On Donnerstag, 28. April 2016 22:43:02 CEST Alexander Neundorf wrote:
>
> Does the order of the sections imply priorities ?
> E.g. "tinkering" comes before "presence on all device classes" ?
Not really, I just put them in the order they came to my mind. If you think a
different order makes more sense, I'm absolutely fine with that.
> > To provide control, freedom and privacy, KDE's products
> > - allow users to "tinker" with them
>
> As Aleix said, what do you mean exactly with that ?
> I could interpret it as
> - sources are available
> - it is easy to build
> - it's highly configurable
> - data is stored in easily accessible formats (text, or documented binary,
> or binary with low level tools, etc) ?
I had all of them in mind (except "easy to build", but tha's just because I if
I build software myself, I always use scripts that make it easy to build,
anyway).
Should we put all of them in separate bullets instead?
> > - apply open standards to prevent "lock-in"
> > - integrate well with existing online services sharing the same values, or
> > create their own where those do not exist
>
> I wouldn't want to restrict us to integrating well with online services
> which share the same values.
> This implies to me that good integration with e.g. Facebook or being able to
> use a kdepim client to connect to an Outlook server is not a top priority
> for us. Both are ...very important for a large set of users. More or less
> everybody is on Facebook, if you need to work with an Outlook server at
> your job it would be great to be able to do that using at least a client
> which gives you freedom and privacy.
From my perspective, integrating well with services that track users to sell
information on them and/or lock them into a certain ecosystem does not promote
users' control, freedom or privacy at all.
That's why for me, integrating with those is purely a part of "reaching users
where they are", not of giving them control, freedom and privacy. See also my
reply to your other email.
> > - provide users with _at least_ the features and quality they expect
> > coming
> > from non-free products
>
> Well, we have the advantage that our software is free, so we offer freedom,
> independency and (if we are successful with that) privacy, something
> non-free software just can't do. If our software is also stable and
> reliable then, I can very well live with software which has somewhat less
> features than non- free products.
While I, as a user, have the same perspective as you do, I fear that this is
not ambitious enough given our goal is to give control, freedom and privacy to
_everyone_ . If we think that freedom and privacy should be enough to convince
people, we only reach those who value these highly. All those for whom they
are nice, but not very important won't sacrifice functionality or quality for
them.
> > - be at the forefront of emerging trends like mobile/desktop convergence
>
> Boring engineer speaking: Nice goal. Not sure how realistic this is.
> We have only a very limited number of full-time developers, so aiming for
> very advanced, complex solutions can quickly require more resources
> (developer time, for new devices also actual money) than we have.
"Be at the forefront" may be a bit marketing-speech, but currently,
convergence is clearly a goal for us, for Plasma as well as applications.
Kirigami is all about convergence, and there are several convergence-ready
applications currently in development.
I think it KDE would be in a much better place right now if we had embraced
emerging trends like cloud, mobile and now convergence earlier. Especially
young developers want to do things which are hip and cool _now_, not things
that were hip and cool five years ago.
If we don't even aim to embrace emerging trends due to our limited man-power,
we create a nice little self-fulfilling prophecy / vicious circle for
ourselves.
> > - integrate well with other Free products to complete the experience
> >
> > To reach users where they are, KDE
> > - strives to make our products available on major Free but also
> > proprietary
> > operating systems and platforms, mostly by applying Qt as a technology
> > that
> > allows easy portability
>
> I'd simply put "Free and propriety" instead of "Free but also proprietary",
> so they both sound like equally first class target platforms.
We obviously have different opinions here. While I agree with you that
proprietary platforms should get much more attention from us than they do now,
I'd still like to give Free platforms a higher priority, because according to
our vision, that's where we want people to end up eventually.
> > - aims for a presence on all relevant device classes (desktop, mobile,
> > embedded)
>
> To me this means e.g. that we'll try to get our applications running on
> Android (good !). Is this how this is intended ?
Android is a platform, "mobile" is a device class. Android is certainly a very
important
