There is still FUD about the licensing, decades on. And a lot of Linux vendors make Gnome the default - perhaps partly because it's less configurable and so easier to support, but partly it does seem to be this weird prejudice. I wonder whether it's a US/EU thing - most of KDE seems to be developed in the EU and the major European distros (which is only really SuSE these days now that Mandriva doesn't exist any more) seem to have it as default, whereas the American distros seem to prefer Gnome.