Wow,  I've got to say that I'm totally shocked and blown away by the
level of hostility that I'm getting from this email.  Here I thought we
were doing good.

I'll keep this short and too the point.

Current Koffice items that we are involved in.

KWord - we signed an agreement to finance 2 programmers for 2 years in
conjunction with Kawail who would find and house them.  So far we have
interviewed at least 20 programmers, and they have either backed out, or
failed or employment test.  So to date, no code has been done for KWord
from my company, when people are working in it, they will work in the
existing CVS.

KImageShop - We asked repeatedly if anyone was working on it, and if
they would like us to do anything, and everyone said yes.  We are on the
mailing list and had a nice open discussion about a new name, and Krayon
was suggested by a few people, so we adopted the name and started doing
some work.  KIS was so broken it took several weeks just to get it to
the point where it only crashed 70% of the time.  These changes were
committed to the KOffice CVS.

All other work, KDB, Kugar, Kivio, Rekall, VeePee, KDE Studio,
PyQt/PyKDE, Kore, Kode, Magellan are all projects we either started work
on internally, or hired the developer, or made arrangements to work with
the developer.  In the case where we are working with the developer
we've typically done dramatic work to the project.  Why in the world
should I have no say over any aspect of these projects?  That just
doesn't make sense.

Waldo and I have been talking the last couple of weeks on the best way
to start integrating what we are doing with the KOffice CVS.  Waldo had
no problem with how we were doing things.  There is far from "a lot"
about a benevolent dictaroship, there is a quick comment about how Linus
controls what goes into the kernal, and that's how it is.  Some of these
projects are open to the public now (see our web site), and some
aren't.  The ones that aren't, are because we don't want them to be,
because they aren't in a state that we are comfortable in handing out.

If you want to work on KWord and KImageShop, then please do, the more
hands the better, it's not like I make any money having my entire staff
help to finish all these half done projects.  If you will notice, there
is typically an official keeper of each project.  The difference is that
in the case of some of these projects, it is theKompany.com that has
assumed responsibility.  The KOffice list has been quiet because there
is a meeting in Germany of the KOffice developers right now, it has
nothing to do with some nefarious plot by us to usurp KOffice.

I suggest you go through our web site and read our news and press
releases, and look at the projects for yourself to see exactly what is
and isn't available.  I can tell you now that almost everything is
available.  In some cases it is controlled access, like KDB (you ask to
be in the group, and you are admitted).  This is because it is very new
and we are trying to have an organized approach to realizing the 1.0
release.  There are several people outside of theKompany that are
working on it, and the list is very active.

We are very active on the list in soliciting input, throwing out ideas
and checking if people are interested in our helping out.  This is the
first time I have been slapped around for being generous with our very
limited resources.  I could have had the entire company focus on our
money making projects and left all these gaps in KOffice, but I thought
it was important to see these things completed.  You've been involved
for 2 weeks, we've been working on things for 13 months.

I suppose the extent of my "commercial control" extends to the fact that
I've worked in large corporations for many years and I know what kind of
software people expect in these environments, and I'll tell you what, it
isn't what the state of most OSS is.  I'm very interested in helping to
make KOffice enterprise and "grandma" ready.  The point you probably
don't understand, is that by doing this, I increase my potential
customer base for my other products.

Please let me know if I've left any questions unanswered.

Regards,

Shawn Gordon
President
theKompany.com