If you have been following this digest for a while, you no doubt have noticed that the same names keep coming up. Obviously some developers are able to spend quite alot of time hacking KDE. Having lived in an economically depressed area for the last 20 years, my habit has been to inquire as to peoples means of living. So, I asked
Who is paid to hack KDE? I'm sure the list is incomplete, and I will get corrections, which I will pass on.
- SuSE employs Waldo Bastian, Cornelius Schumacher, Stephan Kulow, Michael Matz, Lubos Lunak, Lukas Tinkl and Everaldo Coelho. Not all spend 100% of their time on KDE.
- Automatix employs Zack Rusin, who enjoys 50% of his time on KDE. Holger Schroeder has the same deal.
- Trolltech employs David Faure, who had 50% for KDE. Of course, the Qt framework is written and supported by Trolltech.
- Eric Laffoon sponsors Andras Mantia to work on Quanta.
- Bo Thorsen is contracted by Klaralvdalens Datakonsult AB
- Marc Mutz was contracted by Intevation. Bo and Marc and Bernhard Reiter (among others) were working on Kroupware and Kolab, the groupware solution for the German government.
- Arend van Beelen jr. by Auton Rijnsburg, who worked on Krdc.
- Laurent Montel is employed by Mandrake
- David Hyatt and crew are employed by Apple, and have contributed greatly to Khtml.
Not very many are there? This last week there were 163 different people who contributed to KDE, either as translators, web designers or developers, working on the various applications and frameworks that make up the whole package. The majority of contributors are volunteers. What can we take from this? If you use KDE, what are you doing to support those who do the work? Many developers could use hardware upgrades, even a bit of cash to make it to the developer conferences. Or we can support those who support the developers. Or sponsor someone so they can devote more time to the project. Check out
www.kde.org/support for details. If I have missed anyone, or have incorrect information, please let me know.
