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List:       kde-debian
Subject:    State of the project... WAS: Re: FOSDEM2004 and KDE/Debian ...
From:       Alexander Neundorf <neundorf () kde ! org>
Date:       2004-01-21 20:32:38
Message-ID: 200401212132.38053.neundorf () kde ! org
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Hi,

as Daniel put it:

On Wednesday 21 January 2004 09:51, Daniel Stone wrote:
> And say what, seriously? "We started to do stuff but then argued about a
> name for 4 weeks so everyone got bored and did other stuff instead."?
> Don't get me wrong, Kapture and Kalternatives (I haven't forgotten you,
> Juanjux, I've just been way too busy) are great, right, but it's nothing
> with which to advertise a major project.

I think that's not completely wrong.

Main point: we (KDE) need more developers/contributors.

With the few guys around here, we can't build an enterprise distribution.
UserLinux has more people (ok, not sure about this), and it has a big name 
(Bruce).

What can we *realistically* do ?

-build a KDE-demo cd for demonstrating the full capabilities of KDE, 
everything working and setup as good as possible: is being worked on

-take what UserLinux produces and modify it (i.e. default to an optimized KDE 
installation and offer Gnome too): not much there yet

-produce system level tools, probably focussing on *one specific x86 distro*. 
Everything else is not realistic. This one has been chosen to be Debian.
Work is being done on kalternatives, kapture.

-work more closely together with some dstributions: knoppix, skolelinux, suse, 
mandrake...

-work on better integration of non-KDE apps: 
kde-OOo: I guess no new developers have joined over there
the gtk Qt theme: not much news
libqtgtk: not much news
fuse-kio: works, but I get almost no responses
Qt#: last update april 2003....

All the mentioned points are IMHO not very "enterprisy". The enterprise stuff 
has to be done by UserLinux. How can we get the system tools ?
Using handcrafted C++ code works, but I guess there are better/quicker ways.
We have bindings to scripting languages, Python, Ruby. We have Kommander to 
build frontends for CLI tools and more. There is webmin which can do a lot of 
things and works good. No need to reinvent smarter and better stuff. It 
wouldn't become reality. There have been too many announcements of cool new 
projects which are basically dead now.

Main point: how can we attract more people to developing/contributing ?

Ideas ?

I guess we have to be active, maybe write an open letter to all distributions: 
"what would you like to have ?"  And contact the distribution people 
directly. Join their mailinglists.
Advertise the bindings to ruby/python/perl. Maybe even with the focus on the 
bindings to Qt, more than on KDE. This requires less learning (KDE has a big 
API).
Let's publish some articles on the dot, like: "we need a developer to help 
with this kfoo application, wanna help ?" 
Maybe this wish for concrete help might be more successfull than "come and 
help the kde enterprise project, we always need help".

What do you think ?

Bye
Alex
-- 
Work: alexander.neundorf@jenoptik.com - http://www.jenoptik-los.de
Home: neundorf@kde.org                - http://www.kde.org
      alex@neundorf.net               - http://www.neundorf.net

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