[dot] Interview with KDE PIM Hacker Cornelius Schumacher
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stories at kdenews.org
Sun May 29 15:11:42 CEST 2005
URL: http://dot.kde.org/1117363968/
From: Arjan van Leeuwen <>
Dept: we-hate-mosquitos
Date: Sunday 29/May/2005, @12:52
Interview with KDE PIM Hacker Cornelius Schumacher
==================================================
Our final interview in [http://dot.kde.org/1116452031/] this
[http://dot.kde.org/1116675449/] series [http://dot.kde.org/1117225235/]
with the hackers at the on-going Dutch KDE PIM meeting
[http://pim.kde.org/development/meetings/nlpim1/index.php] is with none
other than KDE-PIM module project leader of Cornelius Schumacher. Enjoy
the interview.
Cornelius at the KDE PIM Conference
Cornelius please tell us who you are and what your role is in the
KDE project.
I have been around for quite a while now. I recently found the
first patch I contributed to KDE when looking through old mails. It was
a fix for the development version of KOrganizer which made it not crash
when starting up. This was during the porting from KDE 1 to KDE 2.
Funnily enough I sent the patch to the KOrganizer mailing list exactly
on this day six years ago.
My main focus has been KDE PIM from the beginning, but I have also
done some stuff in the core libraries and other stuff like maintaining
the KDE Help Center.
As my day job I work for SuSE/Novell.
Can you tell us a bit more about what you are currently working on?
If you could code 24h a day for six weeks in a row, what would be the
thing you would do?
I'm currently working on usability and collecting ideas for KDE 4.
I'm also experimenting with some new technology, e.g. Superkaramba. If
I could have a couple of weeks of unexpected extra spare time for
coding I would probably finish the Kontact port to Windows.
We have seen several developers in interviews and blogs talk about
the KDE PIM event in the Netherlands and what they are planning to work
on during the meeting. Do you have any plans or ideas for this meeting?
There are two big goals I would like to achieve at the meeting.
First, creating a roadmap for KDE PIM 4. Second, relaunching the
KDE-PIM web pages with some fresh and rejuvenated content. But I'm sure
there will also come up some new ideas at the meeting.
I saw the attendance list of the PIM meeting and it seems that the
people attending have had a tight relationship with each other for a
while now. Would it good to have some fresh blood in the group?
We always had some people at the KDE PIM meetings which nobody has
met in person before. It's true that there is a fairly stable core of
people, but it's certainly possible to get fresh blood in the group.
This time we for example have Frank Osterfeld of Akregator fame, who is
a new member of KDE PIM.
We heard that some usability people are coming. What's their role
during the meeting?
That's part of the quest to deeply integrate usability work in the
KDE development process. We already had quite some success with it and
I think usability has never been as present in the mind of the KDE
developers as it is now.
We try to get usability feedback as early in the development
process as possible, so that it can really have the impact which is
needed to create high-quality user interfaces. Having around the
usability people when thinking about KDE PIM 4 will be a great asset.
I'm sure that KDE 4 will be the most user friendly KDE ever.
What can we expect from KDE PIM in KDE4? Is there some roadmap?
There are lots of ideas floating around, but we haven't really
started the concrete discussion about KDE PIM 4 yet. I expect the we
will come up with a first roadmap at the meeting.
What's the status of the submitted RFC GroupDav, a protocol the PIM
people came up with during the last meeting together with hackers from
Opengroupware.org?
GroupDav is not a formal committee standard. It has been created
from the needs for standardization which arose from actually
implementing communication between OpenGroupware.org and Kontact. It's
meant to be a pragmatic standard, which makes it easy to implement,
both on the server side and on the client side without introducing much
new technology.
The beauty of GroupDav is that it makes extensive use of existing
standards and the existing development infrastructure, so that we can
take profit of having the excellent WebDav and HTTP kio slaves and our
iCalendar and vCard libraries.
GroupDav has been adopted surprisingly well. There is work going on
to add GroupDav support to Evolution and SunBird, the Mozilla calendar
project. With Citadel there also is a second server implementation.
Isn't groupware in OSS becoming difficult now that Hula groupware
server is supporting CalDav instead of the GroupDav protocol?
Quite the contrary. I think Hula is is a great thing for open
source groupware. It's not the first open source groupware server, but
it puts the focus on the right aspect, on creating a system which
people love to use. This can get the groupware thing out of the dark
corporate corner where it currently hides and annoys the people which
are forced to use it. To be fair I have to say that Hula is not the
only system which is trying to achieve that. Others are doing this as
well.
About CalDav I would like to add, that there is no conflict between
GroupDav and CalDav. GroupDav can be seen as the continuation of
classical iCalendar over HTTP which KOrganizer has supported since
version 2.0 (released almost five years ago) and what Apple has tried
to make proprietary with their "webcal" protocol. GroupDav is the
pragmatic approach to create a protocol which takes more advantage of
having a server, providing more fine-grained access and a solid base
for syncing and caching data by exploiting the lesser known features of
HTTP 1.1. CalDav is one more step. It adds more power, but on the other
hand also hasn't the scope of GroupDav, as it only targets calendar
data.
Once Hula has usable CalDav support, Kontact will support it. KDE
PIM has a track record of implementing server access within days. Hula
will be no exception. Let's see how things evolve, but maybe the
Hula/Kontact combo will be the killer application which will bring
groupware to the common user.
Where do you think KDE PIM shines?
What I like most about KDE PIM is the community. There are lots of
great people and if you look at the commit digest KDE PIM usually is
the most active KDE core module. It's really fun to be part of this
community.
Another aspect is the excellent technology which has emerged from
KDE PIM. It always has been a breeding ground for new KDE technology.
For example KConfig XT or KNewStuff were born in KDE PIM.
Finally, there is Kontact which is a real killer application. It's
kind of the essence of KDE PIM. I really enjoy all the nice comments
and good feedback about Kontact. The best thing about Kontact from a
developers perspective is that it has a very solid architecture. This
provides the potential to quickly adapt to whatever future requirement
will arise.
What part of KDE PIM needs some serious attention?
As a user I would put my attention on Kontact. That's where most of
the exciting stuff will happen.
If your question is asking which areas of KDE PIM I think needs
work, I would mention the KMail internals. Mail still is the heart of
personal information management and systems like Gmail show that there
can be quite some innovation in this area. Although it has improved
significantly recently, the core of KMail still needs some work to make
it as flexible as it could be, so that we can better focus on providing
a usable, innovative and polished user interface.
But all the developers of KMail are already working as hard as they
can, as far as I can judge. How do you see that is going to happen?
It's not about creating extra work. Cleaning up the code will
quickly save us work, because it allows us to implement new features
with less effort and do bug fixes faster and more reliable. Constant
refactoring is an essential part of open source development, especially
in KDE. KDE 4 will provide us with the opportunity to do some of the
stuff we havn't dared to touch in the past because we will have to work
on the code for Qt4/KDE4 porting anyways.
What future do you see for KDE PIM?
Well, I don't have my crystal ball at hand, but I feel that the
future of KDE PIM will be bright ;-)
So another thing we heard is that you are leaving to go to GUADEC
in Germany. Could you tell us more about that? Any more KDE people going
to be there?
Some people have asked me, why are you going to GUADEC, aren't you
a KDE guy? I tell them, yes, I'm a KDE guy and that's why I'm going to
GUADEC. GNOME and KDE are the dominant desktop projects on Linux and
other Unix systems. We have the same goals and there are lots of areas
where we can work together. We should jointly go for the 98 percent of
Windows desktops out there and not fight each other. A bit of healthy
competition is quite useful though.
I will meet some people on GUADEC to talk about cooperation and
standardization. One topic is a common documentation standard, another
is syncing. There certainly will be others.
There will be a number of other KDE people at GUADEC. Have a look
at the KDE Wiki
[http://wiki.kde.org/tiki-index.php?page=KDE+%40+GUADEC+2005] for more
details.
The KDE PIM Meeting Group Photo, see Fab Mous's blog entry
[http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/view/1108] for names.
More photos of the conference are available on kde.nl.
Friday
[http://www.kde.nl/agenda/2005-kdepim-meeting/pics/2705/images.html]
Saturday
[http://www.kde.nl/agenda/2005-kdepim-meeting/pics/2805/images.html]
Sunday
[http://www.kde.nl/agenda/2005-kdepim-meeting/pics/2905/images.html]
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