.. in other monday news

i had a nice long discussion with one of the katapult devs and we came to the conclusion that we should try to share the plugins between the katapult and krunner. this will allow them to essentially become two different interfaces to the same data sources. that's why i put the Runner class in libplasma in the first place, actually: in hopes that other apps would use it (and other people write plugins so i don't have to ;)

another bit of good news was on riddell's blog: apparently the french parliament are installing kubuntu on their 1,154 desktop computers.

you know, it would've been nice if that detail had been noted in the announcement on the fridge. i understand the desire to promote a single brand, but there's also something to be said about giving props where they are due (e.g. riddell and company, not to mention kde) and building an atmosphere where people feel they are, indeed, peers in the whole deal.

and i learned about rxart, a kde based operating system that works in the south american market, via the guys who staffed the kde booth at cebit (who, i've heard, did a bang up job!). the fellow who visited with the kde people from rxart claimed some rather impressive numbers (seven figure numbers for copies sold annually, for instance!). if anyone knows more about this product first hand, i'm quite interested in hearing about your experiences with it.

i also read about how red hat is looking to get back into the desktop side of things in a serious way. this makes it a great time for the first release of the official fedora project kde spin to be debuting, as those wanting red hat and kde will have a better set of options than ever before. this should also help (re-)legitimize the desktop to those who listen to red hat for linux guidance. huzzah. i think we're going to see some good things come out of red hat in this regard in the days to come.

i then stumbled across this "gem" from microsoft and wasn't sure at first whether to be slightly envious of their market research and presentation slickness there, cry at the obvious spin they put on it in several places or laugh out loud at how this validates what the free software community is doing more than anything red hat could ever say. eventually i caught my breath after all the laughing subdued ;)

speaking of marketing, in addition to hacking dates with people at guademy and in oslo (i've heard nice things about the widgets-on-graphicsview stuff going on up there; i'm on the edge of my seat waiting to see what's up!) i also have a marketing meeting with trolltech and kde people. i hope to have some nice things to share coming out of that.

so while kdelibs made some big strides today towards getting ready for 4.0, i was kept happy (if tired and overly busy) with little bits of good news dribbling in throughout the day =)