In KDE 4.0’s cross-platform strategy, Mac OS X plays a key role. The KDE TechBase keeps track of KDE on Mac OS X projects here.

While 4.1 will bring the final release for OS X, there are plenty of things to play with now. I’m particularly interested in KStars, the KDE PIM, and KOffice itself.

I’ve long been a proponent of OpenOffice, but I don’t see KOffice as a threat to OOo. Rather, I think the two are complementary, each with a different primary focus, and yet also helping each other by forming a strong argument for ODF. With ODF, there’s no need to fight for sole software hegemony, since we’ll still be compatible with everyone else regardless of our personal application preferences. As OOo and KOffice grow, they bring more users to the ODF file standard. And as ODF grows, it lets more people freely choose OOo, KOffice, or one of the many other compatible programs.

If a politician were discussing this issue, they’d call it “growing the pie,” not just changing the relative sizes of its slices. That’s good for all the communities involved!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 5th, 2008 at 10:32 am and is filed under Mac, ODF, Open Source, OpenOffice.org. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.