[dot] Josh Berkus: KDE Aids The PostgreSQL Team

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URL: http://dot.kde.org/1177960550/

From: Aaron J. Seigo <aseigo at kde.org>
Dept: his-sql
Date: Monday 30/Apr/2007, @12:15

Josh Berkus: KDE Aids The PostgreSQL Team
=========================================

   During FISL 8.0 [http://fisl.softwarelivre.org/] I caught up with
PostgreSQL [http://www.postgresql.org] contributor Josh Berkus who was
there to present on PostgreSQL and meet up with the local PostgreSQL
community. Josh is a member of the PostgreSQL core team and works at Sun
Microsystems as part of their open source database team. Over lunch,
Josh shared how KDE plays an important role in the release coordination
process which Josh oversees.

Josh Berkus, PostgreSQL
     Josh explained, "We create a press kit for every PostgreSQL release
that is sent out to 600-700 people by email in up to 11 different
languages. The translation is done by our translation community which is
made up of teams of 1-4 people per language."

     How does KDE factor into this process? Josh continued, "Two of my
essential tools in this process are KMail and Kate. The reason being
that the way some of the translators handle translations is that I put
the materials in CVS and some of the translators translate the press
release and the web version of the press kit and check it directly into
CVS. But not all translators are comfortable with CVS and instead they
email their work in to me."

     He went on to explain how KMail's excellent internationalization
support allows him receive mail with attatchements in multiple languages
and encodings without altering or otherwise destroying the contents.
Josh noted that he had tried other popular and common mail tools and
didn't have nearly the same level of success.

     Once he has the documents saved to disk, Josh continued, "Kate
allows me to open multiple copies of the press release materials
simultaneously in different editor buffers while handling them all
perfectly, even when they are each in a different encoding. EMACS was
painful in this regard."

     According to Josh, having to use other programs such as Open Office
or Thunderbird would result in him and the PostgreSQL release team
losing significant amounts of valuable time and effort, slowing down
their release process. Of course, Kate and KMail are just two of the
tools that help Josh and his teammates with a smooth PostgreSQL release
process. As Josh noted, "Quality open source tools are key to PostgreSQL
development, and KDE is among those tools."

     Free and Open Source projects aiding the development and support of
each other in this way is a marvelous example of the rich ecosystem that
has arisen. Due to the efforts and commitment of those involved in
projects such as PostgreSQL and KDE, Open Source projects are able to
enjoy a more productive development process resulting in more frequent
and impressive releases. The KDE project is happy to be able to
participate both as a contributor and benefactor in this technology
community.