Maksim Orlovich



Computer Science & Math at the University of Rochester, and will soon begin
graduate study in CS at Cornell University. I also work part-time doing
embedded firmware development and miscellaneous programming.

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In what ways do you make a contribution to KDE?


I'd split that into two portions: things I feel responsible about, and things I just help with.

For the first category, I am mainly a style developer. I maintain Keramik, the pixmap engine, portions of the special check engine (which is used to test capitalization guideline compliance, and to annoy users with its color coding when their configure files get corrupt enough to enable it). I also help out w/other engines, mainly Light2/Light3.

There are more things I semi-randomly do, but for which I am not really a responsible party. I do random (minor) bugfixing. I've put in quite a bit of time into assorted performance improvements. I also frequently help with Bugzilla bug routing/testcasting/etc.

When did you first hear of KDE?


Around KDE 1.0 time, when I first started playing around with Linux. I wasn't very good at using Unix those days, but I did manage to install KDE, and it seemed like a nice, comfortable way of getting things done, especially compared to all the standalone window managers. It was KDE2.0 that made me switch to Linux fully.

How and when did you get involved in KDE?


Sometime late in 2001 I started to visit the (then) OpenProjects.net IRC network. Back then, I was mostly going to various Mandrake channels, to try to help out the newbies. As I was a bit of a KDE power user at that time, I then moved on to a KDE users channel, and later the developers' channel. After being around developers for a while, I finally decided to get involved.

Since at that time virtually no styles were ported to Qt3, I started off by converting the pixmap engine.

Are you being paid to work on KDE?


No.

How much time do you usually spend on KDE?


Varies a lot. Can be a few hours a week, can be 60 during a vacation. I probably spend more time reading kde-bugs-dist than I care to admit, though.

Which section of KDE is underrated and could get more publicity?


The pretty good uniformity in the coding style throughout most of the modules. This means that developers can help with someone else's applications or classes without spending years trying to understand how they are structured (or learning a brand new library), which is extremely important when apps are left unmaintained as people move on (or when someone is on vacation two weeks before a release, when a critical bug is found).

Oh, and I think Kate is underrated as a programming editor, although that seems to be changing a bit.

What do you think is still missing badly in KDE?


Good ability to manage the underlying operating system. Of course, implementing that would require cooperation from OS/Distribution vendors, since otherwise this would dissolve into spaghetti of special cases.

What are your future plans for KDE?


The biggest project is probably the largeimagelib, which can open huge images while only using a capped amount of memory (using KVMAllactor to swap out to disk). The core largely works now, but it needs decoders (it only has a very outdated port of KHTML's JPEG decoder, which has been improved considerably since then). This library could potentially be used to permit image viewers and KHTML to scale to very large image loads. Of course, it has to prove itself first.

I am also planning on creating a high-contrast accessibility style. This is a big challenge since it's hard to be expressive with two colors and thick lines. The area interests me in general as well...

Oh, and I owe Qwertz a next-generation pixmap engine, so I need to either finish it, or learn to keep my mouth shut about incomplete projects.

What motivates/keeps you motivated to work on KDE?


Being subscribed to kde-cvs and kde-bugs-dist.

A hot item at the moment is software integration, what's your opinion about that subject with regard to KDE?


I am quite sceptical of the present shape of the movement, since I am concerned about the long-term effects on code quality and maintainability (See my answer to the 'underrated' section). I also feel that the movement towards integration is causing time to be spent on many things that only marginally benefit the users, as opposed to actual major advances. In some cases it also limits the flexibility/speed of development, as it requires more parties to be involved to make any sort of a change to a 'common' area. OSS world, say hello to design by committee.

There seems to be a general political atmosphere saying "all integration is good", and pretty much everyone is taking it as obviously correct, which in my experience a perfectly good way to make perfectly bad decisions. I would much prefer this to be viewed case-by-case and not as a general concept. For starters, I think one has to distinguish between things that affect users directly, and things that only affect developers. In my view, the goals should all be "users should be able to do X easily" and not "file format Y must be shared", or worse "library Z must be used by everyone". The latter may be necessary in the end, but I don't believe they should ever be the goals in their own right.

For instance, I think there is a major benefit to being able to use the same file format in OpenOffice and KOffice exactly because it fullfills the goal "Users should be able to seamlessly exchange documents between Open Source office suites", and seems like the most sensible way of doing that, since eventually only one format will become important, and not two, so there will be less "important" code that may have bugs.

On the other hand, the benefits of having two desktops use an identical icon theme format in their installed forms are not that clear-cut, and carries some heavy costs. Now, some users want to be able to easily use the same icons in KDE and Gnome applications, but having an identical format is not the only way of achieving that, and I think it's not the best. This can be done at development time, by a converter tool. Or even by an installer. The latter looks very similar to most users, but still leaves what the desktops actually use internally open-ended. They can freely add more features, without the fear that some other loader would be confused. A more efficient format could be created, to help application performance.

This is not academic, either. I have in fact considered making changes to how we store icons, since I am not happy about all the stat'ing happening, but was thoroughly discouraged by the standardization (which, by the way, is only visible to developers, and doesn't actually do anything for users other than confuse them by displaying icon themes they can't possibly use --- talk about ``benefits''!). It's quite possible I wouldn't be able to come up w/anything better, of course, but sometimes I even manage to be clever.

Which application would you like to see integrated in KDE and how would you achieve that?


I almost never use non-KDE GUI apps, so I don't have too many choices. May be someone can come up with a nice way of visualizing what objdump -s outputs when a lot of stuff has been inlined?

Novell acquired Ximian in August for about 20 million. Do you regret not starting your own KDE company? If so what's stopping you?


Not at all, I am not the type of person who can run a business.

What is your favourite widget style?


I am biased in favour of my work.

What does your desktop look like?


Pretty much KDE defaults, except with a mini-command-line applet in the panel. Actually, I wonder why I keep putting it there, since I haven't used it in years, preferring Alt-F2 instead. Habit, I guess.

If you were a KDE app, which one would you be? Why?


Depends on the day of the week. During the workdays, probably Kile, since it gets to read technical research papers as they are written. On weekends, Konqueror probably sounds a bit better, for some relaxed web-browsing.

Which of your family members do not use KDE and why not?


Those that don't use computers, and those that play too many games.

What users do you have in mind when you're developing/contributing for/to KDE?


Most of my work is either too narrowly targeted or too low-level to have to make a decision like this. Bugfixes and performance improvements pretty much help everyone; while things like scheck have a specific audience that's easily discernable from the function.

Do you socialise with any other KDE contributors?


Only in the IRC sense of socialising.

If you had to be stuck in a lift/elevator with a KDE contributor who would it be?


Scott Wheeler, as I could probably convince him to use the opportunity to help me understand -something- about music properly. Oh, and it would be a good opportunity to ``explain'' to him that trying to make a collection of embarrassing pictures of various KDE developers isn't such a nice idea.

What was/is your most embarrassing KDE moment?


In one of the recent versions, I managed to backport a fix for a minor bug improperly, introducing a major bugs. Oops.

What the latest gadget you bought?


Gadgets? I am a software guy ;-)

Personal questions:


First things first. Are you married/do you have a partner? Or are you up for adoption?


Up for adoption.

Do you have children?


No

Do you have pets? Names? URL to photos?


No.

If someone visits your country, which spot is a must-be?


Any place that's not a major city or tourist destination.

Which book is on your bedside table?


It's currently empty; but the last thing that was on it was "The Salmon of Doubt", which is a rather poignant collection of the late Douglas Adams' short stories, articles, and of a portion of an unfinished novel.

Who or what in your life would you say influenced you most


Probably my mother, who pushed my lazy self to accomplish things long enough that I sort of keep doing that by habit.

Who do you admire? Why?


People who managed to carry on their lives and achieve something positive in places overtaken by war, hate, famine... I don't know whether they find such a strength.

How would you describe yourself?


I desperately need to remember that I have interest in more things than computers, math, politics and linguistics.

What do you get passionate about?


About trying not to be too passionate.

What two or three accomplishments have given you the most satisfaction? Why?


Managing to survive my schoolwork choices in the university.

Getting recoloring in Keramik working well enough for Qwertz to be reasonably happy with it for more than a week.

Realizing that I am also interested in linguistics, and not just computers, math and politics.

You're stuck on a bus for 6 hours and are bored out of your skull. What do you do to amuse yourself?


Scribble some crazy designs in notes that will be unreadable even to myself.

Which T.V. show world would you fit right into?


What's a TV?

Which's slogan T-shirt' would you most likely wear -if you HAD to wear one that is?


"KDE: Conquer your desktop", of course.


Your favourite place to be is: ......?


Anywhere where I can sit back with a nice cup of hot tea.

What is the most difficult question you could be asked?


I have no reason to believe that the set of questions ordered by difficulty (partial order, of course) has an upper bound.