Re: a little something worth noting . . .

begin  Navindra Umanee's  quote:

| I have full access to the logs for my mail server on top of my own
| procmail logs, and I can assure you that your response never
| reached me...  check your own server/client if you want.

weird -- not that i doubt you, because i feel certain that the public 
exchange would not have taken place if you'd received my part of the 
private one. i copied it from my sent mail folder.

| However, I don't imagine Uwe would feel too good about it.

i hope he would take it as the joke, albeit a wiseass joke, that was 
intended. my thought at the time was simply that the whole situation 
was too strange ever to have been imagined.

| Don't confuse KDE with the KDE League, please.  The KDE League was
| always doing its own thing, separately, and most people involved
| with KDE were not involved with the KDE League.  And no, I never
| really had anything to do with the KDE League other than having
| been on the relatively recent working-list.

though you very likely will not believe me (and fortunately, some in 
the kde project do believe me and indeed agree with me), your point, 
that the kde league and kde are two different things is also my 
point. the problem is that to many the kde league was, as it largely 
represented itself to be, the official "front end" of kde, at least 
in the u.s., as witness it being noted -- and believe me, it was -- 
the absence of a kde booth at lwce, due to inaction by the kde 
league. that in a community that so prides itself on openness, such a 
secret organization seemed to handle so much related to kde was at 
best a contradiction, and at worst ominous. if you look at the money 
that went into the kde league (if it ever actually collected the 
initiation feed and dues specified in its bylaws), then we're talking 
a substantial sum, none of which ever seemed to find its way to 
anything benefiting kde. when kde developers seeking to attend 
important meetings had to scrounge for spare rooms and couches to 
sleep on and to pay their fares out of their own pockets while the 
kde league apparently had considerable money and was not using it to 
promote kde, the questions are obvious.

instead, we saw a budget involving more than $170,000 per year -- and 
saw *it* only because it was leaked to me -- in which there was an 
item, news releases at $3,000 apiece. now. in the course of my life i 
have had something to do with news releases, and i can absolutely 
guarantee you that if the kde league paid $3,000 for news releases, 
the kde league got rooked bigtime. there has been no kde news release 
that could not have been professionally written for $250 tops, and 
the fact is that it would have taken little effort to get someone to 
write it for free. but no, we had this:

"Press releases.  This budget item will provide for 4 BW press 
releases per year.  Assuming a 3-month KDE release cycle, this should 
cover all the KDE releases." the budget item was in the amount of 
$12,000.

now. imagine if that money -- not just the $12,000 but the entire 
$173,100, and that was just for one year -- had gone directly to kde 
e.v. for the development and promotion of kde. imagine how useful it 
could have been, and how it could have helped developers get to 
conferences and to other important functions, and how it could have 
aided the project in other ways. i do not believe that anyone can 
point to a single kde users who is so due to the efforts of the kde 
league. so what, then, did the kde league do? perhaps it did 
something useful -- fine, then say so. or perhaps it simply executed 
a swindle, capitalizing on the kde name, in which case the victims 
include the kde project -- in which case, that ought to be said, too, 
lest it be thought that the kde project was party to the thing.

but beyond that, and to get back to your original point, companies 
that might otherwise have contributed to kde *thought they were 
already doing so* through membership in the kde league. that's where 
the problem really was: you are right that kde and the kde league 
are/were separate entities. but the kde league certainly did not 
accent this point. as a result, people putting money into the kde 
league thought they were promoting kde, when in fact all they were 
doing was giving money to the kde league.

and that is why i think it is important that the whole thing be very 
publicly explained. secrecy in this case benefits no one.
-- 
dep

http://www.linuxandmain.com -- outside the box, barely within
the envelope, and no animated paperclip anywhere.

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