I read a letter on koffice dev mail of Aaron Seigo about koffice split.
Is it true?
What would be the consequences?

could you place a link to the letter and define what "split" means in the context of the letter

Well the title say "fork" which means basically the same:
from
http://blog.gmane.org/gmane.comp.kde.devel.koffice

Aaron J. Seigo | 29 Oct 20:22


one more bit of unasked-for input on the forking of the KOffice community

hi everyone...

i hope you won't mind one more bit of unsolicited input on the recent fork in
this community. feel free to ignore any or all of it, of course

======

personally, i find it unfortunate and sad that it has come to this, simply
because it is never nice to see splits in any community, especially ones that
we are a part of. sometimes things get to the point where it is the only
workable solution left, and after discussing various relevant issues with a
few different people in koffice over the last year i can understand how that
may be the case here. still, it's unfortunate.

such circumstances do present an opportunity to grow and strengthen, however.
i am hopeful that is what will happen here.

koffice iteslf is not a strategically significant component for KDE. that may
sound harsh, but i believe it to be true today. the user base is small, years
of releases did not culminate into a (market-)significant product over the
same time span in which 2.0-4.0 of the KDE SC was develped and released, etc.

it has provided some great value for KDE, however: it has helped strengthen
kdelibs, it has brought KDE some very positive light and recognition via key
involvement with ODF and some apps like Krita and Kexi have had their well
deserved moments of shining in the press. and of course those of us who use
KOffice applications are deeply grateful for it.....

what appears to be the announcement http://lists.kde.org/?l=koffice-devel&m ... 919625&w=2 and discussion thread amongst some of the devs regarding the split/fork

I read the mailing list threads as well, but I do not know any more about the subject than what is contained there. The plans have not been finalized, so there isn't much to say or to discuss until an official announcement.

In a month, first the LibreOffice fork and now the koffice fork... people at Redmond will be glad...
O Well, let's hope in the future...

In many ways a pity, since I was (am) looking forward to the 2.3 release. I am currently starting to use KPresenter and KSpread in somewhat production, and was pleased to see that while the import of e.g. old PPT presentations isn't perfect, at least they are readable. I'm no artist, so unfortunately Kexi and Krita or not for me, but actually I do not believe KOffice is too far away from being usable. In other words: Don't be discouraged, and keep up the good work!

In some ways, this split may even be a good thing in the end. As I understand the mailing list conversation, the split will be between the ones that want to head for usable/compatible ASAP, and the ones that strive for a long term, more radical set of features. These two products obviously do not go well together, but may very well work in a Test lab/production environment symbiosis. Only few people using the test lab version, which allows you to try out new ideas, and if they work, may be implement them in the production version as well. I really hope things could work out in any shape or form.

Actually, the split is not about vision or direction, and only barely about technical issues. It's true that there has been a disagreement almost since the inception of KOffice2 about the design of the Flake library, between the original designers of that library and the current KWord maintainer.
But beyond that disagreement, there have been interpersonal issues that have plagued KOffice for many years now. That is the real reason for the steps that are taken now.

And in the end, the split is not really between two "groups"; there is on the one hand the KWord maintainer, and on the other hand the rest of the KOffice community. I don't think much momentum will be lost.

There's only one person working on kword?

There is only one maintainer for KWord. There are more people who work or want to work on KWord.

So to put it in a nutshell Zander's going to be a large community of one, and everyone else is going to be on the other team?

Nothing has been finalized yet, and a final list of who is going where has not been released even on the mailing list. It would be best to not speculate until an official announcement is made.

This is the final and official list of apps: http://lists.kde.org/?l=koffice-devel&m ... 817592&w=2. "Group B" will fork KWord.

Yes, they said what apps would go where, but last I saw they haven't said what developers will go where (besides the maintainers, who of course go with their applications).

Because developers are not asked the question. Also do not expect any official announcement on the subject. Or an official counting, other than application.