COMDEX, Las Vegas, NV — (press release) — Developers of the K Desktop Environment (KDE) today announced the formation of the KDE League, a group of industry leaders and KDE developers focused on facilitating the promotion, distribution and development of KDE. The founding members of the League include leaders from a cross-section of the computer industries: Borland, Caldera, Compaq, Corel,… Fujitsu-Siemens, Hewlett-Packard Company, IBM, KDE.com, Klarälvdalens Datakonsult, theKompany.com, Mandrakesoft, SuSE, Trolltech, and TurboLinux. The League is an open organization, and other corporations who support the goals of the League are encouraged to apply for membership.

The League will focus on promoting the use of the advanced Open Source desktop alternative on PCs, workstations, and handheld devices by enterprises and individuals and on promoting the development of KDE software by third-party developers. The League will not be directly involved in developing the core KDE libraries and applications, although League members are encouraged to contribute to the KDE codebase in the spirit of KDE's wildly successful 'Bazaar-style' development.

Instead, the industry leaders have united to provide financial, moral, and promotional support to KDE with three principal goals in mind. First, to ensure that KDE remains a desktop standard for Linux and other UNIX workstations and PCs, and that KDE becomes a desktop standard on handheld devices. Second, to help KDE compete effectively, on its merits, with proprietary and other desktops prevalent today. Third, to encourage third-party developers to develop for the KDE platform, thereby providing KDE users with a wide assortment of software that makes use of KDE's cutting-edge technologies.

“The creation of the KDE League marks a vital step forward for KDE,” said Matthias Ettrich, founder of KDE. “With the support of our corporate partners, we can work together to ensure KDE gains wider recognition, a greater number of applications and increased functionality, while maintaining the open development model and technical excellence that has made KDE the most popular Open Source desktop.”

Governance of the League will be controlled by a Board composed of representatives of the core KDE developers and of each KDE League member, with the developers and corporate sponsors sharing power equally.

In conjunction with the announcement of the KDE League, IBM announced that it is working with key Linux development partners such as Trolltech, Mandrake and other League members to deliver components of IBM's ViaVoice on KDE. IBM's ViaVoice is currently the only voice recognition software commercially available for the Linux operating environment.

About KDE (www.kde.org)

KDE is an independent, collaborative project by thousands of developers worldwide. The KDE team recently released KDE 2.0, which for the first time offers a fully object-oriented, component-based desktop and office suite. KDE 2 promises to make the Linux desktop as easy to use as the popular commercial desktops while staying true to open standards and empowering developers and users with quality Open Source software.

For more information about the KDE League, please visit the KDE League's web site.

 
This article was originally published on LinuxDevices.com and has been donated to the open source community by QuinStreet Inc. Please visit LinuxToday.com for up-to-date news and articles about Linux and open source.