Important news on future development of Quanta

Hi all,
As most of you know I head two projects, Quanta and Kommander. Many of you 
also know I run a business too. (http://kittyhooch.com) Quanta development has 
been stalled since Andras had to seek more income than we could pay him. I 
have been really busy too. Both Andras and I talk often and are very committed 
to seeing these projects succeed. Unfortunately it will take a lot of 
developer hours. Both projects are partially ported and will be greatly 
enhanced. With full time dedicated programmers they could both be in awesome 
shape in a few months. With the current volunteer effort we will be lucky to 
have both of them looking decent in six months. Clearly we need more 
developers.

Below is an explanation of where we are and where we're going along with an 
appeal. Now that I am within a few weeks of serious effort and dabbling in the 
code right now, this is the time to start actively supporting the project.
http://kdewebdev.org/donate.php

I have mentioned on the list I have some things I have to do for my business. 
I'm happy to report that my internal applications that run on Kommander are 
within a week or two of being a manageable ongoing project. lately I've been 
coding from noon to sunrise, passing out and going back to coding. Ironically 
if I had my tools ported to KDE4 I'd have saved a lot of time, anywhere from 
5%-75% depending on the task. Next I have to do a major rewrite of what is 
probably the most complex web order system I know. I have to simplify the API 
and add several additional layers of functional complexity... all while 
seeming to flow naturally to users. Then I have to implement the wholesale 
order system and finish putting my manufacturing arm on barcodes. Walk in the 
park. I should hire a programmer so I can sleep some day.

Once these key things are done I will be busy, but as I own my business it is 
unstructured most of the time so I could have days and weeks were I could get 
a few hours to all day.

The greatest challenge to a project like this is getting developers. Andras 
actually had the effect of making us less likely to get volunteers, at least 
in my opinion, and we cared less because he is so awesomely productive. I hope 
in the coming month the current trends created by our hard work in our 
business will empower me to consider sponsoring a developer. It's actually 
quite rational in my mind. However no matter if my business is booming or I'm 
eaten by taxes and barely scraping by. The thing is I should not be the only 
one investing in a project that works so well. 

KDE4 offers awesome opportunities, including visual design with webkit. I'm 
thinking on how to integrate a local server and PHP debugging tools to enable 
graphically editing HTML embedded in PHP. I'm also thinking about bring object 
oriented design to web development in such a way that you can identify 
elements in a non proprietary way and manipulate them on a conceptual level. 
this would offer multi-file edits from a single operation. Kommander can 
easily create plugin parts. In KDE4 all this will be enhanced. You will be 
able to point and click to design custom tools and integrate them tightly with 
Quanta. For instance it will be possible to parse a PHP class and generate a 
dialog that enables you to insert and edit code where you can have very 
complex classes. Am I the only one who has started adding a function to a 
several hundred line class and experienced deja vu, did a search and found out 
I already added this feature? Enhanced auditing tools and means to see your 
site more cohesively are for me. I'm getting old and tired of realized my 
photographic memory doesn't develop as well as it used to. I want lazy tools. 
;-)

So at this time I'm once again encouraging those of you interested in offering 
financial support to the project to consider sponsoring or donating. It will 
make a difference in completeness and delivery date. Remember, free software 
is about the freedom to share. Software is never free to produce. Even if it 
is just time it is more costly than you know. Running the program called 
SLOCcount (source lines of code count) which estimates costs  our module; 
which includes Quanta, Kommander and other programs, clocked in at $6M. No 
matter how much money I make in the coming months I have gone through years of 
struggle to get here. I don't see myself having a lot to dump into development 
and given what my time is worth it's hard to justify coding. Sponsoring 
someone is way cheaper for me, even though I like to code more.

Won't you please join my in supporting the project?
http://kdewebdev.org/donate.php
-- 
Eric Laffoon
Kitty Hooch LLC