[kde-community] New maintainers wanted: KDE Telepathy, KAccounts, Plasma Notifications and others

2016-06-18 Thread Martin Klapetek
Hi,

as I got a new job unrelated to KDE couple months ago, I'm finding myself
having less and less time and motivation to keep up with my maintainer's
duties. Therefore I think it's time to pass on some of the KDE things that
have my name in the "maintainer" field.

First off, there's the whole notifications stack, which includes
KNotifications framework, the fdo notifications server and finally Plasma's
popup notifications. The whole stack is relatively simple and does not
require much attention, but it could use some forward pushing to not be
stuck in 2009 anymore.

Staying in the Plasma land, I'd really like to hand the whole clock +
calendar stack to a dedicated maintainer. This is the bottom-right part of
the default Plasma panel - the clock applet, the calendar applet, the
backend for these applets, calendar events, proper timezones support and
all the pieces around. These things can get quite complex to grasp and
improve, yet are a crucial part of the desktop experience and deserve much
more attention than they get now.

KAccounts, the system to set up your online accounts, could use some much
needed improvements and expansions as well as integrating with the new
Akonadi/Sink/Kube-thing. If the last part will not happen, and it certainly
doesn't look like it will, I'm afraid that KAccounts in Plasma would no
longer serve its purpose and would become a burden rather than a useful
system component.

The last one and the biggest one - the 12 repos of KDE Telepathy. Now this
project is effectively dead. It hasn't seen any real development for more
than a year and basically is just on life support ever since the core team
had to leave the project because of job and life constraints. The other
factor is also the wide spread of mobile phones and mobile IM clients;
chatting on the desktop in not entirely modern interfaces with limited
protocol support is not as popular these days. But it would still be nice
to have someone at least oversee the couple of incoming patches every now
and then.

I think that at least the first two stacks are totally vital for Plasma
desktop and really need some attention. If you'd like to put your name on
any of the things above, please let me know. I'll make sure to do a proper
hand-off with explaining everything :)

Cheers
-- 
Martin Klapetek
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Re: [kde-community] KDE Mission - let's do this! : Feedback on survey draft

2016-06-18 Thread Thomas Pfeiffer

On 16.06.2016 13:32, sabayon11 wrote:

Very interesting survey. I found some issues very controversial.

> ...reach as many users as possible, regardless of which operating systems, 
applications or services they currently use


I say no, focus on quality. Be realistic. Don't take to much on your plate.


Be aware that the Mission is not a short-term plan, it is supposed to guide our 
work for years to come.


> ...convince users to switch away from proprietary software and services in 
general


How are you going to convince? Marketing? If quality and useability of KDE 
software is fine they will switch by themeselves. No earlier I guess.


Good quality is of course a necessary requirement for convincing users, but they 
also have to be aware of it.


> ...use new online services created by KDE for areas where no freedom- and 
privacy-respecting services exist

> ...offer our own web-based products / services

Is KDE financialy capable of doing it? Has KDE other necessarry resources to 
accomplish it? Will KDE users sponsor it or pay for it? Will you make it 
commercial service?


WikiToLearn ( http://wikitolearn.org/ ), for example, is a very successful 
web-based KDE product. They have acquired their own sponsors for infrastructure, 
which will probably be a must for any web-based product at some point. So yes, 
it is possible, but probably not with the servers KDE has alone.


> ...aim for a presence on mobile devices (e.g. smartphones and tablets)
> ...aim for a presence on embedded devices (e.g. in-vehicle (entertainment) 
systems, smart TVs, smart home or machine control panels)


Do you really think that KDE can compete with Android or iOS? Or is it a 
wishfull thinking only (dream on).


Nobody said that being a direct competitor for Android or iOS would be our goal.
1. KDE is _not_ the desktop, it is the community which also makes applications. 
We already have a presence on Android devices in the form of KDE Connect, 
KAlgebra and Behaim Globe, and there are several more KDE applications for 
Android in the works. Being present on smartphones does not mean beating Android 
or iOS
2. There is Plasma Mobile. Its goal is not to dominate the mobile market any 
time soon, but that does not mean there are no valid usecases for installing it 
(for example for people or organizations who need better privacy and security 
protection that Android or iOS can offer them)


Aiming for a presence on a platform is not the same as trying to replace 
dominant OSes. Plasma is installed on only a tiny fraction of desktop PCs. Does 
that mean we don't have a presence there?




> ...adopt current and emerging user interface trends (e.g. mobile/desktop 
convergence, conversation-based user interfaces, ...)


Are you capable of doing it in the first place? Do you have resources?

We are capable of doing it. We have Plasma, which already has the capability for 
being used as a convergent desktop, and we have Kirigami, a framework which is 
made for convergent applications. We do not have much technology for 
conversion-based user interfaces, but since we're in the FOSS world, we could 
laverage technologies such as Mycroft.


> ...treat all applications equally, regardless of whether they are for common 
or niche tasks


Quality of Plasma - quickly fixing bugs, providing new features proposed by 
users, basic features of desktop should be a priority. Next utilities. At the 
moment I don't use for example Korganizer because some parts of it are not 
developed and are useless (Kjots, Tasks).


This is a survey, in order to find out what the community wants to focus on, and 
what our users would like us to focus on. We will see what comes out of it.



> Business/ office users

 Is KDE capable of doing it? If yes, in what areas? Be realistic. Is KDE 
office suit capable of replacing MS Office or even LibreOffice? Does it offer 
advanced features like group work? Be realistic.


1. Again: The survey is for helping us decide what to _focus_ on. If we decide 
to focus on business users, then of course we have to invest more of our energy 
into business applications.
2. Why should users not use KDE software in conjunction with LibreOffice? It's 
not like we can only be relevant if people use _exclusively_ our software.


I have the impression that this question reflect that KDE developers have big 
ambitions. But keep in mind that you need to have resources. KDE itself is a 
niche desktop invironment. Focus on basics and if this is fullfilled go further.



See above: The Mission is not our short-term strategy.

I am only an ordinary user. I want the basic features of desktop environment 
to function properly without bugs. At the moment not all features of KDE 4 has 
been implemented.



That is fine, of course, and understandable.
Thank you for your feedback!
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