Re: Proposal unify back our release schedules

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Freitag, 19. April 2024 22:51:55 CEST Jakob Petsovits wrote:
...
> all KF dependencies from source. Now that all the megarelease is out, we
> might want to consider relying on distro packages for KF6 by default, in
> the same way that Qt is not built by default either. This would underscore
> the nature of Plasma and Gear master relying on released KF, and save some
> wasted energy for people who aren't contributing to KF.

Oh yes.
As a from-time-to-time a-little-bit contributor, it makes things so much 
easier if I can build an application against the KF which comes with my distro 
(compared to having to build everything).

Alex

Re: How do we feel about non 100% KDE job offers being sent here?

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Donnerstag, 25. November 2021 14:44:56 CET Albert Astals Cid wrote:
> Hey,
> 
> I know a company that would like to hire people with a skill set that
> is relatively common inside the KDE community, the job is not strictly
> KDE related, one could call it KDE-adjacent.
> 
> How do we feel about such job offers being sent here?
> 
> I have conflicting opinions myself.
> 
> Pro:
>  * We want people of the community to get [potentially better] jobs
> 
> Con:
>  * The list could filled with job offers that are not really KDE
> related since it's hard to define what "KDE-adjacent" really means.
> 
> Possible mitigation of the Con: Allow only Supporting Member companies
> to send such job offers, but then it also is a potential mitigation of
> the Pro :D

So it would cost 1000 Euro/year to be allowed to post job offers (
https://ev.kde.org/getinvolved/supporting-members/[1]  , formatting is partly 
broken on 
that page). If Linux & C++ & Qt would suffice as "KDE adjacent", then this 
would actually be 
cheap (one job ad for one month on stepstone is about 1000 Euro).

Alex



[1] https://ev.kde.org/getinvolved/supporting-members/

Re: On the reappointment of Richard Stallman as a director of the FSF

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Donnerstag, 25. März 2021 08:53:31 CET Patrick Spendrin wrote:
> Am 24.03.2021 um 23:26 schrieb Aleix Pol:
> > Dear community,
> > From the KDE e.V. we followed closely the discussions on the last few
> > days regarding this recent decision within the Free Software
> > Foundation's leadership.
> > 
> > We have tried to sum up our thoughts in the following announcement
> > with the hope to foster collectively the Free Software leadership we
> > need.
> > https://ev.kde.org/2021/03/24/on-the-reappointment-of-rms-fsf/
> > 
> > Looking forward to a more inclusive discussion that will shape the
> > Free Software movement of tomorrow.
> > 
> > Best regards,
> > Aleix Pol with the KDE e.V. Board of Directors
> 
> That is a statement I can subscribe to.

Same for me :-)

Alex

Re: RMS and open letter

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Dienstag, 23. März 2021 20:49:36 CET Carl Schwan wrote:
> Hello all,
> like you probably heard already RMS was reinstatement to the
> Board of Directors of the Free Software Foundation. RMS has
> always been a negative force to the Free Software movement due
> to his toxic behavior. 

IMO, calling RMS' as "always been a negative force  toxic behaviour" is 
far beyond appropriate.
He has been pushing for Free Software for many years (not just for Open 
Source). I am very very thankful for that. We all should be IMO.
He behaved inappropriately, so he stepped back.
But now stating "he has always been negative" is just absurdly wrong.

 I object to signing this.

Alex

Re: Tuxedo and reliability (Re: New kde.org/hardware webpage)

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Samstag, 25. Januar 2020 15:11:36 CET Philippe Cloutier wrote:
> Le 2020-01-25 à 02:47, Alexander Neundorf a écrit :
> > On Donnerstag, 23. Januar 2020 15:42:15 CET Niccolò Venerandi wrote:
> >> Hi!
> >> I'm working on adding a kde.org/hardware webpage. You can see screenshot
> >> here: https://phabricator.kde.org/D26711. What do you think? ~Niccolò
> >> Venerandi
> > 
> > Regarding Tuxedo: I bought one 5 years ago or so, and it is a good
> > machine.
> > But "They provide you with self-programmed driver packages, support,
> > installation scripts and everything around our hardware, so that every
> > hardware component really works. "
> > At least back then, this was not the case, no custom drivers, the
> > fingerprint scanner on the laptop does not work.
> 
> Did it work on (say) Microsoft Windows?

I don't know.
 
> In any case, this claim comes straight from Tuxedo's website.
> 
> > And maybe "They provide custom" instead of "They provide you with self-
> > programmed" ?
> 
> I was going to write the same, but refrained, because in fact this
> brings more questions than it answers:
> 
>  1. Who has verified vendor claims before copying them? The one quoted
> by Alexander hasn't even been adapted to our viewpoint.
>  2. What comes on these PC-s? Vendor-specific GNU/Linux distributions?

It seemed to be a normal OpenSUSE installation (you can choose between a few 
distros, that's nice).

Alex

Re: New kde.org/hardware webpage

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Donnerstag, 23. Januar 2020 15:42:15 CET Niccolò Venerandi wrote:
> Hi!
> I'm working on adding a kde.org/hardware webpage. You can see screenshot
> here: https://phabricator.kde.org/D26711. What do you think? ~Niccolò
> Venerandi

Regarding Tuxedo: I bought one 5 years ago or so, and it is a good machine.
But "They provide you with self-programmed driver packages, support, 
installation scripts and everything around our hardware, so that every 
hardware component really works. "
At least back then, this was not the case, no custom drivers, the fingerprint 
scanner on the laptop does not work.
And maybe "They provide custom" instead of "They provide you with self-
programmed" ?

Alex

Re: Planet KDE posts not about KDE (was: Re: Please don't make planet.kde.org into a politics feed)

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Mittwoch, 11. Dezember 2019 22:23:10 CET Boudewijn Rempt wrote:
...
> The purpose of the planet is not to give news, is not to soothe troubled
> breasts, is not to provide PR, it's a place where blogs by KDE developers
> are brought together, and yes, that means that you will see other parts of
> those KDE developer's lifes. This is healthy; too many people believe that
> working on free, kde, open, source, software is the only thing we do or
> are. Let them learn.
> 
> I don't want people to see only the KDE, Krita part of my life, but also the
> rest of what I am.

+1

Alex

Re: Please don't make planet.kde.org into a politics feed

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Donnerstag, 5. Dezember 2019 13:04:35 CET Jonathan Riddell wrote:
> Planet KDE exists to allow KDE people to share information about themselves
> as well as their KDE contributions. A hard Brexit will affect KDE
> significantly which is why I include it here.  The idea that talking about
> politics is dangerous or anti-social really scares me and is one reason why
> the populists have taken over so much of the political discussion
> currently. I often get people thanking me for my political opinion blogs.
> If you don’t want to read it then don’t read it.

+1

Alex

Re: Climate Impact and KDE

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Freitag, 20. September 2019 11:02:44 CEST Jens wrote:
> So recent discussions about Climate Strike raised some very good points
> about what KDE as a community can do to decrease its footprint. I want
> to thank Friedrich for raising them.
> 
> Personally I think this is a rather fun focus for design, community
> work and development (and I should probably have thought about it
> faster so it could have been squished into the goals voting/suggesting
> - but such is life) and just want to toss some ideas around if others
> are interested
> 
> Community ideas:
> Making a clear statement that carbon footprint in travel will be a
> factor in travel support from the eV. Basically we know that there is
> zero possibility for some to choose, say trains (train from India or
> across the Atlantic is not feasible), but adding that as a part of the
> application process; "choose best transport with ecology and
> environment in mind" can go a long way and for larger events asking
> organizers to look up alternatives and present them as part of the "how
> to get to X" page (much of this is already done of course but
> formalizing it would be awesome).
> 
> Decentralized and Online community events. Now I think we all know the
> value of meeting IRL, how important that is and how it can't be
> replaced, but I would love to explore how we can make online or smaller
> co-run events more interesting. Basically trying to time several
> smaller local events with each other and do some broadcast of talks and
> a way for each event to be able to ask questions of the others talks
> (as if they where there). Evaluate and check how we can make social
> events but online sort of.
> 
> Improve our internal social communication. This sounds a bit guache but
> I think looking at how we can make the forum/social media angle more
> attractive, perhaps more formal, might help the wider community feel a
> part without having to travel to large events (which beyond ecological
> impact is often impossible for many, for various reasons)
> 
> Technical Ideas:
> Look at Plasma and applications energy consumption - and I know it is a
> piss in the ocean 

No, IMO this is significant.
This affects millions (?) of computers running every day for hours.
I don't know how much energy it is, but I would expect that it is all together 
non-negligible.

OTOH meetings in real life are sooo valuable, and even video meetings are so 
much less personal.

Alex

Re: FOSS-North report

[Alexander Neundorf]

On 2019 M04 25, Thu 17:19:14 CEST Agustin Benito (toscalix) wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Tue, Apr 16, 2019 at 10:49 AM Adriaan de Groot  wrote:
> > [[ Since my blog is down, this is the all the report we'll see about FOSS-
...
> > Personally I'd like the Open Source booths to fit in with the rest of the
> > vendor floor, but that may be a space issue (and the "real" vendors pay
> > money).
> 
> 
> Thank you Adrian for all the effort you invest in this and other
> events. It is amazing to see how much passion and dedication you put.
> You are an example in this regard.

+1 :-)

Alex

Re: We published Promo's long term goals

[Alexander Neundorf]

Hi,

On 2019 M02 15, Fri 21:08:40 CET Paul Brown wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> We at the Promo group recently published our Long Term Goals at
> 
> https://community.kde.org/Promo%27s_Long_Term_Goals
> 
> This text  helps explain what Promo does and doesn't, and where our
> priorities lay. More importantly, it also gives you some sort of guide of
> where you can help us out.

the document estimates that maybe 2% of the users use Linux.
So if we want to increase the user base of KDE to 5%, I guess this means 
improving our efforts to run KDE applications on Windows and Android.

Do you have ideas how to attract developers who work on these topics ?

Alex

Re: Improving our integration with KDE application teams, and supporting companies

[Alexander Neundorf]

Hi,

...
> We were close to being global 

I don't really understand what you mean with "global". Can you please explain 
?

Thanks
Alex

Re: Improving our integration with KDE application teams, and supporting companies

[Alexander Neundorf]

On 2018 M08 13, Mon 06:08:38 CEST Valorie Zimmerman wrote:
> Just to follow up: many people have talked about this topic with me at
> Akademy. What I'm not seeing is a public discussion here on the
> community list. Note: I deliberately did not send this to the e.V.
> list because this is not strictly an e.V. matter. I do believe that
> the e.V. should support and welcome companies, but NOT hire
> programmers.
> 
> I'm very frustrated to hear "but the e.V. should not hire developers"
> said so often when that was not proposed.
> 
> Can we please discuss how we can best encourage companies and
> foundations to grow up within the KDE community? I believe such
> companies will support our work if we in turn support them. Our young
> developers will be able to look forward to working in Free software
> and even to contribute to the KDE codebase and other efforts! 

I think that would be great.
Are there realistic business models how to make (some) money by working on 
"KDE" software so th income stream is reliable enough to pay salaries every 
month ?

Back in 2005 or so it seemed all that would be possible, but that bubble burst 
:-/

Alex

Re: FOSDEM - what to show?

[Alexander Neundorf]

On 2018 M01 26, Fri 13:11:56 CET Adriaan de Groot wrote:
> For FOSDEM, we've got a table -- but what shall we show off there? I'll

maybe somehow try to concentrate on the big goals which have been chosen, 
privacy and usability ?

Alex

Re: KDE Community Goals: 2017 voting has started

[Alexander Neundorf]

On 2017 M11 6, Mon 17:55:10 CET victorhck wrote:
> El 06/11/17 a las 17:31, Aleix Pol escribió:
> > On Mon, Nov 6, 2017 at 4:03 PM, victorhck  wrote:
> >> El 06/11/17 a las 15:53, Andy B escribió:
> >>> Thank you Lydia.
> >>> 
> >>> I voted.
> >>> 
> >>> Andy
> >>> 
> >>> On Mon, Nov 6, 2017 at 1:15 AM, Lydia Pintscher  wrote:
>  Hey folks :)
>  
>  We are really close to having our goals for the next 3 to 4 years
>  figured out. The only remaining step is the voting. I am sorry this
>  was a bit delayed because of trouble getting the system set up.
>  
>  You can see the latest state of all goal proposals at
>  https://phabricator.kde.org/project/board/244/
>  
>  I just send out a voting invitation email to the following groups as
>  that is the closest I can get to reaching active KDE contributors:
>  * everyone subscribed to the KDE Community mailing list
>  * everyone with a KDE developer account on identitiy.kde.org
>  That gives us 2709 people. If you know someone who is an active
>  contributor and does not fall into either of those groups please ask
>  them to send me an email and I will add them still.
>  
>  The voting will be open for 2 weeks. Please do take part. This is an
>  important step in helping us work together in the next years.
>  
>  
>  Cheers
>  Lydia
>  
>  --
>  Lydia Pintscher - http://about.me/lydia.pintscher
>  KDE e.V. Board of Directors
>  http://kde.org - http://open-advice.org
> >> 
> >> Hello.
> >> 
> >> Sorry, but it says: "Double-click or drag-and-drop items in the left
> >> list to move them to the right - your highest ranking item should be on
> >> the top right, moving through to your lowest ranking item."
> >> 
> >> But there's an error with the text? The final personal options must be
> >> in the left, not in the right side?
> > 
> > You need to drag from the left to the right and make sure that the
> > list, when it's on the right, it's in your order or preference.
> > 
> > Aleix
> 
> I know the "how-to" but what I said it's that I needed to drag from
> right to left and then I was allowed to submit.
> 
> just the opposite that you and the "how-to" say! :)
> 
> Maybe a little mistake, or maybe I have forgotten what is right and left! :þ

I was confused as well. Why should I drag the stuff to the right column if it 
is already in the right column ?

I dragged everything to the left column and sorted it there, then it turned 
green. Was that right or wrong ?

Alex

Re: Goal: Improve Plasma Mobile platform for end-user needs

[Alexander Neundorf]

On 2017 M09 5, Tue 01:26:44 CEST Aleix Pol wrote:
...
> That said, I think it's also worth including here other major mobile
> platforms. I'm convinced that the appeal to make an application mobile
> is magnitudes greater if the application will work on other platforms
> besides our own.

+1
I think also the barrier to entry is much lower if the first step can be to 
just get your own KDE-based app running on Android, without having to switch 
your phone to a whole different OS.
Actually, when talking about mobile, I wouldn't mind limiting "on other 
platfoms" to "Android"

Alex

Re: Goal: Making KDE software the #1 choice for science and academia

[Alexander Neundorf]

On 2017 M08 29, Tue 18:12:55 CEST Valorie Zimmerman wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 29, 2017 at 4:34 PM, Thomas Pfeiffer
> 
>  wrote:
> > Hi everyone,
> > here is my proposal for a Big Hairy Audacious Goal:
> > Making KDE software the #1 choice for science and academia
> > 
> > I think that here is a lot of yet-untapped potential for the usage of KDE
> > products in the research and academic sector, and we should fix that, for
> > their sake and ours.
> > 
> > See all the details here: https://phabricator.kde.org/T6895
> > 
> > Feedback and contributions very welcome!
> > Cheers,
> > Thomas
> 
> Very cool idea, Thomas. I think Wikitolearn is a natural part of KDE
> leadership here, and we could perhaps partner with
> http://openscience.org/ - some of whom got their beginning in KDE. In
> addition, while searching for Open Science, I saw https://osf.io/,
> which is Open Science Framework: A scholarly commons to connect the
...

Not to forget Kitware, which is strong in Open Science and research.

Alex

Re: Big Hairy Audacious Goal: Privacy Software

[Alexander Neundorf]

On 2017 M08 18, Fri 18:14:22 CEST Sebastian Kügler wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I spent some time thinking and working on a proposal for the big hairy
> audacious goal (1), the goal that the KDE community sets for itself to
> strive for in the next five years. (Context: re-read the thread started
> by Kevin with the subject "Proposal: Have the Community Set Ambitious
> Goals for Itself".
> 
> [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Hairy_Audacious_Goal
> 
> I'll try to keep this email short, but I guess I won't be able to,
> given scope, importance, complexity and the general mess in my head
> regarding this topic.
> 
> What I wanted to do...
> 
> I wanted to write a goal that is snappy to read, easy to understand,
> engaging, worthwhile and measurable. What I came up with so far is:
> 
> "In 5 years, KDE software enables and promotes privacy"

 ... does that kind of imply that we need to offer a range of applications 
which cover the most privacy-sensitive topics, e.g. a competetive web browser 
?

Alex

Re: Proposal: Have the Community Set Ambitious Goals for Itself

[Alexander Neundorf]

On 2017 M08 2, Wed 12:32:32 CEST Sebastian Kügler wrote:
> On Mon, 31 Jul 2017 16:20:11 +0200
> 
> Lydia Pintscher  wrote:
> > Thanks everyone who worked on putting this together at Akademy. I
> > believe this is a way that can work well for us as a community.
> > 
> > So one of the things we still need to iron out is the timeline. Here
> > is a straw man proposal:
> > * We work on the proposals now until beginning of October
> > * We talk about the proposals during all of October
> > * We have a vote on the proposals during the first two weeks of
> > November
> > * We publish the results in the middle of November
> > 
> > What do you think?
> 
> I like it. Thanks for pushing this important topic.

Yes, sounds like a good plan :-)

Alex

Re: Collecting requirements for a KDE-wide instant messaging solution (was: Re: radical proposal: move IRC to Rocket.Chat)

[Alexander Neundorf]

On 2017 M08 9, Wed 00:19:32 CEST Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
...
> - Easy way to share files
> A solution that puts files automatically on share.kde.org and embeds them
> from there works only if we have people willing and able to implement that
> feature into a desktop- as well as mobile client

One thing I like in the google group chat is that you can post images and you 
can do simple free-hand drawing on these images (e.g. draw an arrow pointing 
to something). I think it has also builtin functionality for screenshots.
Both combined make it easy to talk about GUI stuff.
Do other IMs support this too ? (I haven't seen this in mattermost and slack)

Alex

Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Alexander Neundorf]

Hi,

On 2017 M07 7, Fri 07:21:32 CEST Kevin Ottens wrote:
> Hello,
...
> > How about collecting ideas for that ?
> > We have already 5.
> 
> 5? I missed a couple I guess. I spotted only "privacy" and "freedom" so far.

For completeness:
- privacy
- (practical) freedom
- reliability
- KDE apps for Android - konquering mobile ;-)
- cross-platform KDE applications - konquering Windows and OSX ;-)

("konquering" of course means bringing freedom and privacy to those users ;-)

> Note I'd be personally inclined to do an early filtering of them to avoid
> things which are way too generic and impossible to action. The reasoning
> being that if you line them up against more precise things they'd be picked
> up every time since they'd be more easily fitting larger groups... but
> they'd be counter-productive at building a direction.

+1
 
> One simple criterion for that could be "no single term proposal" because
> then you're just showing up a concept and that single word can be ambiguous
> enough to be misunderstood too. See for instance how I didn't quite
> complain about "privacy" but I did for "freedom", it's just than in one
> case I see a clear direction and actions we can take and not in the other
> one. Can be very different for someone else!
> 
> After all we're talking about selecting something like a 5 years strategy, I
> think it deserve more than just a word.

Maybe it could be even shorter like e.g. 2 years ?
5 years feels like a very long time, 2 years feels plannable.

Alex

Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Alexander Neundorf]

On 2017 M07 6, Thu 07:29:39 CEST Kevin Ottens wrote:
> On Wednesday, 5 July 2017 23:12:38 CEST Alexander Neundorf wrote:
...
> > Except that I don't think "Open Data" should really be THE focus of KDE
> > (but I guess you just used that as a random example ?), I fully agree.
> 
> It wasn't totally random, I picked one I knew you wouldn't like. :-)

It's not that I don't like the idea of "Open Data", it's just that IMO KDE is 
not the right community for it, that should be Wikimedia or some scientific 
computing groups. :-)

> And part of my point is that if something like "Open Data" ended up being
> picked, please don't argue it to death to prevent it. We will quickly know
> where everyone stands, but if that's a divisive discussion each we'll keep
> driving people away and we'll win nothing.
> 
> In fact, the selection process still needs to be found. As I mentioned
> earlier on we can't do it somewhat unilaterally like organizations like
> Mozilla can, we need to come up with a way to build up that consensus.

+1

How about collecting ideas for that ?
We have already 5.
 
> > I fully support the idea to figure out some one or a few "main focus"
> > areas
> > and push them.
> > I never meant, never even hinted to exclude projects which are not in this
> > main focus. But OTOH I think we don't need to attract them. Also my
> > impression is that this argument is currently used the other way round: we
> > are so diverse, e.g. Wiki2Lean, so it is impossible to define what our
> > main
> > focus is (implying that everything which is not mentioned in such a
> > statement would have to be excluded).
> 
> Yes, the fact that we want to write everything as globally encompassing
> prevent us from getting a direction because of our diversity. That's why I
> think having something not necessarily covering every project would help as
> long as we all accept 1) to be supportive of it even if it's not to our
> liking and 2) it's not used as a mean to exclude efforts which don't fall
> into it.
> 
> Both are important, otherwise I don't see it working.

+1
 
Alex

Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Alexander Neundorf]

On 2017 M07 5, Wed 13:14:19 CEST Sebastian Kügler wrote:
> On woensdag 5 juli 2017 12:17:10 CEST Kevin Ottens wrote:
> > IOW, knowing the organization as a whole decided on some sort of direction
> > at least for a while would prompt me into looking beyond my usual comfort
> > zone. By doing that with the two examples above we might see a stronger
> > influx of contributors in the current focus zone ('cause promo) who are
> > more likely to then also look at the other stuff we do ('cause
> > cross-pollination).
> 
> Reading through your thoughts, I think we should put privacy into that
> primary focus position. It's a core value for us, something we all agree
> on, and extremely relevant in today's context.
> 
> Should we make privacy our main focus for the next 5 years?

Can you elaborate a bit ?
I mean, KDE is not a community focused on privacy.
Privacy is important, but IMO just one of many aspects.

E.g. on the PC desktop, I don't know whether I care that much about KDE and 
privacy. I'm using a non-KDE browser, a non-KDE office suite and at work a non-
KDE mail client (at home I use kmail, so I do care about kmail and privacy, 
but KDE in general ?).
On the Linux desktop, for "KDE", my personal main issue is not privacy, but 
reliability and robustness.
I am now working on a commercial software for the Linux desktop since 8 years, 
and during that time I learned that neither my collegues and even less our 
customers care about fancy new features in any of the desktop-related 
applications, but just that the basic stuff works and doesn't change without 
strong need.

OTOH, when thinking about KDE applications on Android, privacy could be a very 
strong point. For that we could first make "Android" a focus. IMO there is a 
lot to win there for us. Having a consistent set of free software apps 
produced by a trusted community (...which would imply respecting privacy) 
without ads, etc., would be a "unique selling point".

Still OTOH, for our applications, getting them to work properly on all desktop 
platforms could be the focus. I think we have a lot to win there too. So 
"cross-platform applications" could also be a focus.

Alex

Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Alexander Neundorf]

On 2017 M07 5, Wed 12:17:10 CEST Kevin Ottens wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> On Tuesday, 4 July 2017 22:28:24 CEST Alexander Neundorf wrote:
> > On 2017 M07 2, Sun 03:43:57 CEST Kevin Ottens wrote:
> > ...
> > 
> > > In my opinion our answer to "where we want to go" was supposed to be
> > > something else than "nowhere in particular". Then I think we're falling
> > > very short on that. We face a problem, and instead of putting our
> > > efforts
> > > to find where to go to solve it, we're been pouring over the years
> > > massive
> > > efforts into describing where we currently are. That's understandable
> > > but
> > > it means we went off track in my opinion. If we stop at what we got so
> > > far, we're in my opinion falling into a kind of conservatism trap. The
> > > community will stay put and will keep shrinking as people loose interest
> > > and less new blood gets in.
> > 
> > Are you saying somewhere in those documents we should say what we actually
> > want to accomplish ?
> > Maybe not only on a community level, but on a software level  ?
> > If so, I agree.
> 
> Somewhat yes (see my other probably more detailed answer to sebas). As long
> as it's not used as a mean for exclusion.
> 
> For instance, I'd totally be fine with us saying "OK, open data is our
> strong focus for the next five years, as such we'll try to push further
> projects in that category like WikiToLearn". Probably wouldn't be my
> personal agenda (I'm proud we got WikiToLearn in our midst and I got no
> personal motivation to work on it). Assuming I'd be a Plasma contributor, I
> would still be able to work on Plasma anyway which would be more to my
> liking. But, knowing our focus for the next five years, having it on the
> back of my mind, I would likely be more proactive in talking about
> WikiToLearn when staffing a booth taking the time to look at it, I would
> likely keep an eye open for cross-pollination between Plasma and
> WikiToLearn.

Except that I don't think "Open Data" should really be THE focus of KDE (but I 
guess you just used that as a random example ?), I fully agree.

I fully support the idea to figure out some one or a few "main focus" areas and 
push them.
I never meant, never even hinted to exclude projects which are not in this 
main focus. But OTOH I think we don't need to attract them. Also my impression 
is that this argument is currently used the other way round: we are so 
diverse, e.g. Wiki2Lean, so it is impossible to define what our main focus is 
(implying that everything which is not mentioned in such a statement would 
have to be excluded).

> IOW, knowing the organization as a whole decided on some sort of direction
> at least for a while would prompt me into looking beyond my usual comfort
> zone. By doing that with the two examples above we might see a stronger
> influx of contributors in the current focus zone ('cause promo) who are
> more likely to then also look at the other stuff we do ('cause
> cross-pollination).

+1

Alex

Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Alexander Neundorf]

On 2017 M07 5, Wed 15:05:26 CEST Clemens Toennies wrote:
> On Jul 5, 2017 13:14, "Sebastian Kügler"  wrote:
> > Should we make privacy our main focus for the next 5 years?
> 
> How about Freedom?

The "KDE - Digital Freedom" is one of my favourite T-shirts...
Still, there exists already a software organizatio which has freedom as its 
main goal: GNU.
So, I think that's too broad for KDE.

Alex

Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Alexander Neundorf]

On 2017 M07 2, Sun 03:43:57 CEST Kevin Ottens wrote:
...
> In my opinion our answer to "where we want to go" was supposed to be
> something else than "nowhere in particular". Then I think we're falling
> very short on that. We face a problem, and instead of putting our efforts
> to find where to go to solve it, we're been pouring over the years massive
> efforts into describing where we currently are. That's understandable but
> it means we went off track in my opinion. If we stop at what we got so far,
> we're in my opinion falling into a kind of conservatism trap. The community
> will stay put and will keep shrinking as people loose interest and less new
> blood gets in.

Are you saying somewhere in those documents we should say what we actually 
want to accomplish ?
Maybe not only on a community level, but on a software level  ?
If so, I agree.

Alex

Re: Kubuntu and other KDE distribution's use of KDE infrastructure

[Alexander Neundorf]

On 2017 M01 14, Sat 16:53:19 CET Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> On Donnerstag, 12. Januar 2017 11:18:07 CET Harald Sitter wrote:
> > Manifesto says one of our values is "Inclusivity to ensure that all
> > people are welcome to join us and participate;". Be inclusive, give
> > Kubuntu and Fedora a place on phab to manage their todos. Costs us
> > nothing, helps our friends make their product which features our
> > products better. If either starts calling themselves a KDE project or
> > misrepresents their association with KDE, hit them with the manifesto
> > bat.
> 
> Let me add to that: Any distribution or spin shipping our software is of
> course welcome to become a KDE project as well (from KDE's side, at least).
> neon was the first to ask for that, but it's not exclusive.

well, I wouldn't put it this way.
Regarding neon we had a major discussion whether it is a good idea that KDE 
starts to put his toes into distro waters. I am myself not really decided, 
both sides have valid points.
The "vision" discussion resulted in a nice statement, which avoids mentioning 
what we do (or do not do) completely.
The "mission" discussion has paused for some months now...
I think there is still the split between people seeing KDE as an organization 
"supporting all kinds of FLOSS-related projects" (as the last eV report puts 
it), and people seeing KDE as an organization developing (Qt-based) end-user 
software.

Extending KDE's scope to distros is, so to say, extending it vertically, which 
is a reasonable idea with pros and cons worth discussion, but it's not a no-
brainer. Extending KDE's scope to Wikis, is extending it horizontally, which 
is IMO even more worth discussion.

OTOH, "being nice" towards friends is something where there is I think more or 
less unanimous agreement in the KDE community.

Alex

Re: [kde-community] Results from the Mission Survey

[Alexander Neundorf]

On 2016 M10 31, Mon 22:30:45 CET Alexander Neundorf wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Friday 30 September 2016 12:56:13 Sebastian Kügler wrote:
> ...
> 
> > On the other hand, a mission that actually concentrates on the things that
> > we need to solve at a higher level (community governance, culture,
> > infrastructure, support, network effects, licensing policies, etc.), a
> > focused mission could be really useful, as it provides us a checklist
> > against we can check planned activities, priorities and budgets.
> > 
> > We had a phone conference earlier this week with those involved this
> > discussion, so the work is still ongoing. It's not a trivial thing to
> > solve, but we are making progress.
> 
> is there progress, or notes or something ?

any news here ?

Alex

Re: [kde-community] Results from the Mission Survey

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Tuesday 27 September 2016 16:06:38 Valorie Zimmerman wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 27, 2016 at 2:06 AM, Alexander Neundorf <neund...@kde.org> 
wrote:
> > On Wednesday 21 September 2016 21:53:46 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> >> On 12.09.2016 18:18, Alexander Neundorf wrote:
> >> > Hi,
> >> > 
> >> > On Thursday 01 September 2016 16:54:32 Lydia Pintscher wrote:
> >> >> On Thu, Sep 1, 2016 at 12:14 AM, Ingo Klöcker <kloec...@kde.org> 
wrote:
> >> >>> I don't think so. On
> >> >>> https://akademy.kde.org/
> >> >>> there's no BoF registered for working on the mission.
> >> >> 
> >> >> Thomas and I just added one on Tuesday at 4pm.
> >> > 
> >> > how did it go ?
> >> > Are there notes or something somewhere ?
> >> 
> >> Hi Alex,
> >> there are no notes of the BoF, but all the tangible results of it are
> >> reflected in the updated Mission draft [1].
> >> However, near the end of the BoF, concerns were brought up regarding
> >> whether a Mission for KDE should say anything about our products, or
> >> whether our products should only be defined by their individual product
> >> visions and a KDE Mission should only encompass how we organize and
> >> collaborate.> 
> > just a short remark: I think trying to give a general direction on what we
> > do is necessary, and according to the results of the surveys this is also
> > wanted. We now already have two "documents" where we do not talk about
> > what we create (the manifesto and the vision), so let's try to put down
> > in a mission what we are trying to create.
> > 
> > Alex
> 
> We seemed to be reaching consensus on the updated draft, but at the
> end of the hour some severe doubts were voiced. The product teams have
> some visions, and the doubt seemed to be that those visions and
> mission statements were going to be over-ridden.
> 
> So in my opinion, we need to gather those vision and mission
> statements, and see what the common elements are.

Sounds like a good plan. :-)
Was there the feeling that those might conflict with each other ?

Alex

Re: [kde-community] Results from the Mission Survey

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Wednesday 21 September 2016 21:53:46 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> On 12.09.2016 18:18, Alexander Neundorf wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > On Thursday 01 September 2016 16:54:32 Lydia Pintscher wrote:
> >> On Thu, Sep 1, 2016 at 12:14 AM, Ingo Klöcker <kloec...@kde.org> wrote:
> >>> I don't think so. On
> >>> https://akademy.kde.org/
> >>> there's no BoF registered for working on the mission.
> >> 
> >> Thomas and I just added one on Tuesday at 4pm.
> > 
> > how did it go ?
> > Are there notes or something somewhere ?
> 
> Hi Alex,
> there are no notes of the BoF, but all the tangible results of it are
> reflected in the updated Mission draft [1].
> However, near the end of the BoF, concerns were brought up regarding whether
> a Mission for KDE should say anything about our products, or whether our
> products should only be defined by their individual product visions and a
> KDE Mission should only encompass how we organize and collaborate.

just a short remark: I think trying to give a general direction on what we do 
is necessary, and according to the results of the surveys this is also wanted.
We now already have two "documents" where we do not talk about what we create 
(the manifesto and the vision), so let's try to put down in a mission what we 
are trying to create.

Alex

Re: [kde-community] Results from the Mission Survey

[Alexander Neundorf]

Hi,

On Thursday 01 September 2016 16:54:32 Lydia Pintscher wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 1, 2016 at 12:14 AM, Ingo Klöcker  wrote:
> > I don't think so. On
> > https://akademy.kde.org/
> > there's no BoF registered for working on the mission.
> 
> Thomas and I just added one on Tuesday at 4pm.

how did it go ?
Are there notes or something somewhere ?

Alex

Re: [kde-community] Results from the Mission Survey

[Alexander Neundorf]

Hi,

On Monday 01 August 2016 12:05:25 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> On 01.08.2016 11:20, Martin Steigerwald wrote:
> > Thank you for doing this.
> > 
> > I am baffled by the extreme coherence between answers of contributors and
> > of users. Seems like a perfect match.
> 
> Indeed, I was equally surprised by that. It is true, though (I've just
> re-checked the data to be 100% sure).
> If someone says "KDE has lost touch with their userbase", we can confidently
> say "No, we haven't, look at that
> survey we just did!". At least judging from our attitudes. To the extent
> that our actions match our attitudes,
> we should be all lined up with what our users want.
> Our users should like a Mission Statement derived from these results, then
> :)

so how do we proceed from here ?
Unfortunately I can't attend Akademy, but I guess there'll be some session for 
working on the mission ?

Alex

Re: [kde-community] Please participate in our survey for input on KDE's Mission

[Alexander Neundorf]

Hi Thomas,

On Thursday 16 June 2016 12:02:48 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> Dear fellow KDE contributors,
> as already hinted at in the article about KDE's Vision [1], the next step in
> setting our path into the future is defining KDE's Mission statement. Right
> after our Vision was published, a group of people started drafting a
> Mission statement and discussing it on the kde-community mailing list.
> 
> While we agreed on most aspects of the Mission, it became obvious that on
> some key issues, we just had quite different individual opinions. Even if
> an individual opinion prevailed in our discussion, we would not know
> whether that opinion was shared by the majority of the KDE community. This
> is a problem, because especially in a volunteer-driven community where a
> Mission cannot be enforced from the top down, it can only have a practical
> effect if the majority of those doing the work agree with it. However it
> became obvious that not that many KDE contributors both had the time and
> were comfortable with contributing to the discussion on the mailing list.
> 
> Therefore, in order to still be able to find out what the majority of the
> community considers the right approach towards our Vision, we set up an
> online survey, hoping that this would make it easier for people to voice
> their opinion in an easy, anonymous way. Since we always focus on our
> users, we are also interested in the opinion of interested users, so we
> opened up the survey for everyone.
> 
> So, please Participate in our survey:
> 
> http://survey.kde.org/index.php/858172/lang-en
> 
> It should not take more than 5-10 minutes and providing your input on what
> KDE should do will help us move towards our Vision!
> 
> Thank you,
> Thomas and the KDE Mission team


how long do you want to leave the survey actually open ?

Alex

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Re: [kde-community] Final review for the KDE Mission survey

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Sunday 12 June 2016 14:49:58 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> thank you again for the feedback on the KDE Mission survey!
> I have tried to implement the feedback to the best of my abilities.
> You can find the updated survey (still) here:
> 
> http://survey.kde.org/index.php/858172/lang-en
> 
> In order to get the survey out the door soon, I'd prefer to just get a final
> review now, unless there are still issues which you find so crucial that
> they absolutely have to be further discussed.
> 
> So please have another look over it and point out things like typos,
> difficult to understand or ambiguous wording, problems in the survey logic
> etc until Tuesday, June 14th, 23:59:59
> Then, unless there are still any big issues left, I'll start the survey
> Wednesday morning.

A few comments:

I think the questions should be pointing a bit more toward the future path, 
i.e. instead  "How useful is it or would it be for KDE's ..."
maybe "How useful is it for KDE's future to..." ?


First page, "How useful is it or would it be for KDE's products to..."
---

All good, but:
except one point all offered options are "positive", I doubt there will be a 
lot of variation in the answers. I mean, who would object to "support open 
standards" or "work well with assistive technologies".

The only one which stands out a bit as negative is "integrate well with 
popular services, even if they don't share our values".
Maybe those two simply be merged into one point "integrate well with online 
services", since on the next page at the bottom there is already the question 
which kind of services should take priority.


Second page
---

"offer a desktop workspace with a familiar default user interface"
I don't know what that means, "familiar". Familiar for people used to KDE1..4 
? Or familiar for people used to Windows ?


Third page
---

"How important are the following aspects..:"

How about a point "provide a stable and reliable software" ?


"How much do you agree to the following statements"

Did you intentionally put "adhere to the design guidelines..." and "prefer a 
consistent look and feel ... across platforms" that far apart ?
To me they are opposites, and I would expect them directly next to each other.

The same for "cover our users' most common tasks" vs. "treat equally, common 
or niche".


Fifth page, target groups
-

Maybe make the statement a bit stronger, so participants don't feel bad when 
not checking some of the boxes:
"...should KDE focus on" -> "...should KDE focus on most"

Or turn this into three levels ?
"How important do you consider these groups of users for the future success of 
KDE ?"
Very important - Normal - Not important



And as a last point, I suggest you publish that survey also on kde-core-devel 
(and maybe frameworks-devel), so most core-contributors see it too.
(I guess you'll post it anyway also to the eV -list, right ?).

Alex

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

[Alexander Neundorf]

Hi,

On Sunday 22 May 2016 19:29:22 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> On Sonntag, 22. Mai 2016 15:38:39 CEST Agustin Benito (toscalix) wrote:
> > One of our historical problems, in my opinion, has been our little
> > engagement with the "commercial world". Words can help or holding us
> > back from turning up side down our current situation.
> > 
> > Two examples:
> > 
> > I consider the word  "support" controversial. Support in commercial
> > environments has a specific meaning. It is related with paid service.
> > I would use a different word.
> 
> How about "compatibility with"?
> 
> > The other word is "product".
> > 
> > I understand that Open Source projects, and we are no exception, have
> > a bigger and better "end to end" conscious. That is good. Still, there
> > are several stages of what the commercial world understands as
> > "product cycle" we do not cover. The motivation for creating
> > "products" is also different, so the expected outcome.
> > 
> > I would use a different word in the Mission statement.
> 
> For me, using the word "product" is very important especially in the Mission
> statement. Yes, we currently do not treat what we make as "products", and I
> think that is a problem.
> If there are stages of a product life-cycle we do not cover, than chances
> are that we _should_. Thinking in terms of products would remind us that we
> should think about quality, about bringing our products to market or about
> handling "end of life" properly.

I think this is related to my "reliability" point.
 
> This is one area where I think KDE is not "professional" enough, and it
> would be helpful especially for a better relationship with the "commercial
> world" if we improved that.
> 
> > ++ KDE and Qt
> > 
> > I think we should try to better reflect the aim that KDE has to become
> > even more relevant in the Qt ecosystem, and how important it is to us.
> > I read two references in the current draft:
> > 
> > * "strives to make our products available on all major Free and
> > proprietary operating systems and platforms, for example by applying
> > Qt as a technology that allows easy portability"
> > * "provides frameworks and libraries which facilitate the development
> > of high-quality Qt applications"
> > 
> > I would remove both references.
> > 
> > The first one is irrelevant. In the same way that we mentioned Qt we
> > could have mentioned any other technology. In a mission statement
> > every word counts. In fact, I think that in general we have too many
> > already. It is not easy, I understand.
> 
> I had put that in because in the Vision discussion, several participants
> expressed their fear that KDE might be losing its focus on Qt, so I wanted
> to make clear that Qt is still very important to us and we are still very
> important for Qt.
> Since the survey is there to find out what the majority of the community
> thinks, though, maybe I should add another question
> "Should a focus on Qt be stated in our Mission?"
> Then we find out what the community thinks.

Yes.
 
> > The second one reduces our scope. I thought we agreed on being a host
> > for different projects. It seems here that if it is not a Qt based
> > app
> 
> We do host many different projects and they do not necessarily have to be
> Qt- based, but do we want to host non-Qt _libraries_ as well?

just my POV: hosting everything which is part of our "mission" or which 
supports our mission is perfectly Ok. I.e. of course KDE frameworks, but that 
office-related library which was mentioned recently obviously supports our 
mission (calligra), even if it is not Qt-based.
 
> > I would write instead a sentence that reflects the position within the
> > Qt ecosystem we want to play and how important it is to us.
> 
> Suggestions for how to phrase such a question are welcome!

I'm also curious about what Agustin has in mind...

Maybe something like:

* KDE should try to become the go-to provider of Qt-based libraries for both 
free and proprietary software developers.
OR
* KDE should try to become the go-to provider of Qt-based libraries for both 
free software developers.
OR
* KDE should provide applications, libraries are just a by-product.

Maybe ?


 
> > ++ "classic desktop"
> > 
> > We have suffered the last few years from having two different visions
> > within our community on what desktop means/is. Going through the
> > process of redefining the strategy should serve to solve these kind of
> > fundamental issues.
> > 
> > When I read the mission, I understand that we have used a "political
> > way" to provide satisfaction to both views. In that regard, these two
> > points:
> > 
> > * aims for a presence on all relevant device classes (desktop, mobile,
> > embedded) * offers a "classic desktop" product which makes the switch from
> > other popular operating systems easy
> > 
> > do the job very well.
> > 
> > I question though that this is the way to go. We should focus on
> > solving this issue and state the consensus 

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

[Alexander Neundorf]

Hi,

I'm just commenting on stuff which hasn't been mentioned somewhere else 
already...

On Friday 20 May 2016 20:45:06 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> On Freitag, 20. Mai 2016 00:14:36 CEST Alexander Neundorf wrote:
...
> > Section "To promote the development of Free software in general"
> > ---
> > 
> > There's the option "...provide ... libraries which  facilitate the
> > development of ... Qt applications".
> > Personally I agree with this point, but not necessarily  as "promote ...
> > Free software", but as a useful tool for developers, also for proprietary
> > applications (... to pull also those developers into KDE).
> > Can we make that somehow into a question ?
> > Maybe
> > "Should KDE libraries target mainly
> > * free software developers
> > * both free and proprietary software developers" ?
> 
> The reason why I listed libraries only under that aspect is that I wanted to
> make sure that all aspects of the mission relate to the vision.
> 
> Is getting new contributors for our libraries (and by extension to KDE in
> general) the reason why we make them available for proprietary applications
> as well?
> In that case, how does that relate to our vision?

More contributors to our free libraries -> more and better free software -> 
more freedom.
 
> > Misc
> > 
> > 
> > * I'd like to have a point like "reliable, backwards compatible and
> > stable"
> > somewhere. Maybe in "How important are the following aspects" ?
> 
> Ok, I can add that to the user experience point.
> I'm not sure if "backwards compatible" is clear enough, though. Backwards
> compatible regarding what? Data formats?
> And what is the difference between "stable" and "reliable" in this regard?

You don't need to add it literally.

For me "reliable" includes more than just "not crashing". For me, it also 
means I can rely on that the software will be the there in the future, and 
that the software respects the time and effort users have put into learning 
it/working with it, and continues to work with the documents, configurations, 
scripts, etc. the users have created using the software, instead of requiring 
them to recreate documents from scratch, etc.


> > * Would it make sense to have two additional levels, like "absolutely
> > must"
> > and "not at all, never" ? (I would consider many points very important,
> > but
> > a few exceptionally, absolutely must).
> 
> Hm. I could change the labels for the extremes to "Not useful at all" and
> "Essential". Not sure if the scale should be extended to 7, though.

Do as you think. :-)
 
> > * I'm not too happy with the "How should KDE treat Free vs. Proprietary
> > OS" section.
> > E.g. for Windows and OSX vs. Linux and FreeBSD I would say "equally",
> > which
> > translates to "make Windows and OSX first class targets" (while they are
> > second class right now).
> > OTOH, does Android count as Free or proprietary ?
> > And, when asking focus on Android or Plasma Mobile, I would actually say
> > getting KDE applications onto Android is more important, since that we
> > millions of users can quickly benefit from all the advantages (freedom,
> > control, etc.) KDE provides.
> > Could the survey ask something like
> > "How should KDE treat the following OS
> > - Linux
> > - FreeBSD
> > - Other BSDs, Hurd, etc.
> > - Windows
> > - OSX
> > - Mobile Linux (Mer, Plasma Mobile ?)
> > - Android
> > - did I forget something ?
> > with the two options "important" and "not so important"
> 
> This sounds like it's interesting to find out, but I'm not sure if it's the
> right scope for the Mission. Do we really want the mission to be so detailed
> that it mentions the importance of specific operating systems?

I understand your point.
But I still don't like the current question that much.
E.g. I do agree that ideally Free OS should be used by everybody.
But voting "Free OS are more important for KDE than proprietary" basically 
implies that e.g. Hurd is more important for KDE than Windows. But if we want 
to become more "relevant", then Windows is certainly more important than Hurd.

After all, this is just a survey, not a poll.
A conclusion like "Free OS should be the main focus" could be deduced from 
such a detailled question, while keeping the question itself mostly free of 
politics.
 
> > * Related to the target OS, should there be a question something li

Re: [kde-community] KDE Mission - let's do this!

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Monday 16 May 2016 23:37:17 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> On Montag, 16. Mai 2016 22:59:59 CEST you wrote:
> > Hi Thomas,
> > 
> > On Tuesday 10 May 2016 22:48:01 Alexander Neundorf wrote:
> > > On Tuesday, May 10, 2016 17:18:39 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> > ...
> > 
> > > > Both positions are perfectly valid, of course. Now the problem is: How
> > > > can
> > > > we tell what KDE as a whole puts more emphasis on, when nobody but us
> > > > voices their opinion?
> > > 
> > > Maybe post to a few more mailing lists, e.g. kde-devel, plasma-devel,
> > > kde-
> > > core-devel, kde-frameworks-devel, is there a calligra-dvel ?
> > 
> > I have the impression this is not going well here.
> > How can we get more people to participate ?
> > Simply post to k-c-d and k-f-d ?
> > Or try with some controversial post ? ;-)
> 
> Hi Alex,
> thank you for reminding me of the email I had been wanting to write today:
> To be honest, I don't think the reach of this mailing list is the problem.
> I've heard from quite a few people who have been following this discussion,
> but have not participated in it (for various reasons).
> Therefore, I changed plans. Instead of trying to get more people to
> participate in the discussion here, I will do what I'm trained to do: I'll
> conduct a survey.
> 
> I think we've already come quite far with the draft and I don't think we
> need much more open discussion. We have a quite good draft, but in several
> points, we have your personal opinion against my personal opinion, and now
> I think the next step whould be to find out what the majority (especially
> the "silent majority") thinks.
> 
> Tomorrow I will try to identify the points which are still contested (and
> I'm happy for you or others to contribute to that as well) and put them in
> a survey (along with those on which we agree, just to make sure the
> majority agrees with us as well) which I will spread via the Dot, this
> list, the ev- membership list and maybe kde-devel just to be sure.
> 
> This survey will also invite people to join the mailing list discussion, but
> will primarily aim to just get numbers on those issues where we don't know
> what the majority thinks.
> 
> While I'm confident that we have found a Vision which everybody agrees to, I
> feel that for some points of the Mission, we'll have to go with a majority
> vote, because there are competing standpoints which are both valid but
> cannot really be harmonized. On the other hand, I do not think the
> standpoints are so far apart that those who prefer the minority position
> would not be able to identify with the Mission as a whole anymore if we
> adopted the majority position.
> 
> So, unless there are strong arguments against this approach, this is what I
> will do.

Sounds good, I'm happy to help.

Alex

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Re: [kde-community] KDE Mission - let's do this!

[Alexander Neundorf]

Hi Thomas,

On Tuesday 10 May 2016 22:48:01 Alexander Neundorf wrote:
> On Tuesday, May 10, 2016 17:18:39 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
...
> > Both positions are perfectly valid, of course. Now the problem is: How can
> > we tell what KDE as a whole puts more emphasis on, when nobody but us
> > voices their opinion?
> 
> Maybe post to a few more mailing lists, e.g. kde-devel, plasma-devel, kde-
> core-devel, kde-frameworks-devel, is there a calligra-dvel ?

I have the impression this is not going well here.
How can we get more people to participate ?
Simply post to k-c-d and k-f-d ?
Or try with some controversial post ? ;-)

Alex

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Re: [kde-community] Does KDE attempt to attract experienced contributors?

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Friday 13 May 2016 11:00:18 Stephen Kelly wrote:
...
> What do experienced people look for?
> 
> What makes an experienced person spend their time on FOSS?

just my reasons:

I spend spare time on a FLOSS projects

- to scratch my itch, i.e. because I want it to do something it currently 
doesn't do to my liking (that was the case for everything I contributed to)

- because I'm doing something good for the world :-)

- I can quickly get results (e.g. by using a known technology, or contributing 
is easy, etc.)

- the community is not too hostile

- I do not contribute in order to improve my CV

Alex

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Re: [kde-community] KDE Mission - let's do this!

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Saturday, April 30, 2016 23:22:40 Alexander Neundorf wrote:
...
> So, I'd say let's concentrate on what we are really doing, and strive for
> world domination ("everyone" as the vision says) in these areas (yes, I do
> consider this realistically achievable), and leave the other fields to
> others. We should simply try to serve our users best, offer top support for
> what they are working with, be it file formats, online services, etc.

E.g. I think this 
https://micreabog.wordpress.com/2016/05/01/akonadi-resource-for-microsoft-exchange-web-services-ews/
 is a great effort ! :-)
Not that I think everybody should use a Exchange server, but as long as kdepim 
does not support that mostly feature-complete and reliably, in many settings 
kdepim is simply out of the game.

A recent news item said that Windows now dropped below 90 % :
http://venturebeat.com/2016/05/01/windows-7-drops-under-50-market-share-xp-falls-below-10/
...but desktop Linux has a whopping 1.5% (according to them).
So, IMO, if we want our software to become more relevant, trying to push users 
to full FLOSS systems (from OS over apps over online services) is maybe not 
the best way.

Alex


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Re: [kde-community] KDE Mission - let's do this!

[Alexander Neundorf]

Hi,

On Thursday, April 28, 2016 12:21:28 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> as we've found during the vision creation process that having a concrete
> draft to work from can streamline the discussion, I tried to come up with
> one. It goes quite into detail, but I think this is necessary in order to
> be useful as practical guidance.

wow, quite long. :-)

Does the order of the sections imply priorities ?
E.g. "tinkering" comes before "presence on all device classes" ?
 
> To fulfill our vision, KDE has taken on the mission to create products which
> - give users control, freedom and privacy
>  - convince them - through excellent user experience - to switch away from
> products which don't give them that
>  - reach them where they are
> 
> 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) ?

> - 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.


> - never collect or transmit information about users without their explicit
> consent ("opt-in")
> - strive to provide usable security and privacy features to protect against
> surveillance and data theft
> 
> To create a convincing user experience, KDE's products aim to
> - have consistent, easy to use human interfaces
> - 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.
 
> - 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.

> - 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.

> - 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 ?

Do we aim for embedded ?
IMO with KF5 and Plasma we can, I don't know how much that POV is shared.

> - continues to offer a "classic desktop" product which makes the switch from
> proprietary operating easy

"continues to" sounds a bit ...not strong enough, like "well, we didn't kill 
it yet".

Also I'd leave out the "switch from proprietary operating [systems] easy".
We can stress that we provide a first class desktop for Linux/UNIX OSs.
Beside that, I'd prefer us to be mostly OS-agnostic. If we can give a user on 
... Windows [maybe it'll be Open Source in a few years, who knows, MS ain't 
that evil anymore], Free software for his needs, let's say email, office, 
education software for kids, etc., that's a great achievement. That this runs 
on top of a proprietary kernel, oh well, IMO the OS is not our mission.

> - offers products that also inter-operate with proprietary software, formats
> and services in order to ease the transition to Free alternatives
> 
> ---
> Now we have concrete points we can discuss and fine-tune.
> Looking forward to your reactions,

I like your draft.
It does not mention providing libraries explicitely, but focuses only on 
applications (if I didn't miss it).
Is that something which should be added ?

Alex

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Re: [kde-community] KDE Mission - let's do this!

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Wednesday, April 27, 2016 07:58:14 Martin Graesslin wrote:
...
> Of course there is push-back in your mail. Basically you told us we are
> wasting our time trying to do a mobile shell which could replace Android.
> That's the pushback I'm talking about. We have seen this for years since we
> started with Plasma Active.

I had a pre-order on the Vivaldi tablet, so believe me, I would really like to 
see it succeed. And I am honestly wondering why it does not take off.
My conclusion from the failed Vivaldi effort: getting to a state where normal 
people can buy a tablet with e.g. plasma mobile pre-installed is VERY hard, 
probably not doable, and I think the Vivaldi team tried really hard.
From my POV for mobile/embedded that's actually even harder than for PCs, 
where you have standardized hardware.

So, do we see a place where it could take off ?

...
> And now see this in the context of you concluding anything from the GENIVI
> mail. Who would dare to answer on a public mailing list that he is
> interested to look into it, if the most likely outcome is, that other
> people tell him that he's wasting his time.

You are completely misunderstanding me.
When I saw this from Agustin, I thought, wow, that may be finally THE chance 
for plasma in the embedded space. There, every device/machine has custom 
hardware and custom UI software, and the companies spend many payed man months 
and years on the UI development. Some of those could go that way via plasma 
into KDE. :-)

Alex

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Re: [kde-community] KDE Mission - let's do this!

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Sunday, April 24, 2016 15:04:49 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> Our mission is our way to accomplish our vision.
> If the software was our way to accomplish our mission, what would the
> mission be, then?

Not sure I understand. Is there a "not" missing ?

So, our vision is a world where everybody has full control over digital life 
etc.

Our contribution toward that goal is providing people with software which 
enables them to do that.

Is this kind of right ?

Alex

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Re: [kde-community] KDE Mission - let's do this!

[Alexander Neundorf]

Hi,

On Wednesday, March 30, 2016 22:43:03 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> now that we've finally agreed on a vision for KDE [1] and have that out of
> the way, we can fully focus on how we want work towards that vision.
> Alex has already set up a Wiki page for brainstorming notes [2], so it would
> be great if everyone who has opinions or ideas about how we can nudge the
> world towards the one we envision could add them to it.
> It's really just brainstorming, no ideas are "bad" or anything, everyone and
> everything is welcome!
> 
> I'd suggest that we let the brainstorming phase last until Friday and then
> start discussing the ideas collected on that Wiki page.
> 
> So now let's focus our brains on the KDE Mission and please fill the wiki
> page! Thanks,
> Thomas

there is somehow not much going here...
Ideas how do we get this going ?

Alex

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Re: [kde-community] KDE Mission - let's do this!

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Wednesday, March 30, 2016 22:43:03 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> now that we've finally agreed on a vision for KDE [1] and have that out of
> the way, we can fully focus on how we want work towards that vision.
> Alex has already set up a Wiki page for brainstorming notes [2], so it would
> be great if everyone who has opinions or ideas about how we can nudge the
> world towards the one we envision could add them to it.
> It's really just brainstorming, no ideas are "bad" or anything, everyone and
> everything is welcome!
> 
> I'd suggest that we let the brainstorming phase last until Friday and then
> start discussing the ideas collected on that Wiki page.
> 
> So now let's focus our brains on the KDE Mission and please fill the wiki
> page! Thanks,

so, just as a reminder: whoever wants to put his thoughts down, please do so 
until Sunday :-)

Alex

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Re: [kde-community] KDE Mission - let's do this!

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Wednesday, March 30, 2016 22:43:03 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> now that we've finally agreed on a vision for KDE [1] and have that out of
> the way, we can fully focus on how we want work towards that vision.
> Alex has already set up a Wiki page for brainstorming notes [2], so it would
> be great if everyone who has opinions or ideas about how we can nudge the
> world towards the one we envision could add them to it.
> It's really just brainstorming, no ideas are "bad" or anything, everyone and
> everything is welcome!
> 
> I'd suggest that we let the brainstorming phase last until Friday and then
> start discussing the ideas collected on that Wiki page.

two days is quite short (I just saw it right now).
Let's have a week at least, i.e. April 10th ?

Alex

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Re: [kde-community] finding a clear vision for KDE - final version

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Tuesday, March 15, 2016 22:53:03 David Jarvie wrote:
...
> This may read a bit better, although it does slightly alter the emphasis:
> 
> "A world in which everyone has control over their digital life and enjoys
> freedom and privacy."

How about one more tweak ?

"A world in which everyone can manage their digital life enjoying freedom and 
privacy."

(IMO "have control" and "privacy" are quite close in what they imply, and 
"manage" refers a bit more to the actual activities, than "just" control over 
them.)

Alex

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Re: [kde-community] finding a clear vision for KDE - final version

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Tuesday, March 15, 2016 08:26:15 Stephen Kelly wrote:
> Lydia Pintscher wrote:
> > Hi everyone,
> > 
> > "A world in which everyone enjoys freedom and privacy and has control
> > over their digital life."
> > 
> > Unless there are major objections within the next week I would like to
> > conclude the process and from now on use this as our vision statement.
> 
> Not a major objection, but some feedback: It's very wordy at the end
> especially with all the 'and's in it.

I agree, the two "and"'s sound a bit bumpy/"holprig".

I very much like that freedom is in there, this fit's my wish to express some 
kind of independence.
How about skipping the "privacy" ? This is with no or only very little 
interpretation included in "have control".

Alex

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Re: [kde-community] finding a clear vision for KDE - final version

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Monday, March 14, 2016 14:58:57 Lydia Pintscher wrote:
...
> Next steps:
> * publish the vision. I'm still working out what needs doing.

can we please try to publish vision and mission together ?
If things go well, maybe can get that done until end of April.

Alex

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[kde-community] Vision and mission for KDE - how to proceed ?

[Alexander Neundorf]

Hi,

so, after the discussions, how do we proceed ?

Settle on 
"A world in which everyone has control over their digital life"
as preliminary vision statement, put it in the community wiki somewhere, and 
start with working on a mission statement ?

Other ideas ?

Alex

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Re: [kde-community] finding a clear vision for KDE - second draft for discussion

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Saturday, March 05, 2016 11:18:47 Stephen Kelly wrote:
> Jos Poortvliet wrote:
...
> > Just think about neon - make a list of 5 reasons why it shouldn't be a KDE
> > project, easy. But then look at the vision: does it help people (a certain
> > group, in this case, Ubuntu users) achieve and more control over their
> > privacy, their desktop etc? It does, so, while we can and should have more
> > criteria than 'just' a vision, it IS something which binds us.
> 
> This part of your email seems really out of scope to me.
> 
> A vision is not a tool. It is especially not a tool for deciding things
> like whether something fits in KDE. Look to a mission for that. The vision
> should be 'useless' and 'not helpful to decide anything at all'.
> 
> It should not 'define what KDE is' or be helpful for defining that, or
> anything along those lines.
> 
> The only reason to have a vision is to be inspired by it. Trying to use it
> for other things is a mistake IMO.

Is there general consensus on that ?
There wasn't very much response to this.
(I'm not saying I disagree, just asking)

I wouldn't mind keeping this as the preliminary vision and starting to work on 
the mission.

Alex

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Re: [kde-community] finding a clear vision for KDE - second draft for discussion

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Thursday, March 03, 2016 04:46:20 Jos Poortvliet wrote:
> replying on phone. blame faulty text completion/correction for any rudeness!
> On Feb 29, 2016 5:40 PM, "Alexander Neundorf" <neund...@kde.org> wrote:
...
> > Can we express the "not be at the mercy of some company" clearer than
> > "have full control" ?
> 
> But then you have to spell it all out - it isn't just about companies but
> governments, heck even individuals or charities... 


now that is an interesting point, being independent from governments.
More and more services of (local or national) governments are offered online.
Just as on example, assume that some documents would be only available as pdf.
You need at least a device, an operating system, a pdf reader.
Or other stuff, communicating only via some network service (email ?), sending 
in documents in some specific format, etc., etc.

So IMO it should be a goal of a government to enable their citizen to use 
those services using software which is free of cost (at least for their 
citizen), and without having to rely on some company. There are two obvious 
ways to achieve that: software development done by the government, and 
development of free software supported/paid for by  the government.


I think "sustainability" describes the concept I have in mind: something which 
works at some point in time and you can rely on that it will also work in the 
future.
Don't know how to put that into a vision, maybe something like "a sustainable 
ecosystem of software/technology/... which gives everyone full control over 
their digital life" ?

Alex

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Re: [kde-community] finding a clear vision for KDE - second draft for discussion

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Sunday, February 28, 2016 09:54:18 Stephen Kelly wrote:
> Alexander Neundorf wrote:
> >> I don't know if you read my mail, but I'd encourage you to do so.
> > 
> > TBH, it's so long I got lost.
> 
> Then I don't know why you are writing in this thread. 

Exactly because of that, so I understand better what you mean.
E.g. points 1, 8, 9, 10 are subjective opinions. If you think so, Ok. I'm 
actually undecided whether I agree with them or not.


On Tuesday, February 23, 2016 22:46:56 Stephen Kelly wrote:
> 5) It has a recognizable, idealistic, completely unachievable goal
> 
> Something along the lines of 
> 
>  * control - over digitally 'social' presence, absence etc
>  * control - over availability of digital services
>  * privacy - choosing what to share, knowingly
>  * freedom - to be forgotten
>  * freedom - to have, share, learn, modify, teach
> 
> Though I'm not sure 'freedom' should be in the vision - I think that's the 
> means/prerequisite to achieve personal control and choice of privacy. 
> Having freedom in the vision makes it overlap with the 4 freedoms. 

I guess my comments refer to that.
I'm not sure about that list of 5 items. Are they all candidates for  in 
your vision "template" ?

I think I disagree that freedom (I guess as in Free Software) is really a hard 
requirement to achieve personal control. There can be proprietary software 
which gives the user full control.

Alex

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Re: [kde-community] finding a clear vision for KDE - second draft for discussion

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Saturday, February 27, 2016 19:42:44 Stephen Kelly wrote:
> Alexander Neundorf wrote:
> >> "A world in which everyone has control over their digital life" (in ->
> >> over) seems a great vision.
> > 
> > personally I'd like to have included that this can be done
> 
> At least in my view (see my mail), a vision is not 'done' at all. It is only
> for inspiration.


by "this can be done" I didn't mean "we will do the following to realize 
this", but the "do" refers to the action of "having control over their digital 
life".

> 
> > - independent from the commercial interest of companies
> 
> Out of scope of the vision. See also my mail.
> 
> > - available for everybody to use
> 
> The vision Jos and I discuss says 'everyone'. See also my mail.

Yes, right.
 
> > - using solutions which can survive long-term
> 
> Implied by the vision.
>
> Actually I take this back. It's not implied by a vision. The question is out
> of scope.
> 
> A vision is not done, and a 'solution' is out of scope.

Isn't this nitpicking on the language ?

Let me take an example. Let's take whatsapp.

It is not free of cost, but really cheap. So to me this more or less qualifies 
as "available to everyone". Not ideal (free of cost), but close.
Let's assume a Whatsapp user would have fully satisfying control over his 
privacy, his data, etc.
This would qualify as "control over his digital life".
Still, this is for me not enough.

The user still depends on the company to continue the product, to not change 
the terms and conditions, etc.
The user still is forced to use a device where the software runs, and has lost 
if the app is e.g. not ported to the new mobile OS of the day, to some new 
processor, etc.
To me, this is not satisfying.

Or, IOW, the technology should be available similar to how pen and paper are 
available today - very cheap, not dependent on a single company, notes written 
today will be still readable in 100 years, the knowledge how to create them is 
no secret, etc.

Does that make clearer what I mean.

> I don't know if you read my mail, but I'd encourage you to do so.

TBH, it's so long I got lost.

Alex

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Re: [kde-community] finding a clear vision for KDE - second draft for discussion

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Friday, February 26, 2016 20:01:59 Jos Poortvliet wrote:
> On Wednesday, February 24, 2016 10:22:22 PM AMT Stephen Kelly wrote:
> > Valorie Zimmerman wrote:
> > > Oooo, Steve! Thank you for capping off an excellent discussion.
> > > 
> > > On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 1:46 PM, Stephen Kelly  
wrote:
> > >> I think the form
> > >> 
> > >>  "A world in which everyone has  their digital life"
> > >> 
> > >> is fantastic!
> > >> 
> > >> It doesn't mention KDE. It doesn't have a 'subject' at all.
> > >> It has a very-inclusive object: 'everyone'
> > >> It is inspirational
> > > 
> > > After reading all of the above, which put into words my inchaote
> > 
> > > thoughts, I would like to offer the following version:
> > It seems your thoughts are not the same as my words at all :). Your
> > suggestion seems to be exactly the opposite of what I wrote in many ways.
> > 
> > Maybe I don't understand what you mean or what you want to communicate
> > with
> > that sentence.
> > 
> > > KDE: control your digital life
> > 
> > You dropped the reference to 'everyone'. You added a reference to KDE. You
> > dropped the 'a world in which' making it less inspirational. Altogether it
> > seems to me more like a marketing slogan.
> > 
> > Can you say why you made those changes?
> > 
> > Something I think you are right about is:
> > > Freedom, technology, software, privacy, all of that is IN there.
> > 
> > So for me, this is quite good:
> >  "A world in which everyone has control in their digital life"
> > 
> > I think it is good for all of the same reasons in my previous email. It is
> > also more concise.
> 
> I think she got sidetracked by the search for a slogan - I had the same,
> really liking what she wrote, then reading your mail and realizing it was a
> slogan, not a vision...
> 
> "A world in which everyone has control over their digital life" (in -> over)
> seems a great vision.

personally I'd like to have included that this can be done
- independent from the commercial interest of companies, i.e. no product lock-
in
- available for everybody to use, i.e. more or less free of cost
- using solutions which can survive long-term, i.e. the sources should be 
available

Is all that implied by the your suggestions ?

Alex

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Re: [kde-community] finding a clear vision for KDE - second draft for discussion

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Wednesday, February 17, 2016 22:59:35 Riccardo Iaconelli wrote:
> On Wednesday, February 17, 2016 07:37:07 PM Ingo Klöcker wrote:
> > "KDE creates technology for a world in which everyone has freedom,
> > privacy and control over their digital life."
> > 
> > isn't a conflation of vision and mission. I wondered whether the actual
> > vision isn't just the second part, i.e. "a world in which everyone has
> > freedom, privacy and control over their digital life", and whether "KDE
> > creates technology to enable everyone resp. the users of our technology
> > to enjoy or experience this freedom, etc." isn't already part of our
> > mission. Just wondering (and maybe repeating myself :-)).
> 
> So:
> 
> "KDE envisions a world in which everyone has freedom, privacy and control
> over their digital life."

This one completely avoids stating whether KDE does technology, software, GUI, 
or whatever, so no conflict there.
Maybe "envisions" is a bit passive ? E.g. something like "works for" or 
"fights for" ?

still my favourite KDE T-shirt is "KDE - digital freedom".
But that's now probably really too short. ;-)

Alex
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Re: [kde-community] finding a clear vision for KDE - second draft for discussion

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Tuesday, February 23, 2016 16:50:16 Valorie Zimmerman wrote:
...
> After reading all of the above, which put into words my inchaote
> thoughts, I would like to offer the following version:
> 
> KDE: control your digital life

just a nitpick: worded like this, isn't this an order ?
"control your digital life !"


Alex

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Re: [kde-community] finding a clear vision for KDE - second draft for discussion

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Monday, February 15, 2016 18:36:18 Lydia Pintscher wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> A bit less than two weeks ago we sent the first draft for the
> community vision for KDE. We have gotten a lot of useful feedback and
> have now put this into a second draft. It reads as follows:
> "KDE creates technology for a world in which everyone has freedom,
> privacy and control over their digital life."
> If there is anything that you disagree with about that vision, please
> speak up. Otherwise, expressing your agreement is helpful as well!
> 
> There seems to be significant agreement on the principles encoded in
> this vision. Therefore I'd like us to give this a final polish now and
> if needed go for a third draft (which then should be the last one to
> not stall this forever). This is a draft for a vision for what kind of
> world the community aims for, it's not a product vision. As there
> still seems to be disagreement on the product vision, Thomas will
> address that in a separate email.

there's no strong disagreement with your proposal among the supporters of the 
"focused" draft, given that it'll be accompanied by a product vision/mission.

So, can we try to get that done in one go ?


Having said that, here's a slightly different version:
"KDE creates free software to enable everyone to manage his digital life
with freedom, privacy and full control using state-of-the-art user
interfaces".


It differs in three things:

1. "creates ... for a world" -> "creates ... to enable everyone"
This is a bit more active, it makes more clear that we actually want to build 
(a part of) this world.

2. "technology" -> "software"
This still includes all kinds of stuff which is currently happening in KDE. If 
it happens that in the future "hard- and software will be so much intertwined" 
we can still update it, but I doubt this will happen, to me it seems as CPUs 
are getting more and more powerful development is becoming actually more 
generic, less hardware-specific. And for the time being, it is a little bit 
more specific, tangible.

3. + "...with state-of-the-art user interfaces"
That's kind of what we do, and includes also all the possible future 
developments Martin pointed out. Not sure whether it's necessary to mention 
that if we'll additionally have a product vision/mission, but maybe that's 
actually what we want to be proud of, so it may be a good thing to state it ?



The proposal by Riccardo
"KDE envisions a world in which everyone has freedom, privacy and control over 
their digital life."
actually completely avoids stating what we are doing, so there's no need to 
decide whether we do hardware, software, whatever.
I don't know whether that's good or bad.
An even shorter form of this would be "KDE - digital freedom" ;-)


Alex

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Re: [kde-community] Community vision and product vision

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Monday, February 15, 2016 22:22:53 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> On Montag, 15. Februar 2016 22:02:18 CET Alexander Neundorf wrote:
> > On Monday, February 15, 2016 18:41:14 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> > > My suggestion, therefore, is: Why don't those who are looking for a
> > > common
> > > product direction band together and create one, which however is not
> > > "mandatory" for all of KDE. Instead, any project that adheres to this
> > > common product vision could publicly commit to it, and the suite made up
> > > of all of these products could even create their own _product brand_
> > > (within KDE as the community brand) to reflect that. That way, we can
> > > have a collective product brand with a collective product vision without
> > > having to exclude any project which follows the same _community vision_
> > > out of KDE.
> > > 
> > > To me, this sounds like a win/win situation for all of us. What do you
> > > think?
> > 
> > just a thought: if we go this way, I suggest we try whether we can get
> > that
> > done at once, and announce both together/at the same time.
> 
> Sure, why not?
> The only potential problem I see with this is that finding a good common
> product vision might take a little more time, and I'd neither want to rush
> the product vision nor delay the publishing of the community vision too
> long.
> 
> Therefore, if we all decide to go this route, I'd suggest to start the
> product vision creation process right away and see how it goes. If that
> process goes well and it looks like the product vision can be finished
> soon, then I see no downside in publishing them at the same time (maybe in
> the same article, we could decide that later).
> 
> If, however, those working on the product vision decide that they would like
> to give themselves more time, it might be better to publish the generally
> agreed upon community vision with a remark that an overarching product
> vision is in the works and will be published soon.

my impression is that the term "product vision" which you use, and the 
"mission", which other people use, refer to basically the same kind of 
document. Is that so or are they something very different ?

Alex

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Re: [kde-community] finding a clear vision for KDE - second draft for discussion

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Wednesday, February 17, 2016 22:59:35 Riccardo Iaconelli wrote:
> On Wednesday, February 17, 2016 07:37:07 PM Ingo Klöcker wrote:
> > "KDE creates technology for a world in which everyone has freedom,
> > privacy and control over their digital life."
> > 
> > isn't a conflation of vision and mission. I wondered whether the actual
> > vision isn't just the second part, i.e. "a world in which everyone has
> > freedom, privacy and control over their digital life", and whether "KDE
> > creates technology to enable everyone resp. the users of our technology
> > to enjoy or experience this freedom, etc." isn't already part of our
> > mission. Just wondering (and maybe repeating myself :-)).
> 
> So:
> 
> "KDE envisions a world in which everyone has freedom, privacy and control
> over their digital life."

do the "freedom" and "privacy" refer to the "digital life", or to freedom and 
privacy in general, "real" life ?
That's not really clear from how it is worded.

Alex

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Re: [kde-community] finding a clear vision for KDE - an alternative draft for discussion

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Tuesday, February 16, 2016 08:01:01 Martin Graesslin wrote:
> On Monday, February 15, 2016 10:22:20 PM CET Alexander Neundorf wrote:
> > On Monday, February 15, 2016 15:11:47 Martin Graesslin wrote:
> > ...
> > 
> > > Maybe you could start thinking about that. What does it mean if THE GUI
> > > maintainer doesn't want that? Maybe he has a better look on it with THE
> > > GUI
> > > knowledge?
> > > 
> > > Please don't completely dismiss my feedback. Think about it.
> > 
> > Yes, but I have really a hard time understanding it. I'm actually assuming
> > there must be some misunderstanding, different bias or interpretation...
> > 
> > If the future interfaces won't be graphical, what other options do you see
> > ?
> I'm not a prophet, I have no clue what will be after graphical interfaces.

Hopefully not direct brain interfaces ;-)

> But some things we already see today emerging: speech for starters. Another
> example are all this Virtual Reality stuff which is not graphical in the
> sense of a GUI. Our phones notifies through vibration. We have smart
> watches interacting through sensors with the body. All without a GUI.

Thanks.

I think then we indeed have just different interpretations.

Sensors and speech input are to me "just" input devices, like keyboard, mouse, 
touchpad/screen, trackpoint, joystick, etc. Using them is IMO fully included 
in the term "GUI".

For the output: VR - I agree that "GUI" is typically not used for this. Still, 
"graphical (user) interfaces", can be interpreted to include it.
Speech output - it sure is (very) useful, but I am sure some graphical 
presentation will stay, and I think the vision should just emphasize the main 
points (I still think speech output won't become the main user interface for 
software in general).
Vibration alarm - I'd count that under additional peripheral.

So, the intention of "graphical user interfaces and applications" is:
- we do applications
- we do "user interfaces", i.e. desktop for normal computers and also e.g. 
Plasma Mobile. Do you have a better term ?
- "graphical" is there to point out that they typically have a graphical 
interface, they draw stuff somewhere
- point out that our *main* goal is not CLI
(- and of course everything supporting it/related to it)

Alex

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Re: [kde-community] finding a clear vision for KDE - second draft for discussion

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Monday, February 15, 2016 22:27:14 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> On Montag, 15. Februar 2016 21:49:58 CET Alexander Neundorf wrote:
> > On Monday, February 15, 2016 18:36:18 Lydia Pintscher wrote:
> > > Hi everyone,
> > > 
> > > A bit less than two weeks ago we sent the first draft for the
> > > community vision for KDE. We have gotten a lot of useful feedback and
> > > have now put this into a second draft. It reads as follows:
> > > "KDE creates technology for a world in which everyone has freedom,
> > > privacy and control over their digital life."
> > 
> > just to make sure: this intentionally uses "technology" and not "software"
> > ?
> Yes, this is intentional. Since the vision is supposed to merely outline the
> future we want to live in, not how to get there, we did not want to
> restrict ourselves to software.


On Tuesday, February 16, 2016 19:53:47 Riccardo Iaconelli wrote:
...
> We explicitly re-labeled it "technology" to include icons, wallpapers and
> other kind of content which might not be software.


Is this maybe the reason why we are having those weird discussions, and we 
actually have the same in mind ?

See, here is what the word "technology", used in this context, tells me: a 
community, which is well known as a *software* community, now doesn't use the 
term "software" anymore. Instead it now uses "technology".
There must be a reason why they decided not to use "software" anymore.
To me this means, this community decided not to emphasize that it does 
software anymore. So it probably also does hardware now, probably having stuff 
like Arduino, maybe RPi-based hardware and the maker-community in mind, maybe 
more. I would also expect then a plan for hardware in the mission then.

What I want to say, in my opinion a guiding statement like a vision should 
emphasize the main strengths, the main direction, and doesn't need to be 
worded as broad so that it really covers every nuance.
I mean, icons and wallpapers, which Riccardo mentioned, to me of course belong 
to software, without mentioning them explicitly, and also without the need to 
say "software and all related items".
The same way as "graphical user interfaces and applications" used in the 
vision "just" shows the main direction, and doesn't need to mention that this 
of course includes all supporting and related stuff.

On Monday, February 15, 2016 22:27:14 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> If, say, 10 years down the road, hard- and software is so much intertwined
> that we cannot influence the future with software alone anymore, we don't
> want people to say "But our vision says we only do software!".

Since we are talking about technology, especially a fast evolving technology, 
I'm sure a vision for a technology project could also be updated. :-)

Alex

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Re: [kde-community] finding a clear vision for KDE - an alternative draft for discussion

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Tuesday, February 16, 2016 10:12:06 Mario Fux wrote:
> On Montag, 15. Februar 2016 21:25:52 CET Alexander Neundorf wrote:
> > Hallo Ingo,
> 
> Morning Alex and Co
> 
> > On Monday, February 15, 2016 14:31:09 Alexander Neundorf wrote:
> > > Hi Ingo,
> > 
> > > On Saturday, February 13, 2016 21:35:22 Ingo Klöcker wrote:
> > ...
> > 
> > > > I think your concern is that the vision does not function as
> > > > differentiation from other free software communities. That's correct,
> > > > but setting KDE apart from other free software communities is not the
> > > > purpose of the vision. What differentiates us from other free software
> > > > communities is not our goal, but the way we want to reach (resp.
> > > > approach) this goal. And this way should be spelled out in the
> > > > mission.
> > > 
> > > Ok.
> > > I doubt anybody wants to fight about the definition, whether its the
> > > vision, or the mission, or the product vision, or vision+mission
> > > combined.
> > > 
> > > What our group wants to have, is getting some more attention back to the
> > > products created by the KDE community.
> > 
> > IOW: it seems to me that our alternate vision draft is more a
> > vision+mission ?
> > 
> > If so, I guess the introdcution statement is what is usually called
> > "vision" ?
> > 
> > "KDE is a community of free software enthusiasts that strives to provide
> > graphical user interfaces and applications for end-users for all types of
> > computers across the device spectrum: desktops PCs, laptops, tablet,
> > smartphones, etc.
> > We believe that software should be free and respectful of the privacy of
> > our users. Our values are stated in the KDE Manifesto."
> 
> As I see it the "graphical user interfaces and applications" (which is an
> enumeration of different paradigms/things anyway ;-) could/should be
> substituted with "software" and there would be an agreement more or less
> between the two groups.

Yes, the main difference is "software" vs. "software with a GUI".

Alex

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Re: [kde-community] finding a clear vision for KDE - an alternative draft for discussion

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Monday, February 15, 2016 15:11:47 Martin Graesslin wrote:
...
> Maybe you could start thinking about that. What does it mean if THE GUI
> maintainer doesn't want that? Maybe he has a better look on it with THE GUI
> knowledge?
> 
> Please don't completely dismiss my feedback. Think about it.

Yes, but I have really a hard time understanding it. I'm actually assuming 
there must be some misunderstanding, different bias or interpretation...

If the future interfaces won't be graphical, what other options do you see ?

Alex

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Re: [kde-community] Community vision and product vision

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Monday, February 15, 2016 18:41:14 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
...
> Now the thing is: As many of you surely already know, I'm a big fan of
> product visions. Whenever I start working with a community within KDE, the
> first thing I ask is "Do we have a product vision yet?", and if the answer
> is "no", then I help them create one for their specific product.
> However, when members of the KDE Usability team (and later the VDG) tried to
> encourage the community to create a common product vision for all of KDE's
> products in the past, we were faced with the argument that looking for a
> such a vision would be pointless, since it would either not fit every
> project in KDE, or if it did, it would be too vague to be useful.

here are two links to those discussions:
https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-community/2014q1/000541.html
https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-community/2014q3/001046.html

...
> My suggestion, therefore, is: Why don't those who are looking for a common
> product direction band together and create one, which however is not
> "mandatory" for all of KDE. Instead, any project that adheres to this common
> product vision could publicly commit to it, and the suite made up of all of
> these products could even create their own _product brand_ (within KDE as
> the community brand) to reflect that. That way, we can have a collective
> product brand with a collective product vision without having to exclude
> any project which follows the same _community vision_ out of KDE.
> 
> To me, this sounds like a win/win situation for all of us. What do you
> think?

just a thought: if we go this way, I suggest we try whether we can get that 
done at once, and announce both together/at the same time.

Alex

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Re: [kde-community] Fwd: KDE Vision – towards “wholesame” solutions

[Alexander Neundorf]

Hi,

On Saturday, February 13, 2016 13:12:52 Lydia Pintscher wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 13, 2016 at 7:45 AM, Olaf Schmidt-Wischhöfer
> 
>  wrote:
> > sent to wrong mailinglist by mistake ...
> > 
> > -- Forwarded message --
> > From: "Olaf Schmidt-Wischhöfer" 
> > To: kde-ev-members...@kde.org
> > Cc:
> > Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2016 22:19:00 +
> > Subject: KDE Vision – towards “wholesame” solutions
> > Hi all,
> > 
> > many thanks to all people that have worked on the vision proposals and to
> > everyone who contributed thoughts.
> > 
> > I would like to chime in with an aspect that I feel is missing so far.
> > 
> > This additional aspect is closely related to the motivation behind the
> > product-focussed draft, but my conclusions are completely different.
> > 
> > Already in KDE 2 and KDE 3 times, it impressed me that the software both
> > offered a high degree of flexibility (through modularity and many
> > configuration options) and a high degree of consistency (through clever
> > and
> > integrated solutions via the libraries). This tendency increased later
> > during Plasma 4 and Plasma 5 times with a restructuring of the KDE
> > releases. We now offer far more flexibility to users of the libraries (no
> > monolithic “kdelibs” any more). We also changed the release structure to
> > support the fact that both the libraries and the applications can be used
> > independent of the desktop – while keeping the good integration into the
> > desktop.
> > 
> > The flexibility aligns well with “enables users to control their digital
> > life” (from the value-based draft). 

Actually the product-based draft had that earlier, there was cross-pollination 
between the two :-)
( https://community.kde.org/index.php?title=KDE/VisionDraftA=45297 )

> > The consistency is, I think, what
> > motivates the product-focussed team.

this, and even more that we want to put the product into focus again.


...
> > This can be done via cooperations (OwnCloud, Kolab), but it other cases we
> > will be better off if we allow our own developers to work on solutions.
> > Forcing them to migrate to a different developing community will seriously
> > harm us in our quest.
> > 
> > For this reason, I am deeply concerned about the restrictive wording of
> > the product-focussed draft – even if a similar motivation moves me.
> > 
> > Regarding the value-based draft, my feedback is that it is very
> > well-written. I truly like it. I am convinced, however, that we need to
> > stress somewhere that the various KDE projects aim to integrate well with
> > each other. This can be in the vision, or in a Mission statement, or in
> > the Manifesto – but it is needed if we want to address the fear that KDE
> > will loose focus.

+1
I fully agree with your point that local software should be well integrated 
with online-services, and that KDE should try to provide that.

You say the wording is "restrictive". What exactly do you consider restrictive 
there ?
Do you understand "to achieve that, we work on:" as "we work on exactly that, 
and nothing else" ?
Our intention is to say that those 4 items are the main focus, which we work 
on, and of course everything that supports those (I said that already earlier 
in some mail). So online-software that integrates well with the local 
applications is also in scope.
What's not in scope would be online-software that has no relation to the local 
software (as you say, nothing would be integrated then).

Having said that, it is just a draft, a suggestion.
Not that much effort has been put into the exact words.
Also the 4 items are just a suggestion.
Olaf, if you think those could be modified or something added, please say so. 
:-)


> I agree that integration within our projects is important. And I
> believe it has suffered lately as the cohesion inside KDE became less.
> My gut feeling is that this should go in the mission.
> 
> > I would suggest a sentence like the following:
> > “KDE aims to offer complete, well-integrated solutions – while connecting
> > different platforms, devices and online services.”
> 
> That sounds good to me.

To me too, but I still miss the reference that it is about software with 
graphical user interfaces (GUI's can also have gesture or voice input etc.), 
which Olaf seems to imply too.
I mean, we are not targetting e.g. sensor networks built from 8bit uCs 
communicating to some big online server, with no user intervention (which 
would fit that description too), or are we ?
 
> > Before we finally agree on a vision, we need to clarify how it will relate
> > to the Manifesto – and what will happen to KDE projects that do not fit
> > to the vision.
> 
> They should live side-by-side. One defines who we are and the other
> defines where we want to go.

I think everybody agrees to that.
 
> > I consider it extremely important that we have clarity on the following
> > questions, and would like to hear an “official” answer from 

Re: [kde-community] finding a clear vision for KDE - first draft for discussion

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Saturday, February 13, 2016 15:35:01 Martin Graesslin wrote:
...
> I can turn that 180 degree around and argue that we are currently too narrow
> minded to get new people in and are not doing great. Hey look all the
> awesome work with Plasma 5 and Wayland. We are doing desktop, desktop,
> desktop. Have a new mobile shell. And where are the devs? Where are the
> people following in that pretty clear direction?
> 
> So apparently having the direction seems not to work. People don't follow.
> So maybe we are too narrow? Lose the people who are actually out there and
> do hip stuff?

If you say "desktop, desktop, desktop", yes, that's too narrow.
We suggest desktop, PLUS cross-platform applications (that's not a focus right 
now) PLUS cross-platform libraries (putting even more emphasis on KF5).
I think those two can get us a lot of new users and hopefully developers.

Alex

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Re: [kde-community] finding a clear vision for KDE - first draft for discussion

[Alexander Neundorf]

Hi,

On Friday, February 12, 2016 08:04:10 Martin Graesslin wrote:
> On Thursday, February 11, 2016 10:06:33 PM CET Alexander Neundorf wrote:
> > On Thursday, February 11, 2016 10:06:57 Sebastian Kügler wrote:
> > > On Wednesday, February 10, 2016 10:08:19 PM Alexander Neundorf wrote:
> > > > On Tuesday, February 09, 2016 23:03:47 Sebastian Kügler wrote:
...
> > so do I understand correctly that in general you would consider projects
> > like a shell, a compiler and a text-mode editor as potential KDE projects
> > ?
> > 
> > What's your opinion on one of the original goals of KDE to provide a set
> > of
> > software with a consistent look & feel and usability, stuff like common
> > printing dialogs, file dialog, help systems, dialog layouts, etc, etc. ?
> > 
> > > > What about non-software projects like Project Gutenberg (free books),
> > > > Jamendo  (free indie music), SubSurfWiki.org (free knowledge) ?
> > > > Paraview (empowering students and scientists) ?
> > > 
> > > The draft states clear that we do Free software.
> > 
...
> > Where do you draw the line ?
> 
> Why should there be a line?

people have been asking exactly that wrt. to the focused vision all the time 
continuously, so I think the team of the inclusive-draft can also answer a few 
questions.

So I'd like to know too whether there are any technical limits or requirements 
for the Free software mentioned in the inclusive draft:
"KDE, through the creation of Free software, enables users to control their 
digital life. KDE software enables privacy, makes simple things
easy and complex scenarios possible while crossing device boundaries."

Until now the inclusive-team expressed that they don't see any technical 
requirements, as long as the motivation of the people behind the software 
projects matches ours.
I'd like to know whether I understand that correctly (and things like, as I 
said, compilers, curses tools, a shell, OS kernels, etc.) are considered just 
as good KDE projects as "classical" GUI software, or whether there is still an 
implied focus on GUI software ?

Also, one of the main motivations for the original KDE email was to get rid of 
the many different toolkits and instead provide a set of applications with a 
consistent, easy-to-use user interface.
From what I read, it is not obvious to me whether this is still considered a 
priority.
What is the opinion of the inclusive-draft team to that ?

Alex

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Re: [kde-community] finding a clear vision for KDE - first draft for discussion

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Friday, February 12, 2016 21:00:37 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
...
> Maybe what you want is an overarching product vision instead of a community
> vision, after all?

I think I can answer at least for everybody from the alternative-draft team, 
maybe also for the people who want more "direction" in KDE: yes.

Alex

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Re: [kde-community] finding a clear vision for KDE - first draft for discussion

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Friday, February 12, 2016 21:37:23 Clemens Toennies wrote:
> On Feb 12, 2016 9:14 PM, "Alexander Neundorf" <neund...@kde.org> wrote:
> > On Friday, February 12, 2016 21:00:37 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> > ...
> > 
> > > Maybe what you want is an overarching product vision instead of a
> 
> community
> 
> > > vision, after all?
> > 
> > I think I can answer at least for everybody from the alternative-draft
> 
> team,
> 
> > maybe also for the people who want more "direction" in KDE: yes.
> 
> And you're "overarching (product) vision" to be adopted by all of KDE would
> have to specifically mention "based on Qt"?

For the applications, I'm not completely sure, but anyway this would be just 
my opinion, I asked for the opinions of the others in my other mail 
("Summary...").

Alex

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Re: [kde-community] Vision, mission and manifesto - what is their definition and purpose?

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Thursday, February 11, 2016 10:17:03 Sebastian Kügler wrote:
> On Wednesday, February 10, 2016 09:42:31 PM Alexander Neundorf wrote:
> > > > Also, what do you think about the relation between vision and mission
> > > > ?
> > > 
> > > When I joined the "vision team", my original proposal was to only define
> > > a
> > > mission, because I felt that visions make more sense for products than
> > > for
> > > communities.
> > > However, Lydia convinced me that having a common vision for the future
> > > to
> > > work towards can have more positive effect on a sense of purpose and
> > > motivation than only defining a strategy, so I agreed to define a vision
> > > first and then derive the mission from that.
> > 
> > That's just Lydias opinion.
> 
> No need for this, not even if you think it's funny. For the record, it's
> *not* just Lydia's opinion, so don't try to give that impression.

sorry, I didn't choose good words to express what I wanted to say.
 
> > No, seriously, in the last weeks several people contacted me in private
> > email  and expressed that they are not exactly happy, some even seriously
> > frustrated with the strong emphasis on non-technical topics in KDE in the
> > last few years, and they would prefer to get some more emphasis on
> > technology and products back.
> 
> You know, same here: People express concerns about people who want to steer
> KDE into a self-fullfilling, narrow-minded playground project. 

are you saying that the people who would prefer some more technical direction 
are wrong, they want the wrong thing, what you call "self-fulfilling, narrow-
minded playground project" ?
Can we please assume that everybody who is in KDE wants it succeed, and 
consider their opinions seriously ?
I'm sure nobody here wants to harm KDE.

> You know what I tell them: Please take part in the open discussions about
> that -- that is why we're having these discussions.
> 
> In a do-ocracy such as KDE, you take part and are able to influence
> direction, or you stand at the sidelines and watch, but you don't stand at
> the sidelines and watch and dictate through backdoor politics.

This is what I actually wanted to point out.
The decision, that we need a "community vision", and not a "product vision" 
was made by the inclusive-draft team, consisting at that time of 5 people in 
private discussion, and then presented as only choice to the community.
I want to offer the community an alternative, so the community can actually 
decide, and not just approve the only option.

Alex

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Re: [kde-community] Vision, mission and manifesto - what is their definition and purpose?

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Thursday, February 11, 2016 01:22:02 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> On Mittwoch, 10. Februar 2016 21:42:31 CET Alexander Neundorf wrote:
...
> A vision statement alone doesn't do much, either. A mission is needed to
> turn vision into strategy.

Yes. :-)

> > Anyway, I think vision and mission should be defined together, otherwise
> > we'll get ugly discussions once we have decided on the vision, and get
> > into mission- land.
> 
> The discussions cannot be avoided (though I believe they don't have to be
> ugly!), but it seems to me that the two "camps" are much closer in their
> ultimate goal than they are in what they see as the best strategy to achieve
> it.
> So what is bad about first declaring what we agree on and then debate on the
> level where we actually disagree?

The vision may leave quite a bit of room for interpretation, especially since 
it will be short. Some may understand one thing, some may understand another 
thing. This will lead to more conflicts later on due to misunderstandings 
(like "we cannot put this into the mission because it contradicts the vision, 
which we already agreed on.")

As a real example, there are people who understand "The project stays true to 
established practices common to similar KDE projects" from the manifesto as 
"if it has a GUI, the GUI is done with Qt".
The "inclusive" draft explicitely does not put any limits to 
technologies/libraries. One group can with good right say "this contradicts 
the manifesto !", while another group can with similar good rights say "gtk is 
perfectly fine, since the manifesto doesn't mention Qt !".
I think such conflicts could be reduced if it was worded more clearly, or if 
vision+mission are created together.

Alex

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Re: [kde-community] finding a clear vision for KDE - first draft for discussion

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Thursday, February 11, 2016 10:06:57 Sebastian Kügler wrote:
> On Wednesday, February 10, 2016 10:08:19 PM Alexander Neundorf wrote:
> > On Tuesday, February 09, 2016 23:03:47 Sebastian Kügler wrote:
> > > On Tuesday, February 09, 2016 23:15:21 Alexander Neundorf wrote:
> > > > I'll also start a new sub-thread.
> > > > Since this vision draft is very broad: what kind of projects do you
> > > > consider  to be covered by this vision draft ?
> > > > Or, the other way round, are there projects, or types of projects
> > > > which
> > > > you see as not part of this vision ?
> 
> I don't know what exactly you mean with "being covered by" or "see as part
> of the vision", but let's assume "projects that identify with the goals
> described in our vision.
> 
> > > Sure. Projects that use open source licenses for purely economical
> > > reasons, or those that don't care about the user, or her privacy.
> > > 
> > > A lot of it is about priorities, and the reason why people work on these
> > > project, their goals.
> > 
> > Let's get a bit more concrete.
> > So I guess most GNU projects would fit ? Bash, gcc, emacs ?
> 
> GCC and Emacs (I couldn't find info about bash) require copyright assigment
> through a mandatory contributor license agreements *1. That would be against
> KDE's manifesto. It makes sense to work together, but we disagree about the
> how to do it.

so do I understand correctly that in general you would consider projects like 
a shell, a compiler and a text-mode editor as potential KDE projects ?

What's your opinion on one of the original goals of KDE to provide a set of 
software with a consistent look & feel and usability, stuff like common 
printing dialogs, file dialog, help systems, dialog layouts, etc, etc. ?


> > What about non-software projects like Project Gutenberg (free books),
> > Jamendo  (free indie music), SubSurfWiki.org (free knowledge) ?
> > Paraview (empowering students and scientists) ?
> 
> The draft states clear that we do Free software.

There's also a thin line here.
Most web sites require some programming. Some more, some less. E.g. a 
knowledge site could have some special code for presenting/visualizing data, a 
music site could have custom solutions for streaming, etc.
Where do you draw the line ?

Alex

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Re: [kde-community] Vision, mission and manifesto - what is their definition and purpose?

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Tuesday, February 09, 2016 23:55:59 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> On Dienstag, 9. Februar 2016 23:35:38 CET Alexander Neundorf wrote:
...
> > This is maybe an important detail.
> > The results of "Evolve KDE" (https://evolve.kde.org/surveyresults.pdf)
> > recommend to "Develop a vision, strategy and focus".
> > Are we sure we are searching for a vision for the organization (isn't that
> > quite close to the manifesto ?) and not for a vision for the products
> > created by the organization ?
> 
> Good question! Here is a bit of history on this:
> 
> In the past, the KDE usability team (namely Björn, Heiko and I) have at
> least twice suggested to create a common vision for KDE's products.
> This approach has received mostly negative comments every time, with the
> argument that there is far too much diversity among existing KDE projects to
> define a common product vision which is still useful, and that individual
> product visions would be much more helpful.

I can remember having read about that somewhere...
As you have seen, the argument that KDE is so diverse has been brought here 
too several times, but from what I know there is still very much in common.

Maybe your KDE product vision effort should be brought into scope again when 
we are talking now here about a vision etc. ? Do you have some pointers ?
 
...
> > Also, what do you think about the relation between vision and mission ?
> 
> When I joined the "vision team", my original proposal was to only define a
> mission, because I felt that visions make more sense for products than for
> communities.
> However, Lydia convinced me that having a common vision for the future to
> work towards can have more positive effect on a sense of purpose and
> motivation than only defining a strategy, so I agreed to define a vision
> first and then derive the mission from that.

That's just Lydias opinion. ;-)
No, seriously, in the last weeks several people contacted me in private email 
and expressed that they are not exactly happy, some even seriously frustrated  
with the strong emphasis on non-technical topics in KDE in the last few years, 
and they would prefer to get some more emphasis on technology and products 
back.
This (obviously) includes me. Maybe this also includes many of the people who 
said "vision, strategy and focus" in the evolve-survey ?

Sorry to be blunt: for me, a catchy one-sentence-vision statement *alone* 
won't impress me, everyone has one today. It won't give me a sense of purpose 
or anything. It's just a catchy phrase. Maybe I'm too old for that.

Anyway, I think vision and mission should be defined together, otherwise we'll 
get ugly discussions once we have decided on the vision, and get into mission-
land.

Alex

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Re: [kde-community] finding a clear vision for KDE - first draft for discussion

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Tuesday, February 09, 2016 23:03:47 Sebastian Kügler wrote:
> On Tuesday, February 09, 2016 23:15:21 Alexander Neundorf wrote:
> > I'll also start a new sub-thread.
> > Since this vision draft is very broad: what kind of projects do you
> > consider  to be covered by this vision draft ?
> > Or, the other way round, are there projects, or types of projects which
> > you
> > see as not part of this vision ?
> 
> Sure. Projects that use open source licenses for purely economical reasons,
> or those that don't care about the user, or her privacy.
> 
> A lot of it is about priorities, and the reason why people work on these
> project, their goals.

Let's get a bit more concrete.
So I guess most GNU projects would fit ? Bash, gcc, emacs ?
What about non-software projects like Project Gutenberg (free books), Jamendo 
(free indie music), SubSurfWiki.org (free knowledge) ?
Paraview (empowering students and scientists) ?

Alex

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Re: [kde-community] finding a clear vision for KDE - an alternative draft for discussion

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Tuesday, February 09, 2016 07:55:08 Martin Graesslin wrote:
...
> This was more a rhetorical question. Apparently it didn't make it through.
> I'm worried about your vision closing a path for the future. Your vision
> setting a focus on past technologies, which will result in stagnation,
> shrinking and death

I actually don't consider normal desktop PCs, notebooks, tablets, smartphones, 
smart watches etc. etc, everything that displays something, all as "past 
technology" not worth putting effort into it.

Even if it may not be the technology we'll have in 20 years, it is IMO still 
worth putting work into it, e.g. all Android-devices, for the next few years.

Alex

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Re: [kde-community] finding a clear vision for KDE - first draft for discussion

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Tuesday, February 09, 2016 11:59:26 Marco Martin wrote:
...
> I fear a part of the explanation is very simple and very sad...
> the first time around every participant was young and willing to ride the
> change, today several generations are living together in KDE

here is the mail from Matthias Ettrich:
https://www.kde.org/documentation/posting.txt

This is from 1996. Windows 95 existed. Matthias suggested to use Qt, so 
there'll be a common widget set, and he proposed to develop (from the mail) a 
panel, a file manager, a mail client, a text editor and an image viewer. 
Nothing of that was new or disruptive in 1996, what was new was to do that as 
free software for UNIX/X11. Very concrete goals with a clear technical choice.

Alex

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Re: [kde-community] finding a clear vision for KDE - first draft for discussion

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Tuesday, February 09, 2016 10:41:07 Sebastian Kügler wrote:
...
> As Martin said very well already: By defining our goals not in terms of
> technology but in terms of values and principles, we don't lose the
> technology aspect, we are still experts in Qt, 

sure we'll lose it long-term.
If we don't focus at all on Qt, won't KDE become a mixture of projects using 
many different technologies ? This is how I understand the goal of this draft.
If that's so, then Qt will only be one among many in KDE, not KDEs main 
competence anymore.

Alex

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Re: [kde-community] finding a clear vision for KDE - first draft for discussion

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Tuesday, February 09, 2016 20:37:29 Lydia Pintscher wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 9, 2016 at 8:01 PM, Alexander Dymo  wrote:
> > On Tue, Feb 9, 2016 at 5:41 AM, Lydia Pintscher  wrote:
> >> The technology is something that does not belong into the vision.
> > 
> > Why? It would be strange for the tech organization/community like KDE,
> > IMHO of course.
> 
> You cut off the part of my email with the reasoning: "It can go into
> the mission statement because it is a part of how we get to where we
> want to go. It is not the place we want to go." Or in other words it
> is too specific for a vision. 

To me, this vision draft presented here is also very broad.
Actually I think that only very few Free software projects would disagree to 
it. I mean, it is not too different from the ideas which motivate the GPL.
Do you have already a "mission" draft at hand, so it becomes more clear what 
you have in mind ?

Alex

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Re: [kde-community] finding a clear vision for KDE - first draft for discussion

[Alexander Neundorf]

Hi,

I'll also start a new sub-thread.
Since this vision draft is very broad: what kind of projects do you consider 
to be covered by this vision draft ?
Or, the other way round, are there projects, or types of projects which you 
see as not part of this vision ?

Alex

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Re: [kde-community] Differences between proposed vision drafts (or "inclusive" vs "focused")

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Monday, February 08, 2016 22:41:08 Sebastian Kügler wrote:
> On Monday, February 08, 2016 21:42:58 Alexander Neundorf wrote:
> > > I understand that you're saying it doesn't have a place in KDE.
> > 
> > Sebas, you may have missed that I explicitely mentioned eigen in the mail
> > you  replied to ?
> 
> No, I've missed that.  Sorry...
> 
> > I don't understand what's so hard about this: we can say "we consider A, B
> > and  C to be our core efforts.". That does not mean that everything which
> > is outside that "core" must be kept out of KDE. Of course it means that
> > software or efforts that support A, B or C, are very welcome. OTOH
> > projects
> > which don't support the core do not need to be part of KDE, they can as
> > well use github or something else.
> > 
> > I think this can only be avoided by not having some technical direction at
> > all.
> 
> I think that the technical arguments don't make a lot of sense here, at
> least they're not providing the clarity needed:
> 
> - Qt-based, so it should be OK? But why exactly, just because it uses the
> same libraries?
> - "Supports the core", what is the core? Who makes this call? 

that's the 4 items in the draft. It's a draft, a proposal, so they are not set 
in stone.

> Where do you
> draw the technical line? (You gave some examples, but most of them feel
> quite vague to me, and I'd draw the line at different points.

Sure it is vague since the examples were intentionally "interesting" cases.

The draft is called "focused": some things are clearly in the focus (just some 
random examples I could come up with: Scribus, LxQt, libqwt).
Other things are, to me clearly far outside the focus: e.g. the eCos RTOS, 
bash, joomla.
The line between "in focus" and "out of focus"/"not supporting the core" is 
not a sharp line, it's blurry. We can spend weeks on discussing those.
 
> I think one (not the most important) benefit is that drawing the dividing
> line by asking "What is your goal?" makes it a lot easier to identify
> projects, they can self-select ("Do we identify with these goals?"), and
> also be measured internally ("Does this software actually contribute to
> *our* goal?") is easier.

I think e.g. offering applications which provide a consistent look-and-feel, 
following the same e.g. HIG, etc. is a worthwhile goal too.
We achieve this by using a common set of libraries (Qt and our KDE libraries).
We get more done because we gather developers which are familiar with the same 
technologies: again, the libraries, and in big parts also the programming 
language.
So, the technical aspect is important to me.

Alex

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Re: [kde-community] Vision, mission and manifesto - what is their definition and purpose?

[Alexander Neundorf]

Hi Thomas,

On Tuesday, February 09, 2016 22:56:32 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
...
> That's why I'd suggest that, before discussing the vision any further, we
> should agree on a definition. It doesn't have to be one with which everybody
> wholeheartedly agrees, because it's mostly used for communication.

good idea :-)

...
> (Note that this is the definition of a vision for an organization or
> movement. Product visions are very different from that, they can go into
> much more detail).

This is maybe an important detail.
The results of "Evolve KDE" (https://evolve.kde.org/surveyresults.pdf) 
recommend to "Develop a vision, strategy and focus".
Are we sure we are searching for a vision for the organization (isn't that 
quite close to the manifesto ?) and not for a vision for the products created 
by the organization ?

Also, what do you think about the relation between vision and mission ?

Alex

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Re: [kde-community] Differences between proposed vision drafts (or "inclusive" vs "focused")

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Monday, February 08, 2016 10:56:01 Sebastian Kügler wrote:
> On Thursday, February 04, 2016 08:49:55 PM Alexander Neundorf wrote:
> > Still we don't see linear algebra libraries or build tools as the main
> > goal
> > KDE is trying to achieve (...says the guy who maintained the KDE
> > buildsystem for more than 7 years).
> 
> Next counter-example: The Eigen library, a linear algebra library which was
> initially developed under KDE. It has moved out at some point -- I don't
> know the reasons. In KDE software, it's used in Krita, Step and Kalzium and
> a few smaller bits, as far as I could find out. Point in case: this other
> random example is flawed.
> 
> I understand that you're saying it doesn't have a place in KDE.

Sebas, you may have missed that I explicitely mentioned eigen in the mail you 
replied to ?

I don't understand what's so hard about this: we can say "we consider A, B and 
C to be our core efforts.". That does not mean that everything which is 
outside that "core" must be kept out of KDE. Of course it means that software 
or efforts that support A, B or C, are very welcome. OTOH projects which don't 
support the core do not need to be part of KDE, they can as well use github or 
something else.

I think this can only be avoided by not having some technical direction at 
all.

Alex

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Re: [kde-community] finding a clear vision for KDE - an alternative draft for discussion

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Saturday, February 06, 2016 19:39:35 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> On Samstag, 6. Februar 2016 16:47:31 CET Ingo Klöcker wrote:
> > Yes. I think the vision statement needs to be complemented by a mission
> > statement. But I think, before we tackle the mission statement, we should
> > nail down the vision.

I think the main difference is that it mentions local applications/software 
with GUIs explicitely (that's the "focus" ;-) ).

> That exactly was our (the "inclusive vision group") plan.
> And it now looks to me that maybe the actual Vision part of the "focused
> version" isn't all that different form the other one.

That's good :-)
 
> It feels to me that we all agree far more on the vision than the mission. We
> all want the same in the end (end-users are in control of their devices and
> software, and can keep their privacy), we just prefer different paths
> toward that goal (the mission).
> 
> Am I right or am I missing something?

Well, a one-sentence vision statement probably always leaves a lot of room for 
interpretation...
I think there's no need to rush.
Things are going much better now, that we see what has been written down. :-)
So, let's just continue, gather opinions and views, and maybe head towards the 
mission ?

Alex

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Re: [kde-community] finding a clear vision for KDE - an alternative draft for discussion

[Alexander Neundorf]

Hi Ingo,

On Friday, February 05, 2016 16:43:06 Ingo Klöcker wrote:
> On Wednesday 03 February 2016 22:05:20 Alexander Neundorf wrote:
> > KDE is an end-user focused, openly governed community of free software
> > enthusiasts
> 
> This is a description of what you (and me) think KDE is (or should be), but
> not what its goal (vision) is, unless you think that our goal should be to
> be "an end-user focused, openly governed community of free software
> enthusiasts".
> > that strives to provide graphical user interfaces and
> > applications for end-users for all types of computers across the device
> > spectrum: desktops PCs, laptops, tablets, smartphones, etc.
> 
> Providing end-user software for all kinds of devices sounds like a mission
> statement to me, i.e. like a plan to reach some goal. 

Maybe.
One result of "Evolve KDE" was that users want a vision or strategy or 
something.
Now, what does that mean...
Personally I doubt that they wanted a one.sentence pitch.
I think (just guessing), they just want to have some clear goal or direction 
KDE is working towards. At least that's what I want.
I think this draft would serve that purpose.
Matthias Ettrichs initial KDE-email certainly didn't match the definition of a 
vision, but it worked really well.
"I have a dream" was also more than one sentence. ;-)

Maybe vision+mission belong together ?

We could just tweak the opening sentences so they form a proper "vision", and 
keep the remainder as "mission" ?

> It totally lacks the What and Why, i.e. the greater goal. Why do we strive
> to provide ...? What is in it for the end-users that they do not get from
> any other software vendor?

For me this is hard to put in one meaningfull sentence.
The first sentence basically says "free GUI software for all devices/OSs" with 
slightly different words. The "free software enthusiasts" implies that we want 
to give freedom to the users and developers. Should this be spelled out ?

Why are we doing this ?
For me, I'm in KDE for two reasons: it is fun, and it gives people freedom, 
independence from companies for their everyday GUI software needs.

What is in it for the users they do not get anywhere else ?
One could say that the 4 items relate to 4 different types of users:

- "normal users": "manage their 'digital life' using free software no matter
  on which OS. ..familiar and consistent user experience"

- desktop Linux users: we have a great desktop, and we want to continue that

- tinkerers or companies working with mobile/embedded Linux: we provide a good 
(best) free user interface

- Qt developers: you get awesome libraries from us, free, stable, etc.

Those are very concrete, and also quite different "benefits" for users.

> > We believe that software should be free and respectful of the privacy of
> > our users.
> 
> This sentence seems to hint at a vision I could identify with. Free Software
> that protects the users privacy.
> 
> > Our values are stated in the KDE Manifesto.
> 
> This sentence isn't really part of a vision or mission statement. It makes
> sense to put it somewhere, e.g. on the page which shows our vision (and
> mission), but not as part of the vision (or mission).

Maybe.
it is just a draft, supposed to be changed. :-)
 
> Since Mirko posted a link to this website, I assume that you have read the
> list of 30 example vision statements.
> https://topnonprofits.com/examples/vision-statements/

Yes.

...
> A possible vision for KDE derived from your draft but being more in line
> with the example would be
> "KDE enables everyone to make best use of their digital devices without
> compromising their privacy."

I have to admit, while this certainly matches better the definition of a 
"vision", and I agree with it, to me, as a boring German engineer, this 
sentence alone is not useful.
When I read it, I think, Ok, that's an introduction, marketing, nothing 
concrete, now where is the real stuff ? Such a sentence alone doesn't make me 
excited, nor curious. I have seen enough of those slogans, everybody has one, 
they are usually "deep", "thought provoking", "engaging", etc., I'm actually 
tired of those.
Yes, we can tweak the first few sentences so they match that format.
I think an important point this draft wants to make is to spell out what KDE 
is trying to achieve in concrete software categories, so a reader understands 
what we are doing, and doesn't have to guess and assume.
As I said above, that's maybe vision+mission ?

Alex

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Re: [kde-community] Should we allow non-KDE projects to participate in GSoC under KDE?

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Wednesday, February 03, 2016 14:58:54 Martin Klapetek wrote:
...
> Imho this goes against the Manifesto as the projects gets to
> "enjoy the benefits" without the complying with "commitments"
> of the Manifesto. It's also less transparent overall (not able to
> monitor progress as it's not on KDE infrastructure), can lead
> to cheating and possibly kicking KDE out of GSoC in the worst
> possible outcome.
> 
> On the other hand, every accepted project gets the mentoring
> organization some extra money, which is always handy.

IMO if we stand behind the manifesto, and they don't agree to it, we cannot 
accept them (except if they have serious plans to confirm with the manifesto 
soon).
An alternative might be to think about updating the manifesto.

Alex

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[kde-community] finding a clear vision for KDE - an alternative draft for discussion

[Alexander Neundorf]

Hi everyone,

as Lydia already wrote earlier today, there have been activities in the KDE 
community to come up with a vision for the KDE project for the next years, so 
we can better work together to achieve our goals as a community.

Additionally to the team presented by Lydia, an additional team formed 
beginning of this year and produced an alternative draft for a vision for KDE, 
which we hope can guide KDE into a successful future.

The following people worked on or provided input to this draft:
Alexander Dymo
Alex Neundorf
David Edmundson
Jaroslaw Staniek
Mirko Böhme
Pau Garcia i Quiles


Coordinated with the team presented by Lydia we post our draft also today 
here. The original is at https://community.kde.org/KDE/VisionDraftA .
So here we go:


KDE is an end-user focused, openly governed community of free software 
enthusiasts that strives to provide graphical user interfaces and applications 
for end-users for all types of computers across the device spectrum: desktops 
PCs, laptops, tablets, smartphones, etc.

We believe that software should be free and respectful of the privacy of our 
users. Our values are stated in the KDE Manifesto.

To achieve our goals we work on:

1) A complete set of cross-platform end-user applications

We want to offer a complete set of end-user applications running on all major 
operating systems (Linux, OSX, Windows, Android, etc.). This way we enable 
end-users to manage their "digital life" using free software no matter on 
which operating system. The set of applications covers internet, office, 
communication, multimedia, games and many other. They provide the familiar and 
consistent KDE user experience while fully integrating into the host operating 
system. This is reached by following common guidelines and using common 
technologies.

2) A modern desktop environment for UNIX operating systems

We provide a classical desktop environment for computers and devices running 
Linux or any other UNIX-compatible operating system (as known from KDE 3 and 
Plasma). It delivers a polished user experience, is easy to use and flexible. 
It contains the essentials of a desktop and basic applications like a file 
manager and a web browser, etc..

3) A user interface for mobile/embedded Linux systems

We want KDE to offer the most advanced "desktop" for "mobile Linux", like 
tablets, smartphones or embedded systems.

4) A cross-platform Software Development Kit

We support the development of end-user desktop and applications by developing 
reusable software frameworks. We build on top of the cross-platform Qt 
framework and provide an extensive set of add-on libraries and components to 
do the tasks above. Our libraries are cross-platform, stable, and provide 
source and binary compatibility guarantees. They are licensed under Free 
Software licenses which allow commercial use.

--

This probably doesn't fit the definition of what a "vision statement" should 
be, it's too long for that, maybe it's a mixture of a vision and a mission, 
but more importantly, after reading it, people (hopefully) know what KDE is 
about.


So, now that you have seen this draft and the one posted by Lydia, make up 
your mind about where you would like to see KDE go in the next years for 
yourself.

We are happy to get comments or any other feedback on this draft, and we are 
looking forward to a lively and constructive discussion about the future of 
KDE.

Let's make KDE rule the world of free GUI software ! :-)
Alex D, Alex N., Jaroslaw, Mirko

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Re: [kde-community] finding a clear vision for KDE - an alternative draft for discussion

[Alexander Neundorf]

Hi Adriaan,

On Wednesday, February 03, 2016 23:18:26 Adriaan de Groot wrote:
> On Wednesday 03 February 2016 22:05:20 Alexander Neundorf wrote:
> > Let's make KDE rule the world of free GUI software !
> 
> I'll be a little flippant and say that this is a second vision, different
> from the first one presented in your mail.

Well, maybe. ;-)
I think it says about the same (just very terse and unclear).

> But on-topic: Just a quick question: the paragraphs between - lines is
> the vision-statement from this vision-group? The text on the wiki-page
> https://community.kde.org/KDE/VisionDraftA  is slightly longer, with an
> introduction as well.

The "this document..." introduction didn't make sense to me as part of the 
email. It basically duplicated what the rest of the mail said already.

> I'm asking this because I want to know what I should put into my
> vision-ometer (a contraption that measures the visionariness) and what
> (same) text I should compare to any other vision-statement that is
> proposed.

I don't know.

To me, having a one-sentence vision statement alone is not overly important, 
I'm more interested in having a document which tells people what KDE is trying 
to achieve. That may need more than one sentence.

Having said that, the "core" is the first sentence ("KDE is").

The four items basically just go into more details to explain what that "core" 
statement is supposed to cover.

The whole thing is just a first, rough draft, waiting for feedback, 
suggestions, etc.
If you think this is not a vision, but a vision+mission, or something else, 
say so. :-)

Alex

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Re: [kde-community] Evolving KDE

[Alexander Neundorf]

Hi,

not sure I understand:

On Saturday, April 18, 2015 12:00:03 kde-community-requ...@kde.org wrote:
 * During KDE e.V.'s annual general assembly, the report is discussed
 and some of the recommended focus areas are agreed on as goals.
 * At a strategy sprint, core community members come up with
 measureable suggestions to achieve those goals.

do you mean that at the General Assembly technical goals are voted for, and 
then core developers have to implement them ?
I guess you meant something else ?

Alex

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