GNOME/KDE interoperability hothouse

[Jim Kingdon]

Hi, I'm Jim Kingdon from the Free Standards Group (I'm also known for
CVS, GDB, and other random things).

We're trying to set up a GNOME/KDE interoperability hothouse at
LinuxWorld in San Francisco in August.  There are various pieces to
put together if this is going to happen, but at the moment, the big
one is figuring out who can make it and what they would try to get
done there.

On the question of who, I'm accepting indications of interest.  There
are lots of considerations here, such as trying to get people who can
make decisions about the relevant bits of code, matching the people
with the tasks, balancing GNOME and KDE (and others like ROX as
relevant), and more.  But I'm willing to start with: Who would find
this fun?  Who sees something here they'd like to work on?

On the question of what to work on, a few ideas are:

* the common MIME types database which is well underway on xdg-list.

* work on a registry of drag-and-drop/cut-and-paste selection types
  and hack on converting apps to use the official ones, that idea
  involves a lot of small hacking tasks so might be cool.

* I'm sure there are lots of others.  We want to pick a task or set of
  tasks which are big enough to be a significant accomplishment (in
  the manner of the hothouse in which the KDE developers banged out
  KDE 3.0), but of course it also needs to be attainable.
  Suggestions?

We think we'll probably find someone from XFree86 to serve as
moderator.  This might come in handy if X knowledge is involved, and
in general seems like a Good Thing.

Before LinuxWorld, we would start with conference calls and advance
planning/work.

As a carrot, we plan to have some money for a limited number of travel
stipends.  I doubt we can fund everyone who attends, but the travel
stipends should help us to get the people there who we need to make
this a success.

Follow ups to me or to the list(s) (the former if in doubt; this is
sent to 3 lists).  Flames definitely to me :-).  I suppose it goes
without saying, but there isn't much time between now and August, so
we need to act quickly if we are going to make this happen.

--
Jim Kingdon
Developer Relations, Free Standards Group
+1 202 297 3567 (cell)
kingdon at freestandards.org
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