take KOffice out of Kde?

[Terry-67]

There seems to be nothing happening on this list.  It was different not
so long ago.

A couple of us have started thinking about the need for a strong
competitor in the field of office software.  KOffice may have the
potential.  Is there any prospect of it stepping outside of the
KUniverse with the right support?
--

Regards, Terry North

Murphy's Law is recursive.

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On Wednesday 03 October 2007 15:26:20 Terry wrote:
> A couple of us have started thinking about the need for a strong
> competitor in the field of office software.  KOffice may have the
> potential.  Is there any prospect of it stepping outside of the
> KUniverse with the right support?

Certainly, the KOffice applications are all mature applications that together,
or separately, can be run on most platforms out there.

KWord and Krita are both apps that have been separated from KDE in important
ways; they run on all unixes, macOsX and Windows already. Other apps are sure
to follow.
At the same time we will keep on using the kde libraries to get the nice
features KDE gives us where available.

Bottom line; you can see KOffice as a separate project that is mature enough
to be on its own.  At the same time KDE is a very well known organization and
we embrace the affinity and features that this gives KOffice.

Cheers!
--
Thomas Zander


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On Wed, 3 Oct 2007, Terry wrote:

> There seems to be nothing happening on this list.  It was different not
> so long ago.

Probably because the exciting things are happening on the svn commit list,
and that's not that user-visibile.

> A couple of us have started thinking about the need for a strong
> competitor in the field of office software.  KOffice may have the
> potential.  Is there any prospect of it stepping outside of the
> KUniverse with the right support?

Realistically speaking, there will always be a koffice inside the
kde project -- we love KDE. What you could do is start a company
or partner with an existing company, fork KOffice into QOffice and
hire developers. Whether you will able to entice any or many  KOffice
developers to join you in that project depends a lot on the way you go
about that effort.

For instance, you will have accept that any improvement to your fork
that the koffice developers like will be incorporated back -- it's lgpl
and gpl, after all. And doing without KDE is hard but possible, doing
without Qt is completely impossible. And even as a KDE application, KOffice
is already cross-platform across X11, Os X and Windows.

We have already been through a similar effort, trying to get serious
funding for KOffice development, but the person who tried to get the
money failed to make good on his promises.

Boudewijn

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[Terry-67]

Thanks for the replies.

A higher profile for KOffice would be just as much to my liking.  I am
enjoying KWord even with its peculiarities.  I'm also looking forward to
KSpread 2.0 being able to open my spreadsheets.

A higher profile for KOffice needs to involve the Linux distros,
particularly those which favour Kde.  I don't use the K desktop but I do
use a lot of K applications.  I'm endeavouring to get a discussion going
on the PCLinuxOS forum.

A KOffice forum seems to be a good way to build a community of KOffice
users.  KOffice needs to be more noticed to attract more backing.


Boudewijn Rempt wrote:

> On Wed, 3 Oct 2007, Terry wrote:
>
>  
>> There seems to be nothing happening on this list.  It was different not
>> so long ago.
>>    
>
> Probably because the exciting things are happening on the svn commit list,
> and that's not that user-visibile.
>
>  
>> A couple of us have started thinking about the need for a strong
>> competitor in the field of office software.  KOffice may have the
>> potential.  Is there any prospect of it stepping outside of the
>> KUniverse with the right support?
>>    
>
> Realistically speaking, there will always be a koffice inside the
> kde project -- we love KDE. What you could do is start a company
> or partner with an existing company, fork KOffice into QOffice and
> hire developers. Whether you will able to entice any or many  KOffice
> developers to join you in that project depends a lot on the way you go
> about that effort.
>
> For instance, you will have accept that any improvement to your fork
> that the koffice developers like will be incorporated back -- it's lgpl
> and gpl, after all. And doing without KDE is hard but possible, doing
> without Qt is completely impossible. And even as a KDE application, KOffice
> is already cross-platform across X11, Os X and Windows.
>
> We have already been through a similar effort, trying to get serious
> funding for KOffice development, but the person who tried to get the
> money failed to make good on his promises.
>
> Boudewijn
>
> ____________________________________
> koffice mailing list
> koffice@...
> To unsubscribe please visit:
> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/koffice
>
>  

--

Regards, Terry North

Murphy's Law is recursive.

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[Jos Poortvliet-4]

On 10/3/07, Terry <terauck-klist@...> wrote:

> Thanks for the replies.
>
> A higher profile for KOffice would be just as much to my liking.  I am
> enjoying KWord even with its peculiarities.  I'm also looking forward to
> KSpread 2.0 being able to open my spreadsheets.
>
> A higher profile for KOffice needs to involve the Linux distros,
> particularly those which favour Kde.  I don't use the K desktop but I do
> use a lot of K applications.  I'm endeavouring to get a discussion going
> on the PCLinuxOS forum.

Be sure to get that discussion on steam when KOffice 2.0 is out, it's
gonna rock ;-)

With the recent fights in the OO.o project, I hope ppl will see the
advantages of a real FOSS project more clearly...

> A KOffice forum seems to be a good way to build a community of KOffice
> users.  KOffice needs to be more noticed to attract more backing.
>
>
> Boudewijn Rempt wrote:
> > On Wed, 3 Oct 2007, Terry wrote:
> >
> >
> >> There seems to be nothing happening on this list.  It was different not
> >> so long ago.
> >>
> >
> > Probably because the exciting things are happening on the svn commit list,
> > and that's not that user-visibile.
> >
> >
> >> A couple of us have started thinking about the need for a strong
> >> competitor in the field of office software.  KOffice may have the
> >> potential.  Is there any prospect of it stepping outside of the
> >> KUniverse with the right support?
> >>
> >
> > Realistically speaking, there will always be a koffice inside the
> > kde project -- we love KDE. What you could do is start a company
> > or partner with an existing company, fork KOffice into QOffice and
> > hire developers. Whether you will able to entice any or many  KOffice
> > developers to join you in that project depends a lot on the way you go
> > about that effort.
> >
> > For instance, you will have accept that any improvement to your fork
> > that the koffice developers like will be incorporated back -- it's lgpl
> > and gpl, after all. And doing without KDE is hard but possible, doing
> > without Qt is completely impossible. And even as a KDE application, KOffice
> > is already cross-platform across X11, Os X and Windows.
> >
> > We have already been through a similar effort, trying to get serious
> > funding for KOffice development, but the person who tried to get the
> > money failed to make good on his promises.
> >
> > Boudewijn
> >
> > ____________________________________
> > koffice mailing list
> > koffice@...
> > To unsubscribe please visit:
> > https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/koffice
> >
> >
>
> --
>
> Regards, Terry North
>
> Murphy's Law is recursive.
>
> ____________________________________
> koffice mailing list
> koffice@...
> To unsubscribe please visit:
> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/koffice
>

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[Terry-67]

Jos Poortvliet wrote:

> On 10/3/07, Terry <terauck-klist@...> wrote:
>  
>> Thanks for the replies.
>>
>> A higher profile for KOffice would be just as much to my liking.  I am
>> enjoying KWord even with its peculiarities.  I'm also looking forward to
>> KSpread 2.0 being able to open my spreadsheets.
>>
>> A higher profile for KOffice needs to involve the Linux distros,
>> particularly those which favour Kde.  I don't use the K desktop but I do
>> use a lot of K applications.  I'm endeavouring to get a discussion going
>> on the PCLinuxOS forum.
>>    
>
> Be sure to get that discussion on steam when KOffice 2.0 is out, it's
> gonna rock ;-)
>
> With the recent fights in the OO.o project, I hope ppl will see the
> advantages of a real FOSS project more clearly...
>  

Speaking of which, that's the version I'm waiting on for my
spreadsheets.  Any indication of when?

What about a new name to mark KOffice as a contender for main name
space?  It is not well known as a drop in the Kde ocean, it seems to
me.  I've been thinking of a simple name which would appeal particularly
to the Chinese, whose developers have been joining the OO project in
numbers.  The name I'm thinking would also make sense in the West.

>> A KOffice forum seems to be a good way to build a community of KOffice
>> users.  KOffice needs to be more noticed to attract more backing.

A forum may be something a group of users could undertake.

--

Regards, Terry North

Murphy's Law is recursive.

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On Wednesday 03 October 2007, Terry wrote:
> A couple of us have started thinking about the need for a strong
> competitor in the field of office software.  KOffice may have the
> potential.  Is there any prospect of it stepping outside of the
> KUniverse with the right support?

well, from my pov I totaly agree there on anything you wrote in this mail and
the reply and I would support it in any case (ok, probably cause I am also a
big xfce-fan and even there I use KOffice and other K-apps since they just
work best for me and same will be true with Windows).

But I also guess a fork like suggested isn't a solution nor would it provide
any advantage. Technical it may possible to provide something like a "thin
kdelibs compatibility lib" that removes any KDE-dependencies while keeping
the sourcecode clean from any #ifdef's. But even those thing would be a
rather large task and I doubt it would really provide any serious advantage
for users. For sure there is no way to replace Qt somehow.

In my eyes it's not that much a technical question but more a political one.
So, to have an own Logo+identity would be a start (to bad we even managed to
remove both things from KOffice a year back) and even to have a forum run by
ppl outside of the KDE-world would be a great thing. But I guess as soon as
it's about actions that may result in additional work for developers it
starts to become very difficult. Also, as pointed out during our last talk
about that matter, there are also advantages at beeing recognized as "KDE
Office": we are able to profit a lot by reusing the KDE-infrastructur (svn,
mailinglist, events, branding, marketing, etc.) and we have what makes KDE
such strong: integration (things like kiosk, kparts, kio, kshortcut2, etc.).

p.s. that's all my personal opinion and if you read the other replies you may
note, that each one has another opinion here what may the reason why there
was just no progress on that matter at all.

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[Terry-67]

Sebastian Sauer wrote:

> On Wednesday 03 October 2007, Terry wrote:
>  
>> A couple of us have started thinking about the need for a strong
>> competitor in the field of office software.  KOffice may have the
>> potential.  Is there any prospect of it stepping outside of the
>> KUniverse with the right support?
>>    
>
> well, from my pov I totaly agree there on anything you wrote in this mail and
> the reply and I would support it in any case (ok, probably cause I am also a
> big xfce-fan and even there I use KOffice and other K-apps since they just
> work best for me and same will be true with Windows).
>
> But I also guess a fork like suggested isn't a solution nor would it provide
> any advantage. <snip>
>
> In my eyes it's not that much a technical question but more a political one.
> So, to have an own Logo+identity would be a start (to bad we even managed to
> remove both things from KOffice a year back) and even to have a forum run by
> ppl outside of the KDE-world would be a great thing. But I guess as soon as
> it's about actions that may result in additional work for developers it
> starts to become very difficult. Also, as pointed out during our last talk
> about that matter, there are also advantages at beeing recognized as "KDE
> Office": we are able to profit a lot by reusing the KDE-infrastructur (svn,
> mailinglist, events, branding, marketing, etc.) and we have what makes KDE
> such strong: integration (things like kiosk, kparts, kio, kshortcut2, etc.).
>
> p.s. that's all my personal opinion and if you read the other replies you may
> note, that each one has another opinion here what may the reason why there
> was just no progress on that matter at all.
>  

A fork was not really what I had in mind.  I was just thinking of a more
prominent identity.  The office should be more than another Kde app.  
Marketing by M$ is a major factor in its dominance and the disappearance
of superior providers like Lotus.  I hate to see the field now dominated
by the likes of Sun, Novell and IBM.  How can anyone get enthusiastic
about them?  But people are, because that combination is the visible
alternative to M$ Office.

One answer I got on another forum (not PCLOS) is that KOffice needs to
be cross-platform.  The person suffers from cerebral palsy and has to
use Windows at times so that he can take advantage of Dragon Naturally
Speaking.

I've begun toying with the notion of a free site containing a wiki cum
forum, later with blogs as well.

--

Regards, Terry North

Murphy's Law is recursive.

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On Thursday 04 October 2007 02:23:47 Sebastian Sauer wrote:
> p.s. that's all my personal opinion and if you read the other replies
> you may note, that each one has another opinion here what may the
> reason why there was just no progress on that matter at all.

Actually, I read all 3 answers from the devs and while they are worded
differently the answers are all very very similar.
The reason for lack of progress is mostly because nobody has the abilities
needed to do the work.

I still really want to have a professional graphics designer or such to
create a new KOffice logo and a new website with our own identity. The
website is required to be php driven, and contain no flash.
If you know where to find people that can create a professional looking
website like this, I'm sure every KOffice contributor would love you :)
--
Thomas Zander


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On Thursday 04 October 2007, Terry wrote:

> Speaking of which, that's the version I'm waiting on for my
> spreadsheets.  Any indication of when?

Early Q1 2008, I'm afraid. It's no use denying that KDE 4.0 is not progressing
as fast as we thought it would, and at the same time, we've got our own share
of delays. Some caused by too much ambition, some caused by personal
circumstances like illness. But I'm really confident that we're getting there
now.

> What about a new name to mark KOffice as a contender for main name
> space?  It is not well known as a drop in the Kde ocean, it seems to
> me.  I've been thinking of a simple name which would appeal particularly
> to the Chinese, whose developers have been joining the OO project in
> numbers.  

Renmin Honggong Office!

> The name I'm thinking would also make sense in the West.

Not that one, then... But don't underestimate the amount of exposure the name
KOffice already has had: it is mentioned alongside OO in every news item on
ODF, for instance.

> >> A KOffice forum seems to be a good way to build a community of KOffice
> >> users.  KOffice needs to be more noticed to attract more backing.
>
> A forum may be something a group of users could undertake.

Inge and I are already busy setting up a space for a KOffice web forum, but we
need a good moderator/admin type. Interested?

--
Boudewijn Rempt
http://www.valdyas.org/fading/index.cgi


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On Thursday 04 October 2007, Terry wrote:

> One answer I got on another forum (not PCLOS) is that KOffice needs to
> be cross-platform.  The person suffers from cerebral palsy and has to
> use Windows at times so that he can take advantage of Dragon Naturally
> Speaking.

We're getting there, fortunately, with 2.0.

--
Boudewijn Rempt
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Well, Speaking a bit from outside, though I understand the concerns of the
original poster, I think most of the portability questions should be solved
with version 2.0 running on KDE 4, shouldn't it?
As for the "marketing" aspect, I'm afraid getting out of KDE would reduce
KOffice marketing possibilities more than increase them. I does not seem to
me that Abiword or Gnumeric, while not being strictly speaking Gnome apps,
have really benefited from not being part of it.
I'm pretty sure KDE's increasing awareness with KDE4 will naturally increase
KOffice's own awareness.
But that does not mean indeed that a new logo, a specific forum and things
like that could not be useful, of course.
Maybe the Oxygen guys could be asked to design some look for KOffice? They're
pretty good and could be interested.

        Richard


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On Thursday 04 October 2007 03:39:33 Terry wrote:
> A fork was not really what I had in mind.  I was just thinking of a
> more prominent identity.  The office should be more than another Kde
> app. Marketing by M$ is a major factor in its dominance and the
> disappearance of superior providers like Lotus.  I hate to see the
> field now dominated by the likes of Sun, Novell and IBM.  How can
> anyone get enthusiastic about them?  But people are, because that
> combination is the visible alternative to M$ Office.

To be honest, the currently released KWord is not much of an alternative
in professional settings (too many typesetting issues). So we need to
make sure KWord2 is pushed as a alternative, not the 1.x ones or we risk
being ignored by people.

> One answer I got on another forum (not PCLOS) is that KOffice needs to
> be cross-platform.  

And it is. :)
see the news on http://www.koffice.org

> I've begun toying with the notion of a free site containing a wiki cum
> forum, later with blogs as well.

A forum is good. There are some KOffice developers that are blogging as
well.  We have this planet for all of us (the koffice devs don't blog
enough to deserve their own planet IMOHO). http://valdyas.org/freeOffice/

What we really need IMO is a set of (user) tutorials and content. For
example on that planet link above I read about "a fabulous way to do list
numbering".  Which made me laugh.  Its an incredibly complex thing to
setup and KWord is just amazingly simple to use with good numbering (not
changed a lot between 1.x and 2.0) What we really need is a tutorial
explaining things like that.
I even started the idea of writing a book like that, but nothing has been
written as of yet.

ps. there is a developer wiki on http://wiki.koffice.org but it probably
is entirely unhelpful for users, so, yes, I applaud having a user-site
for this stuff.
--
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[Terry-67]

Boudewijn Rempt wrote:

> On Thursday 04 October 2007, Terry wrote:
> <snip>
>  
>>>> A KOffice forum seems to be a good way to build a community of KOffice
>>>> users.  KOffice needs to be more noticed to attract more backing.
>>>>        
>> A forum may be something a group of users could undertake.
>>    
>
> Inge and I are already busy setting up a space for a KOffice web forum, but we
> need a good moderator/admin type. Interested?
>  

I'd like to help.  I've been moderating on an OO support forum but have
pretty well reached the end of my capacity to keep doing that, I'm so
disheartened with that software and, more importantly, the culture and
attitudes of the development "organisation".  I've been involved in a
move to set up a new forum on a Sun server.  Not the website development
itself but the preliminary discussions.  I've had a trot with SMF and
myBB services to create forums.  I favour those because they seem better
for users than phpBB.  I've only used SMF to any extent in real, virtual
life.

I didn't realise 2.0 was so close.  I've been procrastinating on
re-writing my Calc scripts in Python to ease the transition and am
pleased I can go straight to writing the scripts for KSpread instead.  
That's assuming, of course, that KSpread can handle the situation.

I'm glad to hear there will be a KOffice forum.

--

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Murphy's Law is recursive.

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On Thursday 04 October 2007 08:00:09 Richard Van Den Boom wrote:
> As for the "marketing" aspect, I'm afraid getting out of KDE would reduce
> KOffice marketing possibilities more than increase them. I does not seem to
> me that Abiword or Gnumeric, while not being strictly speaking Gnome apps,
> have really benefited from not being part of it.
> I'm pretty sure KDE's increasing awareness with KDE4 will naturally
> increase KOffice's own awareness.

There have been some brainstorming sessions on this topic in the past; the
outcome was that KOffice can be a brand that stands on its own without
problems and market itself from that perspective. Thus getting away from the
bad image of being inherently tied to KDE which some people dislike.

At the same time this 'standing on its own' in no way means we should tell KDE
to no longer refer to us. So while we may stand on our own we can still
benefit from KDE being the umbrella organization that will redirect people
interrested in office to us.

You see this strategy in lots and lots of products.  See for example
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PepsiCo
and the amount of brands that it owns.  I'm sure many people don't know that
Cheetos is actually part of the pepsi corporation. :)

--
Thomas Zander


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[Terry-67]

Thomas Zander wrote:

> On Thursday 04 October 2007 02:23:47 Sebastian Sauer wrote:
>  
>> p.s. that's all my personal opinion and if you read the other replies
>> you may note, that each one has another opinion here what may the
>> reason why there was just no progress on that matter at all.
>>    
>
> <snip>
>
> I still really want to have a professional graphics designer or such to
> create a new KOffice logo and a new website with our own identity. The
> website is required to be php driven, and contain no flash.
> If you know where to find people that can create a professional looking
> website like this, I'm sure every KOffice contributor would love you :)

I've had correspondence recently with an artist who particularly likes
designing tans.  This one seems to be for Kde, perhaps I'm wrong :
http://ostan-collections.net/imeeji/albums/userpics/10570/normal_ChibiLinux-tan.png

In any case, he does other artwork.  I corresponded with him because of
my then involvement in planning a new forum for OO.  Against my advice,
he has set about designing some tans for OO apps.  He's a Foss supporter
and he may well be willing to help.  I don't care for animated graphics
but this is one he designed (for his own use, IIRC, for PCLinuxOS :
http://ostan-collections.net/images/c-chan/PCLinuxOS2.gif and a shot at
a wallpaper including a tan :
http://ostan-collections.net/annex/Images/newevePCLOS_small.png

--

Regards, Terry North

Murphy's Law is recursive.

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On Wednesday 03 October 2007 23:04, Terry wrote:

> Thanks for the replies.
>
> A higher profile for KOffice would be just as much to my liking.  I am
> enjoying KWord even with its peculiarities.  I'm also looking forward to
> KSpread 2.0 being able to open my spreadsheets.
>
> A higher profile for KOffice needs to involve the Linux distros,
> particularly those which favour Kde.  I don't use the K desktop but I do
> use a lot of K applications.  I'm endeavouring to get a discussion going
> on the PCLinuxOS forum.

We have very informally spoken to some KDE centric distros, and if KOffice 2.x
delivers, it may very well start to replace OOo as the default office suite.  
I don't expect that to happen before 2.1, though.

Once 2.0 is out, I will start to contact more distributions about this, but
it's a really long-term goal.  On the positive side, people do notice
KOffice, and I will have the second speaking slot after Aaron's keynote at
the KDE 4.0 release event in California. This means we have all of KDE behind
us, and they also think that KOffice is an important project.

        -Inge

> A KOffice forum seems to be a good way to build a com