theKompany Interview

Interviewed by Jono Bacon

theKompany.com are shaping up as one of the most promising Linux development companies, developing productivity and development tools. theKompany.com were one of the first companies to embrace KDE as a platform, and I spoke to theKompany.com CEO Shawn Gorden about life in the hotseat and the direction of the business.

What is the purpose and direction of theKompany?
Our focus for the last year has been to create software that is needed to help extend KDE as a popular desktop. To that end we have created products that address the two ends of the spectrum, namely developer tools so programmers can create applications that attract users, and critical desktop software that attracts end users so there is a market for the developers to sell in to.

Over the last 4 or 5 months we've modified this a bit to have more of a focus on Qt specifically so that we can get more platforms. This allows us to reach a broader audience and thereby entice people to switch from Windows to Linux/KDE because they get both versions of the application from us for one price so the risk to make the move is minimized, there is no learning curve for their favorite applications (ours) and the cost is minimal. We really think this has the long range ability to help with a fundamental shift to Linux and KDE.

How does theKompany make use of KDE?

Pretty much all of our internal development is done with KDE Studio Gold, I would say that is the number one use. Outside of that it depends on what function inside theKompany you perform. The programmers tend to not make use of much in the way of typical office software, but our QA guy does, and he will use KOffice for spreadsheets and Kivio for diagramming a process or function. Basically we use it the same way some other company might use MS Windows, but we don't have to reboot every couple of days :).

Did you evaluate other desktop environments, and if so, why did you choose KDE?

When we started out about 2 years ago I was looking at KDE and GNOME from an outsiders perspective, I didn't know anything about the technical merits of them and my original idea was to have our applications run natively for both. We actually spent time putting together various code layers to make this as easy as possible, but when it came down to it we were so much more productive in KDE than in Gnome and then people like Ximian and Eazel showed up, so we decided to just focus on KDE, and I couldn't be more pleased with the results so far. We have been extremely productive, much more so than I would have thought possible.

Which OS do you use KDE on, and why do you use that OS?

We all use Linux, I don't know that any thought process went into it, but we have been getting a lot of requests for FreeBSD lately, so we are working with C.R.F Consulting in the U.K. to provide FreeBSD versions of a number of our apps. Right now we've got Kapital, DocBrowser and KDE Studio Gold working and will probably release them shortly.

What hardware do you run KDE on?

For testing our applications I personally run a 200Mhz box with 96MB of RAM. I like to keep it low end so that I don't have any unrealistic expectations on performance. I figure if it runs good for me it should run good for anyone. I also have an Apple Titanium laptop that I use and a variety of other speed machines for building and testing.

What parts of KDE (or applications) do find of most use to theKompany?

For non-theKompany applications I really use and like Konqueror and KOrganizer. For our software I use Aethera, Kapital, Kivio and I'm really starting to get into Rekall lately. I have a little side project to build a football pool (American football) application in Rekall once I have some time. Right now we are playing with some contact management applications either in Rekall or as a plug in to Aethera. Actually some method of deploying a Rekall application into an Aethera plug in would be really cool, thanks for the idea :).

How many machines and employees run KDE at theKompany?

All of our machines and employees run KDE, we also run Windows and Mac OS X because of the multi-platform stuff we have to do. We have more machines than people, but at last count I think we had about 15. I know it sounds funny, but I've never met any of my employees so doing a head count requires that I look at the payroll books to see who I'm paying lately :).

Do you find KDE a cost effective platform?

KDE absolutely rocks, it is amazing piece of work and really has a good design, and the price is great :)

Where would you like to see the future of KDE go for even better integration into the desktop?

I think the framework is pretty much there, now it's a matter of going one better. I know that internally we aren't interested in copying Microsoft, all we try to do is learn from the past of what things are useful, then we look at how we deal with information and processes internally and try to devise something that addresses the problem and doesn't play follow the leader. Trying to copy someone else is always a loosing proposition. I think KDE has done a great job of planning for the future and now it's a matter of finding those niches or vertical market applications that can really take advantage of it. I know we have some really cool ideas internally we are working on, and I assume other people do as well. So while I didn't give you a specific answer, hopefully I've shared a bit of my vision.

theKompany - http://www.thekompany.com/

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