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List:       koffice
Subject:    PR and the release of KOffice 1.4 (beta)
From:       Inge Wallin <inge () lysator ! liu ! se>
Date:       2005-04-27 19:07:13
Message-ID: 200504272107.14656.inge () lysator ! liu ! se
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Fellow KOfficers,

It is with some hesitation that I write this mail...

What we have in front of us is the release of the most comprehensive free 
office suite in existence. It might not be the best if you look at it and 
compare it to the other office suites component by component. Let's be honest 
with ourselves here; for instance both Gnumeric and  Oocalc is better than 
KSpread and KWord is not as good as neither Abiword nor Oowriter.

What we do have, however, is a more comprehensive suite than any other. 
Abiword and Gnumeric might be very good, but the concept of Gnome office is a 
joke (and you Gnome people who are snooping here would do good to be honest 
with yourself as well. :-) ). And the much heralded Open Office doesn't have 
a counterpart to neither Kexi, Kivio, Karbon nor Krita.

In addition to that this office suite is, in contrast to all others, well 
integrated into the most used and popular free desktop environment on the 
face of the earth.

We must make this release notable!

Traditionally, most of the hype surrounding the free desktops has been around 
Gnome. The reason for this is probably the bigger corporate involvement in 
Gnome and a more visible leadership cadre. Also, Gnome has its leadership in 
America, a country well known for its skill in PR. Still, KDE manages to 
capture more users and get higher user ratings than the other desktops.

Don't get me wrong here.  I think that part of the reason that KDE is so good 
is that it competes and cooperates with other worthy desktops. The healthy 
competition and cross-fertilisation of ideas make all desktops better.

However, I think it is a pity that KDE, being the best desktop, has always had 
the worst PR. Or let me rephrase that: has always had the least visible PR.

So I want to have a very big splash when KOffice 1.4 is released. We as 
developers must make this release the best that we can. We must do two 
things:

1. We must make the programs as easy to use as possible. This phase is now 
over since the feature freeze has become active.

2. We must concentrate to fix the most important bugs that are left. These are 
the ones that users will encounter the most often, the ones that prevent them 
from doing their work. This is our main task from now and 3 weeks into the 
future.

Remember: People *will* check out KOffice and see if it is a worthy contender.  
Journalists *will* write reviews in the papers and people *will* read these 
and get their opinions from them.

But in addition to that, I want to see the KDE PR people get involved in this. 
I want journalists contacted, I want news sites informed. I want KOffice to 
become the "second free office suite" just after Open office. This is a good 
position to be so that it can become the "Default Office Suite" when Open 
Office gets bogged down in java and clunky code, loses developers and SUN 
starts to shrink the resources that it pours into it. This might take a 
number of years, but it will probably happen.

If this was a company, it would be easy. We would just tell the marketing 
department "make it so". But it isn't. So we have to do it ourselves!

Developers! *Please* concentrate on the most important bugs right now. 

Everybody! *Please* find out what *you* can do to spread the news

David! Feel our support for your release work. (And how do you plan to "make 
it so"?  :-) )

 -Inge

-- 
Inge Wallin               | Thus spake the master programmer:               |
                          |      "After three days without programming,     |
inge@lysator.liu.se       |       life becomes meaningless."                |
                          | Geoffrey James: The Tao of Programming.         |
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