Re: [kde-community] Give People Access to Great Technology - a possible vision
On 2014-09-20 23:05, Aaron J. Seigo wrote: On Saturday, September 20, 2014 22.44:45 David Wright wrote: *By KDE here im referring to the software, as I'm not sure what the term is for the amalgamation of plasma 5 / kf5 applications There is no such amalgamation, and that's probably why there is no term. KDE software could be a useful term here - it covers, clearly, all software created by KDE (that's us) and so is a good term for the software ;-) Other than that, as Aaron says, there is no term, any more than there's a term for everything Apple does, everything MS does, everything the Apache foundation does... Cheers, Stu ___ kde-community mailing list kde-community@kde.org https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-community
Re: [kde-community] Give People Access to Great Technology - a possible vision
Thanks for this Andrew! KDE offers the Great Technology and a brand indeed. Below in my looong 2c for the vision topic, written with the widest possible user base in mind, some devil's advocate approach, assuming that we are developing for users, for self-development, and for fun, in no universal order. Before anyone proposes Built for Plasma or even Built for KDE it can remind Built for Windows, Built for iOS. This makes sense for a player that maintains a two-digit slice of the cake, not for us. Linux desktop accounts for 1.5% or so. In the best case KDE has 1%. In this light, skipping the 99% of users (out of them 0.5% are potential active FOSS contributors) looks like lost opportunity, a gift made to the competition. 99%+ of global desktop user base is waiting to even learn about our apps. Knowledge of what KDE is comes later. I imagine most of the support from the 99%+ crowd would be financial. I am convinced most of them so often want to jut get the work done and move along. If they would be sufficiently interested in technology or digital freedom, and/or have time, they wouldn't use a non-FOSS OS. The numbers for the successful Krita fund-raising confirm that. My old numbers for Kexi (before 2008) confirm that too. Isn't this what we're looking for? The thing is people support what they use. Most of the supporters are not early adopters. As soon as we let them to use apps the way they (think they) need, you'd have chance to see the difference. Ordinary people see themselves and act in smaller communities, not in all-or noting. People that care about dogs, perhaps some species, but not so much about all mammals. Some of the supporters will learn about the big picture (KDE), fewer would particularly care about that. Yet you can get support from them, just for the app. Isn't this natural? Getting good figures for brand affection is hard if the meaning is blurry. How about letting apps have, build, their brands if they want? The great contribution of the is the real enabler, a template or a lighthouse. For KDE it's a new beginning. On the other hand, most of you already get the money for developing from a closed-oriented source: you work for a closed vendors/services/whatever to be able to spend some savings for your hobby. The above 99%+ manifesto is a more a variant of the same deal, without indirections, and with bigger risk. It maybe just works only for apps that offer value people are going to pay for. Plasma can be one of the apps I am sure. Add to this the large mobile market. With the app-is-the-center approach, apps by KDE are able to enter the market, and compete with the apps on equal terms i.e. without depending on success of some (free?) tablet/mobile OS. Of course that's a choice to be made by contributors individually. In exact the same time when you're drawing the integration diagrams, Canonical develops redundant integration, which (unfortunate!) despite of using the same pillar (Qt), is a separate distinct effort. All this happens, again, within the 1.5% of the desktop market, not counting the mobile one. Another: why even to declare the personal technology ecosystem? What if some software is primarily aimed at organizations (companies, universities)? For me, too much of declaration and formalisms is a recipe for ignored message, by otherwise interested potential supporters. Similarly, at least half of the FOSS desktop app developers could consider developing for KDE apps if they feel they're still developing something that works OK on their beloved desktops, whatever these are. Does it look like a solution for addressing the said downward trend issue? For me, yes, even if I do not see a reason to compare the numbers from the SVN- and git- workflow eras. So apps for everyone in the center. Would Frameworks be the center for engineers? Yes. We're good at offering that. Not the KDE Frameworks, just Frameworks _by_ KDE. It happens that KDE uses them, but advertising frameworks in a KDE uses then so they must be rocking it is not proved to be an advantage when we market Frameworks to non-KDE developers. Plasma at the center? Putting emotions aside, for me that's definitely NOT a reasonable strategy, it sets us for competition with even the remaining ~50% of FOSS camp. We are smart with LXQt, Razor, and this trend can be continued. Do you know Enlightenment folks love Qt Creator? Windows folks? If you want this story to repeat with your app, try to first find, then develop unique value. It's ideal if it's hard to reproduce. Looking around is hardest part of the effort. Note: I am Plasma user but this should not interfere with the reality-check or analisys. 'Plasma at the center' reminds the 2005 era indeed, however wonderful. I'd rather spread this user-oriented perception: *Plasma is an app*. Dear user, install it if you want this shell. You shouldn't feel worse within the KDE community if you don't. Plasma is so flexible (and apps from KDE are too) so they allow this
Re: [kde-community] Sad news (fwd)
On 28 August 2014 08:15, Jens Reuterberg j...@ohyran.se wrote: That is a good point, Boud would probably be able to get a hold of the guys friend (who wrote on the Calligra list on his behalf) just to check in and make sure we don't do something they'd rather not see. Hi All, As I am preparing the announcement, I'd like to ask if there's go ahead so we dedicate Calligra 2.8.6 to Mojtaba and write a paragraph in this Wednesday release announcement. Or 2.9.0? which is planned in 3 months, what would make sense better for you? On 26 August 2014 18:04, Mehrdad Momeny mehrdad.mom...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Calligra developers, I hope you are all fine. I guess some of you should know Mojtaba Shahi, He was working on some parts of Calligra as I know. I have a really sad news for those of you, it's yet unbelievable for myself. Mojtaba has passed away some days ago due to a brain stroke. Today was his burial in his hometown, Mashhad. May his soul rest in peace now. On Wednesday 27 August 2014 22.03.34 Valorie Zimmerman wrote: Jens, I think that would be lovely. It is so hard to lose a member of the community. And to lose a young person, who would otherwise have a long career ahead of them, feels tragic. I would like to see a respectful Dot story, and some nice memories on blogs as well. And a named Calligra release seems perfect. Does anyone have contact with the family, to be sure that this attention to their loved one is welcome? Valorie On Wed, Aug 27, 2014 at 8:54 AM, Jens j...@ohyran.se wrote: +1 Moji or Mojtaba release sounds nice - should I do a black web banner or something that we can add to our respective blogs? Just to show some respect for someone who contributed to something that benefit us all. On Wednesday 27 August 2014 12.14.48 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote: On Wednesday 27 August 2014 09:00:04 Jens Reuterberg wrote: Thats terrible news. As a community would it be appropriate to write up a short retrospective of Mojtaba? Perhaps combined with a photo, some information about him, his work and his life and post it on one of the larger KDE blogs? I don't know how Iranian burial customs work and we should check in with his family and friends (Mehrdad perhaps if you could help out) but with their allowance it seems as a nice gesture to do towards someone who has been a part of our community as well as worked on things that benefit us all (beyond our own community). What do everyone else think? When community member Claire Lotion passed away in 2012, there was a Dot story ( https://dot.kde.org/2012/05/20/remembering-claire-lotion ) and the KDE SC 4.9 release was dedicated to her memory ( http://www.kde.org/announcements/4.9/ ). Chakra followed suit and named their KDE SC 4.9 release series Chakra Claire. Maybe dedicating a Calligra release to Mojtaba would make more sense than a KDE SC release because Calligra was his focus, but a dot story would surely be due. ___ kde-community mailing list kde-community@kde.org https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-community ___ kde-community mailing list kde-community@kde.org https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-community -- regards / pozdrawiam, Jaroslaw Staniek Kexi Calligra KDE | http://calligra.org/kexi | http://kde.org Qt for Tizen | http://qt-project.org/wiki/Tizen Qt Certified Specialist | http://www.linkedin.com/in/jstaniek ___ kde-community mailing list kde-community@kde.org https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-community
Re: [kde-community] Give People Access to Great Technology - a possible vision
Hello again, I was going to reply to each response individually but I thought it might be simpler to do one reply. First off, thanks for being so so gracious in reviewing the thoughts I shared. As I mentioned these were personal thoughts prompted by my experience at Akademy this year. There's always a risk sharing such thoughts with a community that barely knows me, so I'm grateful for your kindness. At the risk of appearing to be defensive about the ideas expressed, permit me to provide some clarifications: * The ideas were not intended to communicate a stand our ground or a don't adventure beyond the desktop vision. Rather they was intended to say that the desktop doesn't have to be viewed as a now relatively stagnant participant in the ecosystem. I'm not sure anyone in the community thinks that is the case, but to the extent that there is concurrence, it seemed an element of value worth capturing and communicating about ourselves and what we provide. * Regarding integration, the ideas were really intended to regard applications, the desktop, devices and the cloud for their unique capabilities and how they can enhance each other. That can include the make-a-tablet/phone/cloud-version-of-[x] approach, but the hope is that it could include other approaches as well. As noted, there are already many efforts in the community that reflect such approaches, so it seemed an element of value worth communicating as well. * I'm no personal fan of exclusivity-driven integration. I'm rather a fan of open approaches to technological integration that enables people not hinder them. I've never sensed that as an attribute of KDE and I certainly won't advocate for it now. :-) There are details of the thoughts originally shared that are questionable and have been fairly questioned. For all the words and pictures in the original post that were intended to provide clarity but simply raised more questions, the bullets above hopefully contain the meat of the specific idea originally offered. Is it perhaps too limited? Maybe there should be more of a focus on KDE community. Valorie's quote from the manifesto seems quite good to me. (It was really great to meet you too Valorie!) Is it so broad that it loses focus or spreads us thin? I'm not entirely sure what a vision appropriate to our market position should look like, but I totally understand your concerns about lofty but unachievable goals Jaroslaw. Perhaps it might make sense if there are separate visions for our community and for each of the community's products (Frameworks, Plasma, the different apps). Then the folks doing the work can share their vision and better gauge the loftiness of any vision they signing up for. (What I originally offered seems more Frameworks and Plasma related.) How might that approach impact cohesiveness? I'm completely and utterly satisfied if whatever is identified as a vision, whether for the community as a whole or for specific products of the community, differs a great deal or entirely from the thoughts I originally shared. Maybe everything is fine and I just need to educate myself more about the road maps already laid out. I confess as a long-term user, an application developer and more recently as a designer contributor, I do occasionally find it challenging to see what the road ahead is. That may be a personal failing. I suspect though that it's not just me. The worst I could be is wrong. :) Much respect, Andrew ___ kde-community mailing list kde-community@kde.org https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-community
