KDE Quality Team Revisited

At the beginning of March, the KDE Project announced the launch of the Quality Teams Project, a new effort to help people contribute to KDE, whether you are a programmer or not. Lots of people showed interest, and we enjoyed an initial burst of activity, so read on to find out what has happened, and how you can get involved in your favorite desktop environment, and see your work being distributed around the world.

I'll briefly cover work done on artwork, KDE Edutainment, KOffice, KDE Multimedia, KDE PIM, Konqueror, and working with the media. If you want to help any of these, now is a good time to jump in. Of course, the place to start is the Quality Teams Project homepage, but this will help you get an idea of what is going on already.

Remember, in Quality Teams you can do as little or as much as you want. No experience is required, and you can contribute code, documentation, artwork, discuss user interfaces and usability, manage bugs and bug reports, manage the wiki pages, communicate between developers and the wider community, and promote KDE through the media. There's something for everybody :-)

KDE Artwork

This Quality Team has barely started, so if you've been contributing artwork on KDE Look for some time, or if you'd just like to help out, there's plenty to do. The team page suggests three simple tasks to begin with:

1. Create artwork for specific events/applications (possibly through competitions on KDE Look)
2. Keep packaged artwork up to date
3. Find promising artwork and mark it on this page for KNewStuff integration with KDE applications

To get started, read through the team page, subscribe to the KDE Artists mailing list and introduce yourself, then start on whatever interests you!

KDE Edutainment

The Edutainment team has seen lots of activity, including CDs containing CVS copies being sent out to contributors. There are still plenty of jobs going, so if you use Edutainment software, and would like to help shape its direction, have a look through their team page

KOffice

The KOffice team now has new people working on KSpread, and is in need of more people to step up and volunteer for individual applications. There's also some web site work that needs doing, if you can migrate HTML pages to XHTML. Again, check the team page here.

KDE Multimedia

The Multimedia team has barely started any work, but there's plenty to do. The big decision over the multimedia framework (will it be aRts, Gstreamer, NMM, MAS, or another?) needs to be brought into the KDE community and beyond; the developers need help dealing with bugs that aren't related to KDE; and there's plenty more of the usual work. Find out more on their team page.

KDE Pim

The PIM team has seen lots of activity, with a lot of work on updating documentation already begun. There's also an open job to work on calendars for KOrganizer, and an open task for developers for Kontact, all found on their team page.

Konqueror

This isn't a team, so much as a project undertaken by various people on the Quality Team mailing list. To help Konqueror developers improve the KHTML rendering engine, a page of incorrectly rendered web pages has been created. This page needs contributions from frustrated Konqueror users, and volunteers to check over the page and help the KHTML developers get the most out of it.

KDE Media

Have you ever wanted to work in the media? If you want to write articles, do interviews, be interviewed, or help send press releases out and generally help promote KDE, then the Quality Teams Project is ready to help you. I have written an accessible guide to working with the media, aimed at those who have never done media work before. So if you'd like to get involved, read the guide and introduce on the Quality Team Project mailing list. We can help you get articles into various major Free Software / KDE / software related publications, so what better way to start your career than by helping KDE?