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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: Further integration of theKompany projects with KDE
From:       Neil Stevens <multivac () fcmail ! com>
Date:       2001-02-21 18:45:17
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On Wednesday 21 February 2001 07:31 am, Shawn Gordon wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> As I look at what we are doing and all the fine things you guys are
> doing, I think there might be some further opportunity to work together.
>  I don't know if this is agreeable or not, but I would like to at least
> try and start the dialog.  Let me first start with Aethera.
>
> Aethera as a core application will always be free and open source, it
> might not stay GPL, but it will have an open source license.  Our model
> with Aethera is writing plug in applications that we will charge for. 
> The free (in all senses of the word) version of Aethera will do email,
> todo lists, sticky notes, newsgroups, calendar, palm synchronization. 
> As you can see that is a tremendous amount of overlap with a number of
> KDE projects that are out there now.  So the question is, do the people
> of those other projects have an interest in joining forces and really
> accelerating the development of a final app that would be a real killer
> that could be part of KDE standard?

Licensing issues.. oh boy.

Since the GPL can be a real problem to work with, it might be best to find 
ways to get Aethera to cooperate with existing apps, rather than try to 
merge the existing code into Aethera or re-implement things already 
existing in GPL code to be compatible with Aethera.

If you know how you want knotes, kpilot, korganizer, knode, (and perhaps 
even) kit, kaim, or kicq to work together, perhaps an interface in the 
spirit of kab could be written to make it possible.  Then existing apps 
could be fixed up to use that new interface (like kmail began using kab).  
Two benefits that I see to this over merging code into an app like Aethera:

1) It keeps the possibility of making individual components replaceable.  
Don't like MUA bundled with Aethera/Magellan/KDE/whatever?  Use some other 
MUA instead, that also uses the KDE pim interface.  Everything else will 
still work with it.

2) Keeping everything in separate apps avoids licensing disputes (KDE has 
already met its Quota of GPL accusations, and the community is already 
divided enough about thekompany).

> This brings to mind kab to a certain degree.  Both Aethera and Kapital
> have an address book, they address rather different things, and quite
> frankly there is probably little overlap in the information they would
> store - so I would like to at least discuss what might make sense.

I suppose if Aethera had a contact list with coworkers and friends, and 
Kapital had a contact list with utilities and credit card companies (I 
don't know, I'm just guessing), they could both use the same "contact 
list" interface.  Then, when I go to print a envelope in KWord, I can get 
an address from either set, and just plug it in.  That is, the lists may 
not have any overlap, but the things I want to do to those lists might 
have some overlap.

> Adriaan just asked an interesting question about KPilot and Kapital.  I
> gave a smart ass response to the grovel comment, because I thought the
> comment was rude, but the question is interesting.  Kapital will never
> be GPL, it might have a restricted open source license.  As you can
> imagine Kapital is an important revenue stream for us, so I have to
> think carefully about what we give away and how it might make sense.  I
> haven't really given Palm support a lot of thought for Kapital, although
> we are thinking about a 'lite' version of Kapital for Qt Embedded.  I
> would like to think on this and discuss it further to see what might
> make sense for us and for everyone else.

See, keeping everything separated by some kdelibs interface benefits you.  
If everything is separate apps, then your proprietary works can take 
advantage of the interoperability, while remaining unfettered by 
(relatively) restrictive GPL licensing of so may KDE apps.

I hope all of what I said makes sense, and I hope I didn't misunderstand 
anything.  After spending all night hacking out some PHP, my mind's a 
little fuzzy. :-)

-- 
Neil Stevens
multivac@fcmail.com
neil@qualityassistant.com

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