Release of KOffice 1.4.2 Imminent Means Much Work for PR Guy

After a long delay, it seems that the ill fated release of KOffice 1.4.2 will become a reality after all.

The reason for the long delay (the release was first planned to be two weeks ago) was that a security hole was discovered. It was kind of tricky, and it took two tries to get the fix right. You will hear more of this in the release notes.

The good news is that we had two more weeks of bug fixing, and 1.4.2 will be even more usable than it would have been without the delay. Especially good is that we managed to fix a compatibility bug with Open Office 2.0beta during the latter part of these two extra weeks. That wouldn't have been possible with the original schedule since OO 2.0beta didn't exist at that time (if I remember correctly).

Since this release is pretty substantive for a bug fix release, I want to make a big media splash with it. It's also well timed in relation to the Open Document debate that has been going on and which I wrote about in an earlier blog. So what do I have to do for a release like this? Quite a lot, it turns out:

1. Write release notes and changelog -- of course
2. Ask Kurt Pfeifle (pipitas on irc) to put together a klik package of it.
3. Write an article on the dot.
4. Write an article for slashdot and perhaps other geeky news sites as well.
5. Contact the marketing working group and get their cooperation in trying to make non-geeky news media run the story.
6. Write news item for the KOffice web site.

So why would I want to make this much noice about a simple bug fix release? Well, first of all, I take my job seriously. If I am the PR guy for KOffice, by golly, people will hear about KOffice. Second, I think that our biggest problem right now is that not enough people have heard of it. If more people knew that there is such a thing as KOffice, more people would use it. And third, this is most likely the last release before 1.5, the release that will bring full support for Open Document, using it as the native file format. So we have to make people aware of it now, so that those who need full Open Document support have heard about it before and can start use it once it arrives.

A general rule in marketing is that people like things that feel familiar more than new and unknown things. So my strategy right now is to make KOffice a household word in the Linux and Open Source world. Open Document is the next big thing, and I want all news articles to mention Open Office / Star Office and KOffice when they speak about Open Document.

So far, this is going pretty well according to plan.