KSpread Interview - App of the Month
Interview with the maintainer of KSpread, Laurent Montel
You can also read the overview of KSpread.
Laurent Montel
Laurent, you are maintaining the KOffice spread sheet application, KSpread. Please teach us a bit who you are, how you came to the KOffice project and what in detail you are working on.
My name is Laurent Montel, I am 28 years old, I work at Mandrakesoft to integrate KDE and adapt it.
I started to work on KDE in 1998 as a French translator on KOffice. In August 1999, Reginald Stadlbauer (creator of kpresenter/kword) wrote an article about KOffice to ask some help and I sent him some patches for KSpread.
I think that I have modified all KOffice programmes :)
I work principaly on KPresenter, KSpread and KWord. For the moment I'm working on KOffice support for the new file format (OASIS OpenDocument) and trying to finish some import/export filters.
There are many voices who say "why do we need another Office suite for Linux instead of having one big office suite. And why don't the KOffice developpers join another big office project". What's your opinion on that?
When KOffice started there was no free office suite. So we can't say that KOffice is a new office suite. KOffice was started in 1998. KOffice profits from all the advantages of KDE and is very fast.
I think that for "one big office suite" you are thinking of OpenOffice.org.
I think it is a good thing to have two concurrent projects. I do not think that it is as easy and fun to start helping a project as large as OpenOffice.
Politicians, economists and software developers are discussing heavily about the subject of software patents in Europe. What is your point of view here? How would you personally be affected by software patents?
It will be very bad news if Europe accepts the software patents for free software. That would risk limite its use.
I don't think that I have used patented ideas in KOffice programmes.
KDE 3.4. will be releases in short time. Are there any new features you are looking forward to see in the new KDE release?
I am happy to see the new KPDF in kde 3.4, it has been really missing. And especially correct management of the wastebin under KDE (Thank you David).
Laurent, you live in France. What role does open source software play in your country? What's the position of your government towards OSS?
I live in Paris. The civil servants here have started to use Open Source programmes. For example the police decided to use Open Office.
Where do you see the KDE desktop in 1, 2 or 5 years from now?
I think that kde will be faster with qt-4.0. I think that kde will work better with other window managers thanks to Freedesktop.org standards, for example for mimetype/menu/wastebin etc.
Which UNIX/Linux distribution do you use for your work and why?
I use Mandrake Linux. A cooker version at work and a stable version at my home.
I use it because it's very stable and easy to use.
The next KDE summit will take place in Malaga, Spain. Will you attend the meeting?
For various reasons, I couldn't go to previous KDE meeting, but I will go to Malaga.
Why do you help KDE?
I work for KDE because it is an active project, which uses the Qt library which has very good documentation. Moreover there are really very interesting people working with KDE and I like to work with them.
Let us know a bit more about you. Do you have family? Pets? How much time do you spend working on KDE?
I am unmarried and without children. I am not pets, but I have a lof of plants :) I make a collection of cactus, I have some cactus in my apartment, but most of them are at my parent's house.
For KDE I try to work 2-3 hours a day.
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