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List:       koffice
Subject:    Re: Shawn Gordon's Response to John Califf
From:       John Califf <jcaliff () compuzone ! net>
Date:       2000-09-29 9:00:36
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Thank you for you lengthy response.  I have not answered yet because I
couldn't receive email most of this week. I just got a new ISP so I can
now use email again both sending and receiving.

I'm very satisfied with your clarification that when your employees do
work on KWord and KImageShop that work will be done through Kde cvs. 
Also, I must have been mistaken that some people working on KWord are
getting paid by you, if you say that you've had nobody working on KWord
to date. 

On other matters, there was no hostility to you but there was to your
belief expressed several times in several ways that you control what you
pay for. Not just once.  So please stop pretending that I was taking you
through the wringer for doing something to help free software.  Most
companies paying people to work on Kde do not ask in return to have any
control over the work people do - they just want to help the project
which also helps them.  Your business needs are somewhat different, but
when you control what you pay for that also extends into work done on
what's in Kde cvs, if your people are working on code in Kde cvs. 
Personally, I don't find control to be a very wise technique to use with
people, even in business.

The Kde project has made it clear that doesn't want that kind of control
from commercial interests, although some influence is inevitable.  At
last I don't want it. That's why there is always a need for a good
balance between people who are getting paid and people who are not in
this kind of a project, or at least for a wide variety of sponsors. 
We'd all like to be paid, of course.

There are other issues regarding the need for more activity on this list
or a new koffice-devel list I've heard rumors about, but nobody seems to
know where it is.  This has little to do with a meeting in Germany but
more to do with there being very few developers working on finishing up
parts of KOffice right now. It may or may not have anything to do with
your projects drawing people off - that doesn't matter.  Rather than
being assualted with 1001 developers trying to take KOffice into 1001
different directions, KOffice is lucky to attract one new developer a
month.

Many of your assumptions about me are incorrect, but I won't bother to
clarify them in detail.  All I'll say is that I'm just the opposite of a
free software fanatic, and I'm problably older than you are.

I've worked in commercial software too, and I don't find commercial
management to have produced better results than OSS generally. If most
of the KOffice components are unfinished, that may be becasue the
underlying design and component model of Kde 2 has changed so many times
and KOffice has been the testing ground for that.  KOffice may be a
little tired and battered, but its design is very good in my opinion. It
has an underlying vitality. I didn't think that at first until I
actually started working with the code. A lot of little usability issues
and details remain to attend to, and some major performance issues. 
Please have mercy on our pathetic little team.  But I doubt that one of
your cracker jack professionally managed teams could come in and finish
it up in two weeks.  Like they did KImageshop?  It doesn't even compile,
so how could it crash?  At least the code is still in Kde cvs where
people can work on it so it crashes 70% of the time again. 

In closing,  I'm very pleased with your response - on the main points
about leaving the focus for work on what's currently in Kde cvs where it
is.  The rest doesn't matter.


John Califf

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