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List: kde-promo
Subject: Re: [kde-promo] aKademy 2008 Press Release Kit
From: "Jos Poortvliet" <jospoortvliet () gmail ! com>
Date: 2008-03-14 18:18:09
Message-ID: 5c77e14b0803141118t1fee9a1fre39ae7271d9f3768 () mail ! gmail ! com
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On Fri, Mar 14, 2008 at 6:34 PM, Vlad Blanton <vblanton@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello Kde Promoers,
>
> Last year for aKademy 2007 I (with the help of Wendy and Aaron) created
> the pdf press kit.
>
> http://akademy2007.kde.org/press/aKademy-2007-pressbrochure.pdf
>
> Though I was satisfied with the previous years press kit, I would be
> delighted to create an even better one this year. I already have ideas
> on how to improve it -- particularly to make it a high quality PDF
> following contemporary standards and to make sure that it is as
> re-usable as possible for the future. Has anyone began working on it
> yet? If not, I'll jump on it nice and early to make the process as
> stress free as possible.
+1
You should imho use the stuff written for the KDE 4 release event by
Troy and myself... See attached.
>
> to KDE 4.1,
>
> Vladislav Blanton
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
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</style> </head> <body revision="ddwz6w3d_26cf2s7z:119"> <h1>
Write about KDE
</h1>
<p>
The purpose of this page is to help anyone who wants to write about KDE, \
be it for a blog or a magazine. We will give you some general tips and \
ideas, show you how to find information and help you contact the community \
with questions. </p>
<h2>
General tips<br>
</h2>
Free Software has different ideals and principles guiding it than \
proprietary software. The following tips can help you write a better and \
more complete article by pointing out the differences in culture between \
proprietary and free software communities.<br>
<br>
<ul>
<li>
<i>Search out the defining features, rather than comparing to \
commercial products.</i> Many people in the commercial world view open \
source projects exclusively as replacements for their Windows equivalents. \
While some projects exist that do precisely this, the vast majority have \
unique features that help to identify the program. Focusing on what makes \
the program unique will produce a better response.<br>
</li>
<li>
<i>Don't hesitate to contact the program developers directly.</i> \
Direct contact often produces the best answers. Usually programs will have \
an "About" screen (in KDE, it's under the help menu) that lists the \
contact information for the programmers that were actually involved in the \
creation of that software. Most programmers are very happy to answer press \
inquiries, or will redirect your questions to someone who can better deal \
with any specific topic.
</li>
<li>
<i>Informal language is best. </i>Most open source programmers do not \
have a degree in business, journalism, etc. and will respond faster and \
with more details if they are approached as though the interview was \
taking place in a coffee house. If you ask formal questions, do not be put \
off by the informal response you may get in return. Ask for definitions of \
any jargon that you do not understand as some words, especially the word \
"Hacker", have very different meaning in the open source context.
</li>
<li>
<i>Don't expect immediate responses.</i> Many open source programmers \
are coding in their spare time and work elsewhere to pay the bills. They \
will usually respond, but you need to give them time.
</li>
<li>
<i>Discover people's motivations.</i> While some people work on free
software for altruistic reasons, you will find that many do not. Many \
people are paid by a company to implement features that this company would \
find useful. Others simply find it an enjoyable hobby, and like being a \
part of the community. A person's motivation will often dictate what sort \
of programming they will do. If you discover what motivates a person or
project, you will better understand their goals, which isn't always to
compete with commercial software offerings...
</li>
<li>
<i>Play up collaboration, not division.</i> While arguments between \
Linus Torvalds and Sun's CEO may make the rounds in popular press, \
cooperation is the prevalent mode of operation within the open source \
world. Free software projects cover a wide range of applications, from web \
servers to games, and quite often there is more than one product being \
developed under so called 'co-opetition'. Since the source code is \
available, projects readily and freely borrow ideas from one another, and \
even though the implementation details may be different, standards are \
developed for communications, data formats, and so forth. Open source \
projects are often stricter adherents to interoperability standards than \
their commercial counterparts. </li>
<br>
</ul>
<h2>
Finding information.
</h2>
<p>
As most work in KDE is done over the Internet, 95% of the information can \
be found there as well. But much of this information is hidden away in
mailing-lists, chat channels and blogs. It is hard to extract information \
out of those in an efficient way, so we will give you a few pointers on \
how to find information about a topic efficiently.
</p>
<h3>
The KDE site
</h3>
<p>
The first source of information about KDE and the project can be found on \
the <a href=http://www.kde.org/ title="KDE website">KDE website</a> \
[1]. <a href=http://kde.org/whatiskde/>What is KDE</a> [2] and
<a href=http://kde.org/info/>general information about KDE</a> [3] are of \
most interest. Of course, the <a href=http://www.fsf.org/>site of the Free \
Software Foundation</a> [4] and the <a href=http://www.gnu.org>GNU \
project</a> [5] can give you more information on our roots and the \
principles of Free Software. Don't skip the <a \
href=http://www.gnu.org/philosophy>philosophy section</a> [6]! If you want \
to read more about the way Free Software works and is being developed \
compared to proprietary software, this essay by Eric S. Raymond is worth a \
read: <a href=http://www.catb.org/%7Eesr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/ \
id=v6sm title="The Cathedral and the Bazaar">The Cathedral and the Bazaar \
[7].</a> </p>
<h3>
Release announcements
</h3>
Often, the
<a href=http://www.kde.org/announcements/ id=s4xq title="release \
announcements">release announcements</a> [8] come with a nice, graphical \
overview of what's new. Based on this, one can quickly write an interesting \
piece showcasing the newest and greatest features in KDE.<br>
<h3>
Websites
</h3>
<p>
Most individual KDE sub-projects have their own website under the
<a href=http://www.kde.org/>kde.org</a> [9] umbrella. For example, the
educational project can be found on
<a href=http://edu.kde.org/>edu.kde.org</a> [10]. These sites are \
aggregated on the <a href=http://techbase.kde.org/Projects>Projects \
page</a> [11]. It is a good place to start and find the basic information, \
but be aware that it can be seriously outdated!<br>
</p>
<h3>
Techbase
</h3>
<p>
Much more technical information can be found on the
<a href=http://techbase.kde.org/>techbase site</a> [12]. KDE gathers all
relevant developer information here. Interesting pages can be:
</p>
<ul>
<li>
Development frameworks in KDE 4:
<a href=http://techbase.kde.org/Development/Architecture/KDE4>Architecture/KDE4</a>
[13]
</li>
<li>
Release schedulers and feature plans:
<a href=http://techbase.kde.org/Schedules>Schedules</a> [14]
</li>
<li>
Overview of the KDE projects:
<a href=http://techbase.kde.org/Projects>Projects</a> [15]
</li>
</ul>
<p>
</p>
<h3>
The KDE news site
</h3>
<p>
A premier source off information about KDE is the KDE news site,
<a href=http://dot.kde.org/>the Dot</a> [16]. It offers
<a href=http://dot.kde.org/searchForm>search functionality</a> [17], and \
we can give a recommendation: The
<a href=http://www.googlesyndicatedsearch.com/u/dot?as_q=road+to+kde&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&num=100>'Road
to KDE 4'</a> [18] series by Troy Unrau are an excellent starting point \
on the many new technologies available in KDE 4. Further, just searching \
for the technology you are looking for, like 'Decibel' will help you find \
what you are looking for.
</p>
<h3>
People
</h3>
<p>
For information about the KDE developers, we recommend
<a href=http://www.behindkde.org/>People behind KDE</a> [19]. It offers
interviews with many KDE developers. Further, you can find their blogs \
mostly on the <a href=http://planetkde.org/>Planet</a> [20]. Look under \
subscriptions for individual feeds.
</p>
<h3>
Commit Digest
</h3>
<p>
The <a href=http://www.commit-digest.org/>Commit Digest</a> [21] is a \
very valuable source of more detailed information, but it can be hard to \
extract due to the sheer amount of information. A good tip is to quickly \
read the 'This Week' section at the top to get a quick overview of "what's \
hot". Further, you can use the search functionality in your web-browser...
</p>
<h3>
Mailing-list Archives
</h3>
<p>
The most detailed information generally available online is to be found \
in the mailing-list archives of the several KDE projects. Links to these
mailing-lists can be found on their respective websites (see the
<a href=http://techbase.kde.org/Projects>Projects</a> [22] site).
</p>
<p>
An example of the edu mailing-list archives can be found
<a href=http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-edu/>here</a> [23]. Using the \
search functionality is often required to find anything useful in a decent \
amount of time!
</p>
<h3>
Contacting the community
</h3>
<p>
If you want to have the latest information, or verify what you're \
writing, the best place to ask is on the
<a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mailinglist>mailing-list</a> [24] or \
the <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Relay_Chat>IRC \
channels</a> [25]. You can subscribe to the mailing-list (but don't have \
to, just be sure to mention it if you're not so they include you \
personally in the replies), information about this can be found on the \
individual <a href=http://techbase.kde.org/Projects>projects'</a> [26] \
websites. The same goes for IRC, the channel-names and server information.
</p>
<p>
If you want to get in contact with individual developers, you can send \
them an email. Names can often be found on the
<a href=http://techbase.kde.org/Projects>Project</a> [11] website or on
<a href=http://www.behindkde.org/>People behind KDE</a> [19], and \
google-ing often brings up their email address (tip: Google the name + \
"KDE"). </p>
<br>
<p>
</p>
<h2>
Conclusion
</h2>
<p>
If you want to write about KDE, it is often advisable to find a specific
source of interest, as the whole of KDE is a lot to write about. Picking \
one of the technologies behind KDE and writing an article about them is \
made easy by the huge amount of information available online. The above \
guide can help you quickly gather the basic information, and it tells you \
where you can find or ask about the current status.
</p>
<ul>
<br>
</ul>
<br>
Written by Troy Unrau and Jos Poortvliet<br>
<br>
Links<br>
[1] http://www.kde.org/<br>
[2] http://kde.org/whatiskde/<br>
[3] http://kde.org/info/<br>
[4] http://www.fsf.org/<br>
[5] http://www.gnu.org/<br>
[6] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy<br>
[7] http://www.catb.org/%7Eesr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/<br>
[8] http://www.kde.org/announcements/<br>
[9] http://www.kde.org/<br>
[10] http://edu.kde.org/<br>
[11] http://techbase.kde.org/Projects<br>
[12] http://techbase.kde.org/<br>
[13] http://techbase.kde.org/Development/Architecture/KDE4<br>
[14] http://techbase.kde.org/Schedules<br>
[15] http://techbase.kde.org/Projects<br>
[16] http://dot.kde.org/<br>
[17] http://dot.kde.org/searchForm<br>
[18]
http://www.googlesyndicatedsearch.com/u/dot?as_q=road+to+kde&amp;as_epq=&amp;as_oq=&amp;as_eq=&amp;num=100<br>
[19] http://www.behindkde.org/<br>
[20] http://planetkde.org/<br>
[21] http://www.commit-digest.org/<br>
[22] http://techbase.kde.org/Projects<br>
[23] http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-edu/<br>
[24] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mailinglist<br>
[25] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Relay_Chat<br>
<br></body>
</html>
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