Fwd: Re: KDevelop

[Sandy Meier]

Hi!

Catalin ask me to keep his answer private, but I think the KDevelop-Team
should know what's going on. :-), but please don't forward this to public
mailinglist's.

Ok, as I understand it, most of us want to work on the current codebase and
don't want to write/design a new IDE in "coorperation" with a company. If
everybody agree on this decision I will write an "offical" statement to Catalin
and to our mailinglist kdevelop at barney on tuesday.

Ciao!
Sandy


P.S Thanks to Ralf for forwarding Shawn Gordon's mail.
P.P.S. I didn't get an email from mosfet. The only mail I got was "Get paid to
work on KDevelop" but this was posted on kde-devel some weeks ago.


----------  forwarded message  ----------
Subject: Re: KDevelop
Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 05:06:01 +0200
From: "Catalin Climov" <catalin at pmsd.com>


-----Original Message-----
From: Sandy Meier <smeier at rz.uni-potsdam.de>
To: Catalin Climov <catalin at pmsd.com>
Date: 02 octombrie 1999 06:52
Subject: KDevelop


>Hi Catalin!
>
>Sorry for not answering your first email, but it read like an announcement
>for the next KDevelop generation and I didn't know what to answer. 

:-). Nevermind. It's okay. I doesn't matter who's fault it is, what really
matters now is to decide (your team and my team) whether we should cooperate
or not. I'm sure that your time is valuable, the same as our is, so let's
not waste it anymore.

>Nevertheless I think we will come to a solution on the kdevelop mailinglist,
>even if this means a codesplit or working together on a new KDevelop design.

Now that Shawn (my boss) decided to reveal our real plans, I think I can
tell you the whole story.

So:
1. What we want:
    - to improve KDevelop: make it modular and flexible, based on plugins,
suitable for any language. That is not negotiable.
    - to be make our work (source code, design, etc ) public, in order to
help your team and the KDevelop community. Our maybe cooperate very close
with your team, and negotiate every step and design decision.
    - to work very fast. We have deadlines, and we must have very clear
roadmaps. That is not negotiable.
    - to make a set of plugins for the Cobol language. We have a Cobol
compiler and we want to make KDevelop the "official" IDE for it. We will
give KDevelop for free together with our Cobol compiler. It's not clear at
this moment whether the plugins will be open source or not ( even if they
will be open source, they will be useless without our compiler). But they
will cost nothing. So, our product will include: the Cobol compiler (will
cost money), the plugins (will cost nothing), and KDevelop (will cost
nothing, of course ;-)). Since the REAL tool is the compiler (and afterall,
development can be done using vi and makefiles :-)), we consider KDevelop a
commodity, and that's why we will not charge our clients for it.
2. What we don't want:
    - we don't want to sell KDevelop. No one will buy a product that is
available for free. Even that we spend money on improving it, our plan is to
deliver KDevelop for free (as a gift) together with our product. It is much
easier to sell a compiler if you have an IDE for it.
    - we don't want to put our own copyright on KDevelop. We can gather the
resources necessary to create our own IDE from the groud up. But our idea is
to combine the advantages of both open and close source development (take it
as an experiment) and see what comes up.
    - we don't want to take KDevelop away from you. Stealing your work will
not help us anyway.
3. What are our benefits:
    - we will spend less resources by improving an existing IDE, than
creating our own.
    - we will increase our sells by provinding an IDE for our compiler.
    - we will make good points by helping open source development.
4. What are your benefits:
    - KDevelop will be developed much faster and will soon become the best
IDE ever.
    - KDevelop will have access to new areas (commercial products) and new
users (our customers). It will be advertised and that will bringmore
developers and more users.
    - KDevelop will have support from our company.
5. Who we are:
    - The Kompany.com. It is obvious where the "K" comes from :-).
    - Shawn Gordon: Kompany's president.
    - Daniel Duley, aka Mosfet. I think you know who he is :-).
    - Jo Dillon. You know him, too.
    - Catalin Climov (XXL). I was a Java programmer for the last 2+ years. I
have solid Java GUI knowledge (SWING) and I can create any GUI without using
visual tools (BTW, I noticed that a lot of KDE programs do not use layout
managers.Too bad. Maybe layout management is a little bit hard to
understand, but once you've got the idea, it becomes a pleasure :-)). Since
Qt resembles to Java GUI in many respects, it was very easy for me to learn
Qt programming. I don't exactly remember when I started to use KDevelop, but
since then I downloaded almost every release and snapshot, and continously
studied its sources. I didn't try to solve any bugs, but rather tried to get
an overview on the whole KDevelop structure. Then I started to imagine how I
would design KDevelop, and what changes should be done to the actual
KDevelop, in order to fulfill my dreams. One month ago I was contacted by
the Kompany via Mosfet, and when they told me what they want, I realised
that we have the same interests. Since I had more intimate knowledge on
KDevelop than anyone else in the team, Shawn decided that I should be the
one to contact you (Mosfet told me that he also tried to contact you, but
got no answer). So I wrote you the first mail. While wainting for your
answer, I wrote some of my ideas on KDevelop new design in a document and
sent it to the other members of the Kompany. After some time, I talked to
Shawn and told him that we should make a public announcement, hoping that we
will finally get an answer from you. And you know the rest of the story :-).

Now that you have more informations about us, I hope you will be more
communicative. English is not my native language (and I suppose that's true
for you, too) so sometimes my words don't express exactly what I mean and
missunderstandigs are possible. That's why before making assumptions, ask
for more details.
What we want NOW, and fast, is to decide (both you and us) whether our
interests are compatible with your interests, and how much cooperation is
possible. Then we should make a public announcement (a friendly one, not
flame-based :-)) on what we decided (either to cooperate or not).
BTW, since you sent me this mail privately (and not on the list), I will
assume you will keep my answer private. Maybe we should meet on irc. It's
much easier to discuss.

Regards,
XXL.