Uh... Actually, Konfabulator was around before Dashboard; in fact, when Dashboard was announced, there was a furor by fans of Konfabulator similar to the whole Sherlock/Watson debacle. There are a bit too many similarities (they both use JavaScript as a backend (ugh, why JavaScript?) and have superfluous user interfaces), but really, they're both just bloated extensions of Desk Accessories introduced back in Mac OS 6 (I think).
http://daringfireball.net/2004/06/dashboard_vs_konfabulator