note on further KDE on cygwin development

[Ralf Habacker]

> > Hi all,
> >
> > in the last time there were some exiting and faster alternatives to the 
> >  KDE on cygwin port in using colinux (http://www.colinux.org) and xming
> > (http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Xming) the win32 based X-Server. Because they
> > provide are much easier way to run KDE application on windows, I thought
> > about the sense of the KDE on cygwin port, especially because a native KDE 
> > 4 port to windows is not far away. The result of this thoughs are that I 
> > will stop further development of the kde-cygwin port because of:
> > - a side effect of the the ongoing transition to KDE 4 is that the 
> > releases kde svn is partial unstable  (for example the autotool build 
> > system), which require much more work to fix, I unfortunally don't have.
> > - there are trademark issues (initiated by trolltech) about the gpl'ed 
> > native qt3-port, which makes further development for me personally
> > somewhat unsecure. (I hope that  this effects noone other working on the
> > native qt3 port) 
> > - The required time of porting and supporting the KDE on cygwin port may 
> > be better used helping the KDE 4 windows port.
> >
> > As summary I think that KDE on cygwin and the native gpl'ed qt3 port had
> > opened a wide door for getting a native KDE 4 on windows. But as anything 
> > in this limited world has it's live time, KDE on cygwin' live time seems 
> > to be over.
> >
> > I like to thank all who had contributed to this project and worked hard to
> > make it possible. Everytime I think about what was reached, i'm very
> > impressed how the open source movement works.
> >
> > -- Keep up the good work.
> 
> Hi Ralf,
> 
> It's been great to work (albeit somewhat sporadically) with you first
> on KDE for Cygwin and later the GPL'd Qt port. I can understand your
> reasons for stopping with kde-cygwin and I look forward to a true
> native KDE 4 port on Windows.
> It's a shame the Qt port effort had been marred by the trademark
> issues and I must take some responsibility for that in pushing for the
> 're-branding' of the project. I hope that the legal issues do not
> affect you personally.

Currently I'm a little double-minded to make this public or not. 

- Yes because I'm angry that this only layer related request is negative 
marketing for trolltech in the open source world and If I would be in the  
position of trolltech's CEO or marketing chief, i would not do that .   (The 
head of trolltechs layer requested  to rename all qt related projects on 
sourceforge and elsewhere  having the term qt in the project name. This means 
to close all related sf project and reopen under a new name. What a 
nightmare). I personally think that this request was intended by an overeager 
person without previous arrangement with marketing, but first I couldn't 
prove it and second it was an official trolltech request, which has to taken 
serious. 

- No, because I personally don't like to harm trolltech, which will have 
negative effect to KDE, which is carried by the open source community.    

So I have to live with this infringment or to forgive them and go one, 
probably I will do the latter. 

> Do I understand that you will be working on KDE 4 yourself 

currently I'm trying to make the KDE4 scons/bksys based build system to get 
ready for mingw. Real porting will probably more for the real developers. 
Christian Ehrlicher and Jaruslav Staniek are working on the msvc related stuff 
and Holger Schröder is also working on the buildsystem. 

> or have you had your fill of KDE development for the time being?

May be this happens, when the KDE4 windows port is on the road and my 2cent 
are given, but I don't know yet. 

Regards
 Ralf