The Press Kit

KDE has a problem. Not a big problem. Not a developer problem. It has a press problem when held up to the same standards as proprietary software. These mainstream computer magazines and so forth tend to consider KDE, and open source applications in general, as one-to-one replacements for windows applications, and tend to cover them as such. They treat Krita like it's a shareware replacement for photoshop, rather than covering it on its own ground.

This has been happening for a while, but since I live in the North American market, I can only really speak for the American mags that publish in English. I can't really comment on other markets.

So, while recently talking to Wade, the idea of press kits came up again. Only we're going to focus on creating hard-copy press kits containing information about KDE which would be mailed to brick-and-mortar media outlets during the release of KDE 4.0. It could then be modified to be handed out at events, and future releases.

Here's some of the proposed contents so far, slightly paraphrased from an email discussion with Wade and Sebastian:

• Executive and/or Working Group Bios
• Some basic prewritten articles that may be used solely for republishing.
• LiveCDs, etc. I'd personally like to see the Mac .dmg files shipped in this kit, as many media outlets use the Mac as their main systems.
• Get testimonials and let people know the testimonials may show up in print.
• A "How to Work with OSS people" letter - a simple guide to dealing with OSS culture for interviewers and so forth.
• Stock artwork and screenshots for reuse and republication by magazines (logos and branding).

Wade has sent an email off to the e.V. folks about bios, and perhaps we can also draw on Danny's people.kde.org stuff as well, if we have recent material, and consent from Danny and the interviewee... (Interviewee looks funny as a word. Is is even a word?)

I've started the How to Work with OSS people letter, and I think we'll have that one done shortly.

And now the unrelated parts...

All of this, and I've been putting off my own articles. Do not fret, I have got responses from 5 different KDE PIM people, and I'll be publishing my kdepimlibs article soon. Other topics coming up soon are Krita and some KDE Embedded stuff. I am waiting for word from the artists before I feature the oxygen style and windeco - as soon as they make them the default styles, expect an article on that, even if other topics have to get pushed back. Additionally, I'm waiting for kicker to finally die before featuring plasma. Aaron has kindly agreed to let me be the executioner of kicker once the time comes. I had so much fun killing kdesktop the first time around, I had to get in on it again.

Speaking of killing things. Is there an attic folder or similar in SVN I can move dead things into? For example, kdesktop still lives in kdebase/workspace/kdesktop even though it's not built or installed anymore. There are still one or two bits of code that can be pulled from that folder (such as the background drawing modes, etc.) before we can do svn rm. So I'd much rather svn mv it someplace.... When the time comes, I'd do the same with kicker... Anyone know of a good group home for old KDE programs that are retiring and don't have a family willing to take care of them?

Take care folks.