developerWorks Responds to KDE Community Concerns

Friday, 13 April 2001  |  Dre

Yesterday we posted a story about the IBM developerWorks' KDE Theme Contest. It quickly became apparent that the contest had a few shortcomings, which were noted in another update and in the comments from our readership. It turns out that the people working on the contest were new to the Open Source community and KDE and did not realize the mistakes that were made. I drew IBM's attention to these problems and when the Open Source leadership at IBM noted them they immediately recognized and corrected them. An explanation from Shailendra follows. Kudos to IBM for being so receptive and responsive to our community! (Also check out the NewsForge story on this.)



Shailendra from developWorks writes:

Due to an overwhelming response from the community, calling us on a few not-so-subtle gaffs, we have changed our KDE theme contest. First and foremost, entering the contest does not mean you are giving us ownership of your code or exclusive rights to it (we'll be sacrificing a lawyer to the OSS gods for that rule tonight at midnight). All your entries (see revised rule 7 on the contest page) must be licensed under an OSI-approved public software license. Yes, we screwed that one up the first time. Apologies!

Secondly, so that we can make the contest open for contestants worldwide, winners will be able to choose a non-profit, Open Source organization to which dW will make a donation on the winner's behalf. Unfortunately, giving away cash worldwide is another legal quagmire we were trying to keep our foot out of. Turns out we put it in our mouths instead :)

Finally, themes eligible for the contest are to be compliant with KDE 2.x or KDE 1.x, not versions 1.1.x and 1.2 as we accidently wrote in our previous rules! Whew!

Shailendra
ssdhanoa@us.ibm.com

Comments:

deadline - Wilhelm Schlegel - 2001-04-13

Great! Seems like IBM is getting it - accept feedback and work with the community.... Another thing they should probably change is the deadline. I imagine that a really good theme needs more time than 2 weeks to make. This way they will limit the number of possible participants (who doesn't have the time right now to do this) and make do with an assemblage of relatively hurried work.

Re: developerWorks Responds to KDE Community Concerns - Antialias - 2001-04-13

Good, I am going to donate my 2000 $ to KDE :).

Re: developerWorks Responds to KDE Community Concerns - Craig Black - 2001-04-13

Man thats cool!! Go IBM!! Craig

Re: developerWorks Responds to KDE Community Concerns - Jelmer Feenstra - 2001-04-13

Yeah !!! IBM really tries to express this "Love" thing they're advertising with :)) Thanks IBM !!

Re: developerWorks Responds to KDE Community Concerns - msx - 2001-04-13

Impressive...most impressive. This is the way companies interested in Open Source/Free Software are supposed to behave. You make money thanks to community's efforts, then give something in reward and respect the community itself cool =)

Re: developerWorks Responds to KDE Community Concerns - Eric Laffoon - 2001-04-13

> we'll be sacrificing a lawyer to the OSS gods for that rule tonight at midnight Now that's what I call commitment... exercising the "death clause". :-O Will this be webcast? ;-)

Re: developerWorks Responds to KDE Community Concerns - Mark Hillary - 2001-04-14

I hope so. I wonder if they can set up a poll so that we can chose the method of sacrifice.

IBM - the goooood guys!? (was: developerWorks...) - Karl-Heinz Zimmer - 2001-04-14

[Caution: lots of exclamation marks following] You are right: It is nice to see this reaction of IBM and sacrificing one of their thousands of lawyers surely is a very good idea! Even more nice would be to let us choose *whom* to sacrifice: I would like to select one of their top-patent-layers! Honest, cari amici, of course it is nice (and wise) that they have reacted that way this time but while 'praising' them do NOT forget that IBM is constantly filing lots (and I mean LOTS) of patents worldwide! They are the main fighter for software-patents in the european community - this does *not* look like a main friend of free software would act - a themes contest doesn't change this at all! I once had a boss who told us "Just put money on it!" when being asked how to solve a problem. The funny "We love Linux." thing presented to us by IBM recently reminds me to that former boss: IBM seems to think that putting money on Linux is the way to salvation. Perhaps it is a good thing for IBM to do this but does that mean it is also a good thing for the Linux Community? In my (absolutely unimportant) opinion the patents-issue should be addressed aggressively next time the wannabe nice people from IBM are offering their so-called help! Money from people who (at the very same time!) are die hard fighting against fundamental open source ways of sharing ideas and sharing code is kind of bad money. (just my 2 pence, feel free to ignore it - but a "Non olet pecunia!" won't change my mind.)

Donate to an organisation that is against patents? - Daniel - 2001-04-18

You could ask your prize money to be donated to an organisation that lobbies against software patents. At least that may leave a mark with management. Does anyone know of such organisations?

Re: IBM - the goooood guys!? (was: developerWorks...) - Alexander Kuit - 2001-04-18

How about this: <daydream> IBM tries to get as many software patents as possible, only to let the open source community use them freely! Patents are of no danger if the owner of the patent is your friend </daydream>. It's just a silly dream, I know :-(

Talk about timely correction and care... - Greg Brubaker - 2001-04-13

Seriously, I didn't fully mind the contest as it was, but I did feel very queasy about it... Talk about Timely correction, and care! Now when's IBM going to start selling linux desktop computers??? Anyway, good job IBM. All of us KDE user's aplaud your corrections!

Re: Now when's IBM going to start selling .... - Stephan Boeni - 2001-04-17

IMHO IBM sells Netfinity Servers with SuSE Linux.

Re: Now when's IBM going to start selling .... - Greg Brubaker - 2001-04-22

IBM sells Linux systems, but mostly business oriented(Suse Servers, and Caldera Notebooks). Tell me when they start pre-installing Loki game packs on Linux boxes... Not until then are they selling CONSUMER desktops.

Re: developerWorks Responds to KDE Community Concerns - Mark Hillary - 2001-04-14

They have my respect. Peace Man :-)

Why was the dot (and apps) down? - Evan "JabberWokky" E. - 2001-04-17

Can we have a news story as to why apps.kde.com and the dot were down? Or was it just me and everybody I talked to? Inquiring minds want to know... -- Evan

Re: Why was the dot (and apps) down? - AC - 2001-04-18

This has been a problem a couple of times, I don't know why the KDE people are still having the same people host the sites or have not switched to a non Zope based message board.

Re: Why was the dot (and apps) down? - kdeFan - 2001-04-18

IIRC, last time it was ISP trouble - not zope trouble.

Re: Why was the dot (and apps) down? - reihal - 2001-04-18

Maybe they should rename this site to http://down.kde.org. (Sorry about that, I hope irony works)

Re: Why was the dot (and apps) down? - AC - 2001-04-18

It's not that Zope is broke, it's that Zope is hard to move if the server goes down.

Dot Editor Conserving Neural Energy - Navindra Umanee - 2001-04-18

> It's not that Zope is broke, it's that Zope is > hard to move if the server goes down. It's only a matter of installing the software and importing the zexp. I try to keep a backup zexp available generally. And FWIW, we had hardware problems. On this note, I'm taking a break as editor of this site for personal reasons. Fortunately, we have several other hardworking ones. Some stories I'm hoping will be covered in one form or another in the future but that I won't be taking care of myself: - KDE presence at GUADEC II, Interoperability - KC KDE #6 - Rich Moore interview, and other interviews - LinuxTests review - New devel articles by Rich, Rik and co. - Qt Mozilla - etc. See you in May or so. Cheers, Navin.

Re: Dot Editor Conserving Neural Energy - kdeFan - 2001-04-18

Thanks Navindra, you did a great job :-)

Thanks IBM :) - Asif Ali Rizwaan - 2001-04-18

Your support to Open Source is very much appreciated by us (the users). Thanks a lot. Indeed if I win I would donate it to KDE and Gnome 1/2, 1/2 :)