For Gaël Duval, co-founder of Mandrakesoft, "Mandrake owes a lot of its success to KDE and Free Software movement. We are very happy to help back and contribute to the enhancement of development. We invite all the companies who profit from Open Source Software to support KOffice by funding dedicated developers. The more good developers will be involved in KOffice the faster it will be ready for the users."

According to David Faure "KOffice is an integrated office suite being developed by the KDE Team and based on the KDE libraries. It currently includes a enhanced wordprocessor with desktop publishing functionality , a spreadsheet, a presentation application, a vector drawing program, a diagram program, a formula editor and an image viewer. KOffice makes use of the most advanced Object Model in the OSS world. Thanks to this, it is possible to embed any KOffice component in a different KOffice application. This is realized using the KOM/OpenParts object model. Of course the KOffice is, as the whole KDE project, a free project which is released under the GNU GPL.

David Faure has been a core developer for the KDE project for two years, maintainer of the KDE file manager (kfm) and its rewrite, OpenParts-based (konqueror). He has also participated in the development of the KDE libraries, including KOM/OpenParts, as well as the development of KOffice itself.

About KDE:

KDE is a collaborative project by hundreds of developers worldwide to create a sophisticated, customizable and stable desktop environment employing a network-transparent, intuitive user interface. In addition, many KDE users assisted in the preparation of new releases by providing constructive feedback, suggestions and software patches. KDE is working proof of the power of the open source software development model.

About MandrakeSoft:

Founded in 1998, MandrakeSoft publishes the popular Linux Mandrake operating system, which is compatible with the leading Red Hat Linux (tm) distribution. Linux Mandrake 6.0 features the "Mandrake touch" MandrakeSoft's signature graphical interfaces that give users selected desktop icons including easy CD-Rom and floppy disk access and easy Internet upgrades using the "Mandrake Update" icon. Linux Mandrake also features Pentium optimization, scalable font support and KDE/Gnome integration. MandrakeSoft is also the originator of several other innovative Open Source cooperative projects that focus on ease of use, including Lothar, an automatic hardware configuration, Linux4Windows, which allows users to install and use Linux on top of a Windows partition, and the DiskDrake hard-drive partitioning tool.

LinuxMall, the largest online reseller of Linux products, reports that Linux Mandrake was its bestselling box version in July. LinuxWorld also selected Linux Mandrake as a finalist in three categories: Product of the Year, Distribution/Client and Distribution/Server.

KOffice: http://koffice.kde.org
KDE: http://www.kde.org
Linux-Mandrake: http://www.linux-mandrake.com