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On Tuesday 11 September 2007 16:36, Torsten Rahn wrote:

> To focus on professional image work you'd use a _real_ graphics suite
> instead (like the ones Adobe and Corel sell).

True, very true... Idem the bits I snipped. And I think the combination of=
=20
Karbon (which has made fantastic progress thanks to Jan Hambrechts) and Kri=
ta=20
could become a good contender.

And I've thought, often even, about what it would mean for Krita and Karbon=
 to=20
sort of split off from KOffice and form a second suite based on the same=20
libraries and using the same plugins.

=46rom a purely technical point of view, that's easy. It's what some=20
distributions are doing already.=20

=46rom a labour-investment point of view, the balance isn't that easy to=20
compute: we would need to invest time in a website, in forums, mailing list=
s=20
and things like that. We could also gain, possibly, some more developers,=20
people who share the artist's idea that being part of an office suite is=20
boring. But we'd need manpower to perform the splitting task up-front. (I=20
certainly do intend to make Windows and OS X installation packages of Krita=
=20
(or Krita+Karbon+selected flake shapes) available separately. Those poor=20
people have to do without the fine-grained auto-dependency packaging that's=
=20
available on Linux. Whether I will have the time to do that, I don't know.)

At the same time, if Krita were Qt-only, we would gain even more acceptance=
,=20
also from the Gnome world (which curiously enough welcomes Scribus almost a=
s=20
if it were a native GTK application). We would also need many more develope=
rs=20
to replace all the functionality we'd have to add ourselves.

Developer manpower is the currency with which free software is paid, so tha=
t's=20
important. Having more users does not automatically translate to having mor=
e=20
developers: having more developers automatically translates to having more=
=20
users. KOffice is a big project with a large developer community.

=46rom a social point of view, I'm not sure whether it is worth going it al=
one,=20
at this point. We have, despite some unfortunate spats, a great community. =
We=20
share lots of code and ideas and we have the basics of an application suite=
=20
set to beat Apple's iWorks at its own game. (And note how Apple re-uses bit=
s=20
of Aperture in Pages). All KOffice developers are not just adding value to=
=20
their own application, but to the whole; I wouldn't want to disturb that.=20

We might want to market the creative and productive parts of KOffice a bit=
=20
more separately, after 2.0. We might want a better name for KOffice, which=
=20
always reminds me of a terminal chain smoker, but in the end, I think we're=
=20
not doing badly at all. News and info articles about free graphics software=
=20
more and more mentions Krita as a separate and worth-while application.

And if it's needed, and someone steps up to do the work, a separate website=
=20
about Karbon and Krita -- possibly with a catchy name like Kreative=20
Komputing, and offering separated downloads of the creative parts of KOffic=
e,=20
will always be a possibility. Heck, the aforementioned hypothetical person=
=20
might even coordinate with me and Cyrille about intermediate releases=20
separate from the KOffice release schedule. Such things can be arranged,=20
without outright forking.

But splitting away from the koffice subversion repository would be a Bad Id=
ea:=20
we gain so much from the cooperation in our developer community, technicall=
y=20
and socially, that it would be a net loss for Krita to distance itself from=
=20
that.

=2D-=20
Boudewijn Rempt=20
http://www.valdyas.org/fading/index.cgi

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