Shawn Gordon, president of theKompany.com, has been named chief
executive officer of American operations for HancomLinux, Inc., the
Korean software vendor.
Gordon and theKompany.com have become well known in the Linux
world over the last 18 months through their contributions to KDE
and KOffice, their suites of developer tools, and their infant
Kapital personal finance program.
HancomLinux publishes the Hancom Office suite, which comprises a
number of standard office applications written to the QT toolkit
and a word processor which is a WINE port of their Windows word
processor. Though popular in the Far East, Hancom’s suite has
failed to dent the U.S. market. Gordon’s appointment, announced
today at Linux World in San Francisco, is part of an effort to gain
popularity in the United States. That effort includes porting the
word processor, HancomWord, to QT, as well as inclusion of
applications from theKompany.com aimed at the enterprise and
groupware market.
“We’re going to be doing some neat things with the office
suite,” said Gordon. “We’re looking to gain both individuals at
home and corporations.”
Among the innovations Gordon hopes to bring to Hancom Office
marketing is the discount for beta testers that has been well
accepted when used in preparing for release of theKompany.com’s
products.
“One thing we’ll do is use the subscription method we’ve had on
a lot of our products,” Gordon said. “If you buy Hancom Office 1.5
right now for $49 and get the subscription, you’ll get 2.0 when it
ships.”
Hancom Office 2.0 will be built against QT-3.0 and will be fully
Linux native, Gordon said, though versions for other operating
systems are likely to be included on the CD, allowing
cross-platform interoperability.
“We’ll have integration with ReKall, Quanta, and Aethera,” he
added. “This will include very good Microsoft filters. It will be a
really unified environment.” He said he is aiming for a shipping
date late this year at an initial price of $99.
Gordon stressed that his association and that of theKompany.com
with Hancom does not mean the end of theKompany.com, which will
continue to offer its own products as well as standalone versions
of some of the programs it is contributing to Hancom Office.
The Hancom Office 2.0 will broaden the suite’s range of
applications, including an HTML editor called HancomWebBuilder, a
database application, HancomEasyDB, and a personal information
manager, HancomQuicksilver.
Hancom’s U.S. operation will be headquartered at 29833 Santa
Margarita Pkwy Ste. 500, Rancho Santa Margarita, CA.