GNOME vs KDE - Income and Expenses

Being avid users of GNOME and/or KDE, have you ever wondered how much revenue these well known open source projects generate ? If popular perception is taken into account, GNOME should generate far more revenue, in-turn more profits, than KDE. But reality is somewhat different.

The following are some nuggets of information gleaned from the quarterly reports that give a birds eye view of the income and expenses of GNOME and KDE respectively.

• For second quarter of 2009, GNOME's income is $102567.00 vs KDE's first quarter income of $111059.97. 
• If you exclude Desktop summit fees (one time fees) of $65000 from GNOME's income above, it is found that KDE has twice the budget of GNOME in each quarter. 
• GNOME has traditionally relied on corporate supporters but is switching to a more community based source of income.
• KDE does not seem to be affected by recession, where as GNOME's income seem to have declined across quarters.
• KDE was reporting a positive bank balance of over $288,000. Chances are GNOME's bank balance is nowhere near that of KDE.
  
• However, KDE's administrative costs are less than half GNOME's, despite its larger income. The implications are clear - KDE runs a much more lean ship than GNOME as far as expenses are concerned. 

[Sources : KDE 2009 Q1 report, GNOME 2009 Q2 report, Linux Magazine ]