About Workrave...

Workrave was started by Rob Caelers. During his day job, he used a proprietary tool to remind him to take a break for once and a while. Unfortunately (read: fortunately), no Linux version was available. Also, the tool could be improved upon. It was Rob's dream to have a distributed version someday, one that would remind you to take a break even if you switch between computers. So Rob started hacking...

After a while, Rob had an early prototype up and running. That's when Raymond Penners joined in. It went something like this:

Rob: My program needs a name...
Raymond: How about 'Workrace' ?
Rob: Okay..

(a few weeks later)

Rob: Here's a copy...
Raymond: Workrave?!?
Rob: That's what you said!
Raymond: err, I meant workrace :)
Rob: Oh..I thought you said workrave!

At first, Raymond worked mostly on the GUI front-end. You know, drawing sheep, the usual stuff. He is also responsible for the Windows version, the marketing department, and, of course, trying to stop Kees-Jan Dijkzeul from wanting too much configurability...

Kees-Jan has been doing an excellent job at reporting bugs, just have a look at the sheer amount of bugs he reported so far. You may find some harsh discussions deeply hidden in our Bugzilla, but without him Workrave wouldn't be in the state it currently is. Err, I meant that in positive sense. Besides testing, Kees-Jan is studying to become a fully certified shepherd, as you can see from the following image:

(Actually, what you're not supposed to know is that Workrave used to crash very often. When it crashes, it leaves the sheep icon in the system tray. So, what you are actually seeing here is 7 crashes and one running Workrave...)

(To be continued...)