KDE
KDE is an international free software community developing Free and Open Source software. As a central development hub, it provides tools and resources that allow collaborative work on this kind of software. Well-known products include the Plasma Desktop, KDE Frameworks and a range of cross-platform applications like Krita or digikam designed to run on Unix and Unix-like desktops, Microsoft Windows and Android. Being one of KDE's most recognized projects, the Plasma Desktop is the official / default desktop environment on many Linux distributions, such as openSUSE, Mageia, OpenMandriva, Kubuntu, KaOS and PCLinuxOS; the KDE community and its work can be measured in the following figures: KDE is one of the largest active Free Software communities. More than 2500 contributors participate in developing KDE software. About 20 new developers contribute their first code each month. KDE software consists of over 6 million lines of code. KDE software has been translated into over 108 languages. KDE software is available on more than 114 official FTP mirrors in over 34 countries.
A read-only mirror of all repositories can be found on Github. There are many free software projects maintained by the KDE community; the project known as KDE or KDE SC nowadays consists of three parts: KDE Plasma, a platform UI that provides the base for different workspaces like Plasma Desktop or Plasma Mobile KDE Frameworks, a collection of more than 70 free-to-use libraries built on top of Qt KDE Applications KDE Plasma is a user interface technology that can be adjusted to run on various form factors like desktops, netbooks and smartphones or embedded devices. The brand Plasma for the graphical workspaces has been introduced from KDE SC 4.4 onwards. During the fourth series there have been two additional workspaces besides the Plasma 4 Desktop called Plasma Netbook and Plasma Active; the latest KDE Plasma 5 features the following workspaces: Plasma Desktop for any mouse or keyboard driven computing devices like desktops or laptops Plasma Mobile for smartphones Plasma Minishell for embedded and touch-enabled devices, like IoT or automotive Plasma Media Center for TVs and set-top boxes KDE Frameworks provide more than 70 free and open-source libraries built on top of Qt.
They are the foundation for KDE Plasma and most of the KDE applications, but can be part of any project that would like to make use of one or more of its modules. Kirigami is an Qml application framework developed by Marco Martin that enables developers to write applications that run natively on Android, iOS, Plasma Mobile and any classic Linux desktop environment without code adjustments. There is a growing list of applications like Linus Torvalds and Dirk Hohndels scuba diving application Subsurface, the messenger client Banji, the Kaidan messenger or the KDE software center Discover. While being written in C++, there are many bindings for other programming languages available, e.g. for the following programming languages: Python Ruby Perl C#. These and other bindings use the following technologies: Smoke: for creating bindings for Ruby, C# and PHP SIP: for creating bindings for Python Kross: Embedded scripting for C++ applications, with support for Ruby, JavaScript, QtScript and Java During KDE SC 4, the so called KDE Platform consisted of all libraries and services needed for KDE Plasma and the applications.
Starting with Qt 5, this platform was transformed into a set of modules, now referred to as KDE Frameworks. These modules include: Solid, Phonon, etc. and are licensed either under the LGPL, BSD license, MIT License or X11 license. KDE Applications is a bundle of software, part of the official KDE Applications release. Like Okular, Dolphin or KDEnlive, they are built on KDE Frameworks and released on a 4 months schedule with the version numbering consisting of YY. MM. Software, not part of the official KDE Applications bundle can be found in the "Extragear" section, they feature their own versioning numbers. There are many standalone applications like KTorrent, Krita or Amarok that are designed to be portable between operating systems and deployable independent of a particular workspace or desktop environment; some brands consist of multiple applications, such as KDE Kontact. KDE neon is a software repository, it aims to provide the users with updated Qt and KDE software, while updating the rest of the OS components from the Ubuntu repositories at the normal pace.
KDE maintains that it is not a "KDE distribution," but rather an up-to-date archive of KDE and Qt packages. There is two "Developer" editions of KDE Neon. WikiToLearn, abbreviated WTL, is one of KDE's newer endeavors, it is a wiki that provides a platform to share open source textbooks. The idea is to have a massive library of textbooks for anyone and everyone to create, its roots lay in University of Milan, where a group of physics majors wanted to share notes—then decided that it was for everyone and not just their internal friend group. They have become an official KDE project with several universities backing it. Like many free/open source projects, developing KDE software is a volunteer effort, although various companies, such as Novell, Nokia, or Blue Systems employ or employed developers to work on various parts of the project. Since a large number of individuals contribute to KDE in various ways (e.g. code
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc. for macOS and Windows. It was created in 1988 by Thomas and John Knoll. Since this software has become the industry standard not only in raster graphics editing, but in digital art as a whole; the software's name has thus become a generic trademark, leading to its usage as a verb although Adobe discourages such use. Photoshop can edit and compose raster images in multiple layers and supports masks, alpha compositing, several color models including RGB, CMYK, CIELAB, spot color, duotone. Photoshop uses its own PSB file formats to support these features. In addition to raster graphics, this software has limited abilities to edit or render text and vector graphics, as well as 3D graphics and video, its feature set can be expanded by plug-ins. Photoshop's naming scheme was based on version numbers. However, in October 2002, each new version of Photoshop was designated with "CS" plus a number. Photoshop CS3 through CS6 were distributed in two different editions: Standard and Extended.
With the introduction of the Creative Cloud branding in June 2013, Photoshop's licensing scheme was changed to that of software as a service rental model. Photoshop was bundled with additional software such as Adobe ImageReady, Adobe Fireworks, Adobe Bridge, Adobe Device Central and Adobe Camera RAW. Alongside Photoshop, Adobe develops and publishes Photoshop Elements, Photoshop Lightroom, Photoshop Express, Photoshop Fix, Photoshop Sketch and Photoshop Mix. Adobe plans to launch a full-version of Photoshop for the iPad in 2019. Collectively, they are branded as "The Adobe Photoshop Family". Photoshop was developed in 1987 by brothers Thomas and John Knoll, who sold the distribution license to Adobe Systems Incorporated in 1988. Thomas Knoll, a Ph. D. student at the University of Michigan, began writing a program on his Macintosh Plus to display grayscale images on a monochrome display. This program caught the attention of his brother John, an Industrial Light & Magic employee, who recommended that Thomas turn it into a full-fledged image editing program.
Thomas took a six-month break from his studies in 1988 to collaborate with his brother on the program. Thomas renamed the program ImagePro, but the name was taken; that year, Thomas renamed his program Photoshop and worked out a short-term deal with scanner manufacturer Barneyscan to distribute copies of the program with a slide scanner. During this time, John traveled to Silicon Valley and gave a demonstration of the program to engineers at Apple and Russell Brown, art director at Adobe. Both showings were successful, Adobe decided to purchase the license to distribute in September 1988. While John worked on plug-ins in California, Thomas remained in Ann Arbor writing code. Photoshop 1.0 was released on February 1990 for Macintosh exclusively. The Barneyscan version included advanced color editing features that were stripped from the first Adobe shipped version; the handling of color improved with each release from Adobe and Photoshop became the industry standard in digital color editing. At the time Photoshop 1.0 was released, digital retouching on dedicated high-end systems cost around $300 an hour for basic photo retouching.
Photoshop files have default file extension as. PSD, which stands for "Photoshop Document." A PSD file stores an image with support for most imaging options available in Photoshop. These include layers with masks, text, alpha channels and spot colors, clipping paths, duotone settings; this is in contrast to many other file formats that restrict content to provide streamlined, predictable functionality. A PSD file has a maximum height and width of 30,000 pixels, a length limit of two gigabytes. Photoshop files sometimes have the file extension. PSB, which stands for "Photoshop Big". A PSB file extends the PSD file format, increasing the maximum height and width to 300,000 pixels and the length limit to around 4 Exabytes; the dimension limit was chosen arbitrarily by Adobe, not based on computer arithmetic constraints but for ease of software testing. PSD and PSB formats are documented; because of Photoshop's popularity, PSD files are used and supported to some extent by most competing software. The.
PSD file format can be exported to and from Adobe's other apps like Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects. Photoshop functionality can be extended by add-on programs called Photoshop plugins. Adobe creates some plugins, such as Adobe Camera Raw, but third-party companies develop most plugins, according to Adobe's specifications; some are free and some are commercial software. Most plugins work with only Photoshop or Photoshop-compatible hosts, but a few can be run as standalone applications. There are various types of plugins, such as filter, import, color correction, automation; the most popular plugins are the filter plugins, available under the Filter menu in Photoshop. Filter plugins can either create content. Below are some popular types
Mahabharata
The Mahābhārata is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India, the other being the Rāmāyaṇa. It narrates the struggle between two groups of cousins in the Kurukshetra War and the fates of the Kaurava and the Pāṇḍava princes and their succession. Along with the Rāmāyaṇa, it forms the Hindu Itihasa; the Mahābhārata is an epic legendary narrative of the Kurukṣetra War and the fates of the Kaurava and the Pāṇḍava princes. It contains philosophical and devotional material, such as a discussion of the four "goals of life" or puruṣārtha. Among the principal works and stories in the Mahābhārata are the Bhagavad Gita, the story of Damayanti, an abbreviated version of the Rāmāyaṇa, the story of Ṛṣyasringa considered as works in their own right. Traditionally, the authorship of the Mahābhārata is attributed to Vyāsa. There have been many attempts to unravel compositional layers; the oldest preserved parts of the text are thought to be not much older than around 400 BCE, though the origins of the epic fall between the 8th and 9th centuries BCE.
The text reached its final form by the early Gupta period. According to the Mahābhārata itself, the tale is extended from a shorter version of 24,000 verses called Bhārata; the Mahābhārata is the longest epic poem known and has been described as "the longest poem written". Its longest version consists of over 100,000 śloka or over 200,000 individual verse lines, long prose passages. At about 1.8 million words in total, the Mahābhārata is ten times the length of the Iliad and the Odyssey combined, or about four times the length of the Rāmāyaṇa. W. J. Johnson has compared the importance of the Mahābhārata in the context of world civilization to that of the Bible, the works of William Shakespeare, the works of Homer, Greek drama, or the Quran. Within the Indian tradition it is sometimes called the Fifth Veda; the epic is traditionally ascribed to the sage Vyāsa, a major character in the epic. Vyāsa described it as being itihāsa, he describes the Guru-shishya parampara, which traces all great teachers and their students of the Vedic times.
The first section of the Mahābhārata states that it was Gaṇeśa who wrote down the text to Vyasa's dictation. The epic employs the story within a story structure, otherwise known as frametales, popular in many Indian religious and non-religious works, it is first recited at Takshashila by the sage Vaiśampāyana, a disciple of Vyāsa, to the King Janamejaya, the great-grandson of the Pāṇḍava prince Arjuna. The story is recited again by a professional storyteller named Ugraśrava Sauti, many years to an assemblage of sages performing the 12-year sacrifice for the king Saunaka Kulapati in the Naimiśa Forest; the text was described by some early 20th-century western Indologists as chaotic. Hermann Oldenberg supposed that the original poem must once have carried an immense "tragic force" but dismissed the full text as a "horrible chaos." Moritz Winternitz considered that "only unpoetical theologists and clumsy scribes" could have lumped the parts of disparate origin into an unordered whole. Research on the Mahābhārata has put an enormous effort into recognizing and dating layers within the text.
Some elements of the present Mahābhārata can be traced back to Vedic times. The background to the Mahābhārata suggests the origin of the epic occurs "after the early Vedic period" and before "the first Indian'empire' was to rise in the third century B. C." That this is "a date not too far removed from the 8th or 9th century B. C." is likely. Mahābhārata started as an orally-transmitted tale of the charioteer bards, it is agreed that "Unlike the Vedas, which have to be preserved letter-perfect, the epic was a popular work whose reciters would conform to changes in language and style," so the earliest'surviving' components of this dynamic text are believed to be no older than the earliest'external' references we have to the epic, which may include an allusion in Panini's 4th century BCE grammar Aṣṭādhyāyī 4:2:56. It is estimated that the Sanskrit text reached something of a "final form" by the early Gupta period. Vishnu Sukthankar, editor of the first great critical edition of the Mahābhārata, commented: "It is useless to think of reconstructing a fluid text in a original shape, on the basis of an archetype and a stemma codicum.
What is possible? Our objective can only be to reconstruct the oldest form of the text which it is possible to reach on the basis of the manuscript material available." That manuscript evidence is somewhat late, given its material composition and the climate of India, but it is extensive. The Mahābhārata itself distinguishes a core portion of 24,000 verses: the Bhārata proper, as opposed to additional secondary material, while the Aśvalāyana Gṛhyasūtra makes a similar distinction. At least three redactions of the text are recognized: Jaya with 8,800 verses attributed to Vyāsa, Bhārata with 24,000 verses as recited by Vaiśampāyana, the Mahābhārata as recited by Ugraśrava Sauti with over 100,000 verses. However, some scholars, such as John Brockington, argue that Jaya and Bharata refer to the same text, ascribe the theory of Jaya with 8,800 verses to a misreading of a verse in Ādiparvan; the redaction of this large body of text was carried out after formal principles, emphasizing the numbers 18 and 12.
The addition of the latest parts may be dated by the absence of the Anuśāsana-parva and the Virāta parva from the "Spitzer manuscript". The oldest surviving
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is a widely-used free software license, which guarantees end users the freedom to run, study and modify the software. The license was written by Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation for the GNU Project, grants the recipients of a computer program the rights of the Free Software Definition; the GPL is a copyleft license, which means that derivative work can only be distributed under the same license terms. This is in distinction to permissive free software licenses, of which the BSD licenses and the MIT License are widely-used examples. GPL was the first copyleft license for general use; the GPL license family has been one of the most popular software licenses in the free and open-source software domain. Prominent free-software programs licensed under the GPL include the Linux kernel and the GNU Compiler Collection. David A. Wheeler argues that the copyleft provided by the GPL was crucial to the success of Linux-based systems, giving the programmers who contributed to the kernel the assurance that their work would benefit the whole world and remain free, rather than being exploited by software companies that would not have to give anything back to the community.
In 2007, the third version of the license was released to address some perceived problems with the second version that were discovered during its long-time usage. To keep the license up to date, the GPL license includes an optional "any version" clause, allowing users to choose between the original terms or the terms in new versions as updated by the FSF. Developers can omit it; the GPL was written by Richard Stallman in 1989, for use with programs released as part of the GNU project. The original GPL was based on a unification of similar licenses used for early versions of GNU Emacs, the GNU Debugger and the GNU C Compiler; these licenses contained similar provisions to the modern GPL, but were specific to each program, rendering them incompatible, despite being the same license. Stallman's goal was to produce one license that could be used for any project, thus making it possible for many projects to share code; the second version of the license, version 2, was released in 1991. Over the following 15 years, members of the free software community became concerned over problems in the GPLv2 license that could let someone exploit GPL-licensed software in ways contrary to the license's intent.
These problems included tivoization, compatibility issues similar to those of the Affero General Public License—and patent deals between Microsoft and distributors of free and open-source software, which some viewed as an attempt to use patents as a weapon against the free software community. Version 3 was developed to attempt to address these concerns and was released on 29 June 2007. Version 1 of the GNU GPL, released on 25 February 1989, prevented what were the two main ways that software distributors restricted the freedoms that define free software; the first problem was that distributors may publish binary files only—executable, but not readable or modifiable by humans. To prevent this, GPLv1 stated that copying and distributing copies or any portion of the program must make the human-readable source code available under the same licensing terms; the second problem was that distributors might add restrictions, either to the license, or by combining the software with other software that had other restrictions on distribution.
The union of two sets of restrictions would apply to the combined work, thus adding unacceptable restrictions. To prevent this, GPLv1 stated that modified versions, as a whole, had to be distributed under the terms in GPLv1. Therefore, software distributed under the terms of GPLv1 could be combined with software under more permissive terms, as this would not change the terms under which the whole could be distributed. However, software distributed under GPLv1 could not be combined with software distributed under a more restrictive license, as this would conflict with the requirement that the whole be distributable under the terms of GPLv1. According to Richard Stallman, the major change in GPLv2 was the "Liberty or Death" clause, as he calls it – Section 7; the section says that licensees may distribute a GPL-covered work only if they can satisfy all of the license's obligations, despite any other legal obligations they might have. In other words, the obligations of the license may not be severed due to conflicting obligations.
This provision is intended to discourage any party from using a patent infringement claim or other litigation to impair users' freedom under the license. By 1990, it was becoming apparent that a less restrictive license would be strategically useful for the C library and for software libraries that did the job of existing proprietary ones; the version numbers diverged in 1999 when version 2.1 of the LGPL was released, which renamed it the GNU Lesser General Public License to reflect its place in the philosophy. Most "GPLv2 or any version" is stated by users of the license, to allow upgrading to GPLv3. In late 2005, the Free Software Foundation announced work on version 3 of the GPL. On 16 January 2006, the first "discussion draft" of GPLv3 was published, the public consultation began; the public consultation was planned for ni
X86-64
X86-64 is the 64-bit version of the x86 instruction set. It introduces two new modes of operation, 64-bit mode and compatibility mode, along with a new 4-level paging mode. With 64-bit mode and the new paging mode, it supports vastly larger amounts of virtual memory and physical memory than is possible on its 32-bit predecessors, allowing programs to store larger amounts of data in memory. X86-64 expands general-purpose registers to 64-bit, as well extends the number of them from 8 to 16, provides numerous other enhancements. Floating point operations are supported via mandatory SSE2-like instructions, x87/MMX style registers are not used. In 64-bit mode, instructions are modified to support 64-bit addressing mode; the compatibility mode allows 16- and 32-bit user applications to run unmodified coexisting with 64-bit applications if the 64-bit operating system supports them. As the full x86 16-bit and 32-bit instruction sets remain implemented in hardware without any intervening emulation, these older executables can run with little or no performance penalty, while newer or modified applications can take advantage of new features of the processor design to achieve performance improvements.
A processor supporting x86-64 still powers on in real mode for full backward compatibility. The original specification, created by AMD and released in 2000, has been implemented by AMD, Intel and VIA; the AMD K8 processor was the first to implement it. This was the first significant addition to the x86 architecture designed by a company other than Intel. Intel was forced to follow suit and introduced a modified NetBurst family, software-compatible with AMD's specification. VIA Technologies introduced x86-64 with the VIA Nano; the x86-64 architecture is distinct from the Intel Itanium architecture, not compatible on the native instruction set level with the x86 architecture. Operating systems and applications written for one cannot be run on the other. AMD64 was created as an alternative to the radically different IA-64 architecture, designed by Intel and Hewlett Packard. Announced in 1999 while a full specification became available in August 2000, the AMD64 architecture was positioned by AMD from the beginning as an evolutionary way to add 64-bit computing capabilities to the existing x86 architecture, as opposed to Intel's approach of creating an new 64-bit architecture with IA-64.
The first AMD64-based processor, the Opteron, was released in April 2003. AMD's processors implementing the AMD64 architecture include Opteron, Athlon 64, Athlon 64 X2, Athlon 64 FX, Athlon II, Turion 64, Turion 64 X2, Phenom, Phenom II, FX, Fusion/APU and Ryzen/Epyc; the primary defining characteristic of AMD64 is the availability of 64-bit general-purpose processor registers, 64-bit integer arithmetic and logical operations, 64-bit virtual addresses. The designers took the opportunity to make other improvements as well; some of the most significant changes are described below. 64-bit integer capability All general-purpose registers are expanded from 32 bits to 64 bits, all arithmetic and logical operations, memory-to-register and register-to-memory operations, etc. can now operate directly on 64-bit integers. Pushes and pops on the stack default to 8-byte strides, pointers are 8 bytes wide. Additional registers In addition to increasing the size of the general-purpose registers, the number of named general-purpose registers is increased from eight in x86 to 16.
It is therefore possible to keep more local variables in registers rather than on the stack, to let registers hold accessed constants. AMD64 still has fewer registers than many RISC instruction sets or VLIW-like machines such as the IA-64. However, an AMD64 implementation may have far more internal registers than the number of architectural registers exposed by the instruction set. Additional XMM registers Similarly, the number of 128-bit XMM registers is increased from 8 to 16; the traditional x87 FPU register stack is not included in the register file size extension in 64-bit mode, compared with the XMM registers used by SSE2, which did get extended. The x87 register stack is not a simple register file although it does allow direct access to individual registers by low cost exchange operations. Larger virtual address space The AMD64 architecture defines a 64-bit virtual address format, of which the low-order 48 bits are used in current implementations; this allows up to 256 TB of virtual address space.
The architecture definition allows this limit to be raised in future implementations to the full 64 bits, exten
Kickstarter
Kickstarter is an American public-benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity and merchandising. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative projects to life". Kickstarter has received more than $4 billion in pledges from 15.5 million backers to fund 257,000 creative projects, such as films, stage shows, journalism, video games and food-related projects. People who back Kickstarter projects are offered tangible rewards or experiences in exchange for their pledges; this model traces its roots to subscription model of arts patronage, where artists would go directly to their audiences to fund their work. Kickstarter launched on April 28, 2009, by Perry Chen, Yancey Strickler, Charles Adler; the New York Times called Kickstarter "the people's NEA". Time named it one of the "Best Inventions of 2010" and "Best Websites of 2011". Kickstarter raised $10 million funding from backers including NYC-based venture firm Union Square Ventures and angel investors such as Jack Dorsey, Zach Klein and Caterina Fake.
The company is based in Brooklyn. Andy Baio served as the site's CTO until November 2010. Lance Ivy has been Lead Developer since the website launched. On February 14, 2013, Kickstarter released; the app was aimed at users who create and back projects and was the first time Kickstarter had an official mobile presence. On October 31, 2012, Kickstarter opened projects based in the United Kingdom, followed by projects based in Canada on September 9, 2013, Australia and New Zealand on November 13, 2013, the Netherlands on April 28, 2014, Ireland and Sweden on September 15, 2014, Germany on April 28, 2015, France and Spain on May 19, 2015, Belgium, Italy and Switzerland on June 16, 2015, Singapore and Hong Kong on August 30, 2016, Mexico on November 15, 2016 and Japan on September 12, 2017. In July 2017, Strickler announced his resignation. Kickstarter is one of a number of crowdfunding platforms for gathering money from the public, which circumvents traditional avenues of investment. Project creators choose a minimum funding goal.
If the goal is not met by the deadline, no funds are collected. The kickstarter platform is open to backers from anywhere in the world and to creators from many countries, including the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, The Netherlands, Ireland, Sweden, France, Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg and Mexico. Kickstarter applies a 5% fee on the total amount of the funds raised, their payments processor applies an additional 3–5% fee. Unlike many forums for fundraising or investment, Kickstarter claims no ownership over the projects and the work they produce; the web pages of projects launched on the site are permanently archived and accessible to the public. After funding is completed and uploaded media cannot be edited or removed from the site. There is no guarantee that people who post projects on Kickstarter will deliver on their projects, use the money to implement their projects, or that the completed projects will meet backers' expectations. Kickstarter advises backers to use their own judgment on supporting a project.
They warn project leaders that they could be liable for legal damages from backers for failure to deliver on promises. Projects might fail after a successful fundraising campaign when creators underestimate the total costs required or technical difficulties to be overcome. Asked what made Kickstarter different from other crowdfunding platforms, co-founder Perry Chen said: "I wonder if people know what the definition of crowdfunding is. Or, if there’s an agreed upon definition of what it is. We haven’t supported the use of the term because it can provoke more confusion. In our case, we focus on a middle ground between commerce. People are offering cool stuff and experiences in exchange for the support of their ideas. People are creating these mini-economies around their project ideas. So, you aren’t coming to the site to get something for nothing. We focus on creative projects—music, technology, design and publishing—and within the category of crowdfunding of the arts, we are ten times the size of all of the others combined."
On June 21, 2012, Kickstarter began publishing statistics on its projects. As of February 13, 2015, there were 207,135 launched projects, with a success rate of 40%; the total amount pledged was $1,523,718,656. The business grew in its early years. In 2010 Kickstarter had $27,638,318 pledged; the corresponding figures for 2011 were 11,836 funded projects and $99,344,381 pledged. On February 9, 2012, Kickstarter hit a number of milestones. A dock made for the iPhone designed by Casey Hopkins became the first Kickstarter project to exceed one million dollars in pledges. A few hours a new adventure game project started by computer game developers, Double Fine Productions, reached the same figure, having been launched less than 24 hours earlier, finished with over $3 million pledged; this was the first time Kickstarter raised over a million dollars in pledges in a single day. On August 30, 2014, the "Coolest Cooler", an icebox created by Ryan Grepper, became the most funded Kickstarter project in history, with US$13.28 million in funding, breaking the record held by the Pebble smart watch.
In July 2012, Wharton professor Ethan Mollick and Jeanne Pi conducted research
KOffice
KOffice was a free and open source office suite and graphics suite by KDE for Unix-like systems and Windows. KOffice contains a word processor, a spreadsheet, a presentation program, a number of other components that varied over the course of KOffice’s development. After development began in 1997, two major versions of KOffice were released: Version 1.0 in 2000 and 2.0 in 2009. Following internal conflicts, the majority of KOffice developers split off in 2010 – resulting in the creation of Calligra Suite. Two years in September 2012, the KOffice.org website went offline. It now redirects to Calligra.org. Initial work on KOffice development began in 1997, by Reginald Stadlbauer with KPresenter, followed by KWord in 1998. In 1999, KOffice was cited in testimony in the United States v. Microsoft anti-trust trial by then-Microsoft executive Paul Maritz as evidence of competition in the operating system and office suite arena; the first official release of the KOffice suite was on October 23, 2000 when it was released as part of K Desktop Environment 2.0.
Versions 1.1 followed in 2001, 1.2 in 2002, 1.3 in 2004, 1.4 in 2005, 1.5 and 1.6 both in 2006. KOffice underwent a major transition as part of the release of KDE Software Compilation 4. Coinciding with the work on SC4, the KOffice team prepared a major new release – KOffice 2.0 – which used the new KDE Platform 4 libraries. Although version 2.0 was released in 2009, the release was labeled as a “platform release”, recommended only for testers and developers, rather than production use, since the release was missing key features and applications from the previous stable release series – Kexi and Kugar were not included. This continued with version 2.1 in November, 2009. Regular end-users requiring a stable environment are still recommended by developers to use the stable 1.6 release series. This version was ported to Haiku but the port was not updated for newer KOffice versions. In May 2010, version 2.2.0 was released and brings an unprecedented number of new features and bugfixes. Kexi was integrated again.
Kivio has not yet been migrated. A new framework for effects on shapes and a new import filters for the Microsoft Office Open XML formats that are used in MS Office 2007 and got added. In mid-2010, following disagreements between KWord maintainer Thomas Zander and the other core developers, the KOffice community split into two separate communities, KOffice and Calligra. Following arbitration with the community members several applications were renamed by both communities. KOffice forked the KSpread spreadsheet utility to KCells the KPresenter presentation tool to KOffice Showcase, the Karbon14 drawing tool to KOffice Artwork; the community split coincided with the move from KDE’s Subversion repository to git. The Krita painting application, the Kexi database manager, dedicated mobile platform GUI files were not migrated into the KOffice git repository. KOffice 2.3, released 31 December 2010, along with subsequent bugfix releases was still a collaborative effort of both the KOffice and Calligra development teams.
Beginning with KOffice 2.4 the developers aimed to release new KOffice versions every six months in sync with SC4 releases but KOffice had seen no development activity since mid-March 2012. As of September 2013, Calligra has released 2.4 and 2.5 and 2.6 and 2.7. After two minor commits in August 2012 the koffice.org website was replaced by a placeholder in early September 2012. On 22 October 2012 KDE removed KOffice from their Quality Website Tools; as of 2014 KOffice was declared unmaintained by KDE. The last formally released version of KOffice included the following components: KOffice applications are developed using Qt and KDE Platform. All its components are released under free software licenses and use OpenDocument as their native file format when possible. KOffice can be downloaded from KDE's FTP server. KOffice 2 underwent a large overhaul to use the Flake system of components and Pigment color system, as much as possible within applications. KOffice developers planned to share as much infrastructure as possible between applications to reduce bugs and improve the user experience.
They want to create an OpenDocument library for use in other KDE applications that will allow developers to add support for reading and outputting OpenDocument files to their applications. Automating tasks and extending the suite with custom functionality can be done with D-Bus or with scripting languages like Python and JavaScript. Comparison of office suites List of office suites Archived copy of the official web site at the Wayback Machine KOffice development home
