Author: JT Smith
IBM put up a KDE tutorial earlier this week, and on April 10 they launched a KDE theme creation contest. If you were watching closely, you may have noticed a few interesting twists to this contest.The interest in IBM’s developerWorks tutorial on creating KDE themes has been running high since the story broke on April 10. But there were a few snags in the contest rules. For one thing, the contest was limited to U.S. residents only — rather impolite considering there are KDE users all over the world. Not only that, but the rules stated that contestants must develop themes for KDE 1.1 or 1.2 only, not the latest versions, 2.0 and 2.1. And last but certainly not least, according to IBM’s director of Linux technology, Dr. Daniel Frye, the rules did not make a provision for submissions being Open Source. Instead, they mandated that all submissions became the property of IBM.
Frye says, “We screwed up in a couple of different ways that we are fixing.” The contest is being extended to include citizens of all countries. The only limitation is that awards to winners in countries other than the United States will be given as donations to the victors’ favorite Open Source project.
IBM is fixing the version restrictions and the wording of the rules as well. “Our heart is in the right place,” says Frye. It’s simply a case of inexperience with the Open Source way of doing things. Frye says that IBM contest designers received several emails pointing out the unintential gaffes. “They (the contest designers) are much more familiar with Open Source today than they were yesterday.”
Frye and Lisa Lanspery, IBM’s Linux media relations representative, said that the site is fully updated. You can take a look at the fresh contest rules at this URL.
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