KOffice arbitration is finished

[Thomas Thym]

In October 2010 the disagreements in the KOffice team got to a point when the developers decided it is better for the project to split.[1] Like in real life such splits are not easy. Not every issue could be solved by the team itself. Finally they agreed on an arbitration with a binding result.

After many hours of hard work of both teams I am proud to announce the solution of the KOffice split arbitration.

There were highs and not so happy times but all in all the two teams did a great job, and cooperated to find the best solution possible. In the end the two teams agreed on most of the major issues. (Sadly some points had to be decided without an agreement.)

The goal: Both teams want to focus on their projects, want peace to concentrate on bringing their software further and to provide clear information and guidance for their users. 

The major points of the agreement are:
- Team A (around Thomas Zander) is allowed to keep the name KOffice and KWord, including the communication channels (website, mailing lists, irc channel etc.). 
- Team B (now called Calligra suite) is allowed to keep the names Kexi, Krita and Karbon.
- All other applications are or will be renamed.
- To make it clearer to all users of the original KOffice project, all application names not used by the project anymore have to be deleted from the koffice.org website. There will be a footer that informs about the split on the ML and IRC until the end of year. 
- The teams want to go their separate own ways and do not want to interact or interfere with each other. (The calligra team is allowed to answer questions in #koffice on irc until the next major release of the software of either team.)

For details see the attached decision.

Both teams have now a clear basis to build their future upon. They can focus on their projects for the best for them, KDE and the whole Free Software Community.

I hope to see both office suites flourish in the future. All my best wishes to both.

Thomas
(The arbitrator)

[1] Summarized background information about the split: http://lwn.net/Articles/419822/
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