In a move designed to stun the market, the
Gallery team has publicly announced its plans to merge with the
Coppermine project. "After Yahoo bought Flickr we started feeling a little bit left out! Why do those corporate droids get to do all the acquisitions?" asked Bharat Mediratta, co-founder of the
Gallery project, in a joint press conference. Joachim "Gaugau" Müller, the lead developer for
Coppermine, added "It's time for us open source guys to get in on the fun of burning money by making senseless acquisitions!"
Market analysts have been quick to point out that a merger will
be tricky. The members of each team are scattered all over the globe,
and most of them have never met each other in person. However, both
teams are optimistic that things will go smoothly and are quick to
downplay any tension between the projects."The rumors of a bar fight
between Bharat and myself in Lisbon last year are completely
unfounded", claimed GauGau. Bharat is quick to add "It was barely even
an argument. Everybody *knows* that Emacs is superior to Vim."
The teams have agreed that the merged project with the catchy new name, "Gallercopperminery"
will approach open source in a new and innovative way. Instead of
providing a free, high quality product with world class tech support,
the teams have agreed to switch to a model where they implement every
single feature request that the users suggest in the forums. "The
user always has a better idea of what features we should add, according
to a recent Gartner report. Who are we to question that?" asks Christian Mohn, a senior Gallery support team member. "And," adds Christopher Brown-Floyd, a developer from the Coppermine team, "they
always seem to know just how to implement the feature themselves so we
don't have to design it ourselves. This saves us a lot of precious
mental energy."
In addition to this novel approach, the team has decided that it
will best serve the user's needs if it drops support for tricky
operating systems like Unix and Windows and switch their focus to
shipping the new product on the Sony Playstation Portable. "It's clear
that every person on the planet will own a PSP before the end of the
year, and it's much trendier than an iPod" exclaimed Jay Rossiter, a
lead developer for the Gallery team.
Contact: Chris Kelly
Public Relations Manager
Gallercopperminery: http://www.coppergallery.org
