EU Survey on "Sustainable OSS communities in the public sector"

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

Hey everyone,
The European Commission is currently looking for input on "Sustainable OSS 
communities in the public sector" via an open survey.
I believe it's a great opportunity to show politicians and bureaucrats how to 
collaborate with us in a sustainable way.
Therefore, I'd encourage all KDE projects who have any kind of significant 
touch points with the public sector (e.g. their software being used in public 
schools or universities, government agencies, whatever) to participate in the 
survey.
I'd think it's best to fill the survey out once per public sector project.
You can find it here: 
https://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/OSORsurvey2020sustainabilitycommunities
Thank you,
Thomas

Re: 4th global climate strike - should KDE take action?

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

I have sent a former vote proposal to the e.V. list now.
We'll see what happens.

On 04.11.19 15:56, cahfof...@tuta.io wrote:
> Hello Christoph,
> thanks for your fast answer.
> 
> You're rigth, the general interest in this topic is very low at this moment, 
> there were neither positive nor negative reactions.
> 
> I would not be able to start a KDE e.V. online voting as I am not a member of 
> the KDE e.V. .
> Your's faithfully
> cahfofpai
> 
> 4. Nov. 2019, 15:43 von christ...@cullmann.io:
> 
>> On 2019-11-04 15:32, cahfof...@tuta.io wrote:
>>
>>> Dear KDE community,
>>>
>>> two questions:
>>> Christoph and David suggested to do a poll on this topic to get a
>>> consent within the community. Is such a consent finding process
>>> already established, for example described by an official document by
>>> the KDE e.V., and was such a community wide poll ever done before?
>>> During the discussions for the last global climate strike people
>>> mentioned there are ongoing conversations in the KDE e.V. on improving
>>> the community's climate impact - what's the current state of this
>>> discussions and are there any results yet?
>>>
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> we have only e.V. internal voting setup procedures
>>
>> https://ev.kde.org/rules/online_voting.php
>>
>> and I think that would be enough to do for this, if somebody triggers that.
>>
>> Until now, there seems to be zero positive feedback about this request on 
>> this list anyways,
>> not sure if voting makes then any sense.
>>
>> For the state of discussions about climate impact: I think we have not yet 
>> reached
>> any decision there e.V. internally.
>>
>> Greetings
>> Christoph
>>
>>>
>>> Sincerely yours
>>> cahfofpai
>>>
>>>
>>> 30. Okt. 2019, 15:24 von david.hu...@mailbox.org:
>>>
 Date: Tue, 29 Oct 2019 21:57:42 +0100
 From: Christoph Cullmann 

> On 2019-10-29 12:18, cahfof...@tuta.io wrote:
>> Dear KDE Community,
>>
>> On 29th of November, the fourth global climate strike will take place.
>>
>> For the last global climate strike, a banner was placed on the website
>> (https://web.archive.org/web/20190921055543/https://kde.org/
>> ) and a
>> social media post was published
>> (https://mastodon.technology/@kde/102821138461667105
>> ).
>>
>> Should we (as a community) take action at the next global climate
>> strike? A blog post and / or a social media post about the progress of
>> internal discussions about KDE's climate impact and how it could be
>> improved came to my mind.
>>
>> What do you think?
>
> Hi,
>
> I am not sure the last action in this regard was well perceived by all
> parts
> of the community or KDE e.V.
>
> Given we lacked time for the last strike to clarify this better, would
> it be
> a good idea this time to e.g. at least have a poll inside the e.V. if we
> want
> to support that?
>
> Greetings
> Christoph
>

 Hi,

 after reading the discussion from september, I think a poll is the minimum.
 Even withot the next climate strike, I feel we have to do the poll.

 Cheers, David

>>
>> -- 
>> Ignorance is bliss...
>> https://cullmann.io | https://kate-editor.org
>>
> 

Re: KDE should rather act then just "strike" (Re: Should KDE join the (Digital) Global Climate Strike this friday?)

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

Hi Christoph,

On 20.09.19 22:35, Christoph Cullmann wrote:

> I must confess I missed that we decided to participate, too, but digging
> in the mails of this thread it seems the board of e.V. did so. (if I
> don't misread
> Aleix mail)

>From my perspective, the course of events was:
- On Wednesday evening, Sept 18th, cahfofpai opened a Phabricator ticket
"Should KDE join the (Digital) Global Climate Strike this friday?" [1]
and around the same time started a thread on this list
- The promo team wasn't sure whether it would be okay for them to do
this because there weren't many reactions on the list and they didn't
want to go against the community
- At 1am of the 19th, Aleix asked me for my opinion on the idea, since
he knew I was active in the climate movement. I told him that it made a
lot of sense to me, and that we'd need to get it going on Thursday in
order for it to have any effect in getting more people to join the
strike on the streets
- Aleix told me that the board had a call the next morning and he would
propose a vote on it there
- After the meeting, Aleix replied in this thread that the board
approves of the action
- At that point, the promo team started to get into "action mode", and I
pushed them to get the word out still on Thursday because I believed
that it would be far more likely for people to decide to join a protest
"tomorrow" than "today"

> This is OK for me, as for that the board got elected, to do some decision
> when we can't wait for weeks to vote on something.
> 
> Thought I would have appreciated if at least a 5 lines post of the
> announcement
> that "KDE joins this" would have been done on the planet or here to make
> clear what happens. I am not sure that communicating this over twitter only
> is the best way to do that, given we have the lists/planet/dot.
> 
> (not that twitter is bad to advertise it to the world)
> 
> I think this would have been be possible to discuss more properly if one
> didn't bring this up
> a few days before it needs to happens.

> Some people in the thread said they had this strike marked since months
> thought it seems
> nobody thought about communicating it to our community here a bit
> earlier that "let's do this
> this week".

I can't say why cahfofpai proposed to join the digital strike on Wednesday.
What I can say is that when I first learned about the digital strike a
few weeks ago (not sure when the idea for the digital strike was born,
the "marked on my calendar for months" was referring to the strike on
the streets), I must admit that I didn't dare proposing for KDE to join
because I knew that some people would react negatively and I am terribly
conflict-averse. I simply chickened out.
It was only when I learned that someone else proposed it that I jumped
on the bandwagon.

So yes, I could have suggested that KDE should join the digital strike a
earlier, had I mustered the courage to go against the nay-sayers. My
bad, will try to be better next time.

Thank you to cahfofpai for being more brave than I was.

Cheers,
Thomas

> Greetings
> Christoph
> 
> P.S.
> 
> :-) You might not remember, but I did put up the "we oppose software
> patents" strike banner
> more than a decade ago on kde.org and got burned a lot for that, even
> thought we discussed that internally
> at that time.

People who take action will always be burned. This is probably the way
any community works, and those who take action sadly have to expect and
live with that.


[1] https://phabricator.kde.org/T11717

Re: KDE should rather act then just "strike" (Re: Should KDE join the (Digital) Global Climate Strike this friday?)

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On 19.09.19 20:58, Friedrich W. H. Kossebau wrote:
> Am Donnerstag, 19. September 2019, 19:35:53 CEST schrieb Nate Graham:
>> On 9/19/19 11:05 AM, Friedrich W. H. Kossebau wrote:
>>> More, I see all those "strikes" are substitutes for people actually
>>> handling or at least for postponing their own handling. Do you really
>>> need politicians to decide for you that you should look at what you
>>> consume and do and what harm it does to others, and then adopt things
>>> accordingly? Are you really all helpless victims of the bad evil system?
>>> Not responsible for the damage you create, because "politicians did not
>>> put a bin here, their fault that I drop my garbage on the ground"?
>>
>> It's a common polluter tactic to get people to internalize the idea that
>> each individual must take action on their own. And we should take
>> individual action!
> 
> So you have internalized that? ;)
> 
>> But it is not enough, and it never will be.
> 
> Yes. And no-where did I (intent to) say otherwise.
> 
> In case you missed my point, allow me to repeat it:
> asking others to move first, while not moving oneself is not a convincing 
> argument. To be a serious proposer for a goal, one should show that one 
> strives to the goal already.

We are encouraging people to join the Global Climate strike, yes. But
who says we're not doing the same?
I, for one, am not only participating in the strike, I'm helping as a
steward ("Ordner" in German).
And talking to some people in KDE, I've realized that many of them
weren't even aware of the strike, but when they learned about it, they
thought it was a good thing.
So by informing people about the strike, we can maybe help make it grow
larger. That is a good thing.

> KDE as organization so far has not. And thus so far is not a convincing 
> supporter of the goal. Like a car company which does blabla about how small 
> EVs should be used by people rather and how they might build some in the 
> future, but currently selling big SUVs and wasting lots of resources (and it 
> does not matter what worker privately do, when it comes to company business).
> Having lip-only supporters as allies is not helping, it's hard to trust them.

> And actually it harms an organisation as well if it shouts "save the world!" 
> but has not shown own efforts. Like someone eating meat and mumbling "people 
> should eat vegetarian". Who should feel motivated to change things for you, 
> who takes you serious?

It is true that environmental protection has not been high on our agenda
in the past, but the board has started looking into the topic late last
year, and in July the membership of KDE e.V. has started drafting an
environmental responsibility policy.
It will still take a while to finish because while there is broad
consensus that it's a good idea, there is a wide range of opinions about
the details.

I don't think anybody believes we should stop at that, though. There are
already more ideas, such as focusing our software on energy-saving or
supporting older hardware, cooperating with eco-friendly hardware
manufacturers or encouraging our current hardware partners to make more
sustainable hardware.

> If you look at history, politicians will also not be really impressed by 
> peaceful strikes, other than looking where they need to adapt their image. 
> The 
> numbers they look at are poll results

Yes, and poll results are affected by voters' opinion being influenced
by images of protests.

Before Fridays for Future started, climate change was ranking pretty low
in people's priorities. Now, for example, 63% of Germans believe that
climate protection should take precedence over economic growth [1]. When
even Germans think that, that says a lot.

Of course FFF wasn't the only thing that happened between then and now,
we've also had several temperature records, news of melting ice caps and
burning forests so there is no clear causal link, but I still believe
that when people see so many young people out on the streets every week,
it does affect them.

> And the numbers business looks at are sales results. If you want to change 
> things with them, use those numbers. Or become politician or business and try 
> to do the right thing.
> And that's also how real strikes work; business not being able to make 
> business, to pressure business leaders' mind to change.

School kids not going to school does bother people, as evidenced by lots
of people having a strong opinion about it, one way or another. Why is
it not a "real strike" just because those striking are still in school?

> I would like to see KDE here being long-term serious, and not just doing an 
> ad-hoc "yes, evilevil, we agree, protest against it, people, are we not also 
> good (and back to current harmful business)", without existing track.

I want KDE to do both!
I want us to use our reach to inform people about climate action, and of
course I also want us to do our part to save our planet!
But who says we can't do both?

Cheers,

Re: FSF leadership

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On 19.09.19 11:48, Agustin Benito (toscalix) wrote:
> Hello again,
> 
> a clarification from my side...
> 
> On Thu, Sep 19, 2019 at 8:16 AM Agustín Benito  wrote:
>>
>> Hello,
>>
>> I am against this. I find disrespectful to tell a fellow organization what 
>> they should do. I would feel the same way if anybody does it to us.
>>
> 
> KDE eV is not an affiliate of the FSF but the FSFE. We are not
> "fellows" in strict sense of the FSF then. It does not change the
> meaning though, but accuracy is good.

What Valorie was referring to is that the FSF is on our advisory board,
which is true.
Both FSFE and FSF are on our advisory board.

Re: Should KDE join the (Digital) Global Climate Strike this friday? - Proposal

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

Hey everyone,

Here is a concrete proposal which I've just brought up on the promo
channel and which seems to gain support there:

- Add a banner on our website _today_ informing about the Global Climate
Strike which starts tomorrow and telling that we support it (not
covering the whole website, just big enough that people notice it)
- Post on social media _today_, telling people that we think the strike
is important
- Do _not_ use the JavaScript which does the "blackout" tomorrow.

Reasoning:
The blackout thing is indeed more of a grand gesture of solidarity,
which in itself doesn't do much, at least on our website. The strike is
mainly aimed at politicians, and I don't think many of them even go to
our website.

However, telling our audience about the strike and showing our support
_today_ may motivate some people to join, and that does have an effect.
Politicians don't care about FOSS websites showing a banner, but they do
care about millions of people protesting out on the streets.

I know they do, because they have told me, in person, when I paid them
visits together with other climate activists.
They told me "If you want us politicians to listen, don't sign online
petitions. Go out on the streets in really big numbers!"

Would anybody have serious concerns about that?

Cheers,
Thomas

Re: KDE should rather act then just "strike" (Re: Should KDE join the (Digital) Global Climate Strike this friday?)

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

Hi Friedrich,

On 19.09.19 13:52, Friedrich W. H. Kossebau wrote:
> Am Mittwoch, 18. September 2019, 18:01:18 CEST schrieb cahfof...@tuta.io:
>> Hello to all members of the KDE community,
>>
>> this friday (september the 20th) will be a big day in climate protests and
>> hopefully also in human history: People in more than 3500 places worldwide
>> are joining the Global Climate Strike to draw attention to the rising
>> climate crisis.
>>
>> The question I want to ask you is: Should KDE join this protests and show
>> solidarity with the people engaging for this very important topic?
> 
> If KDE (as organization) found this topic important, it should rather have it 
> on its agenda every day, instead of just signaling one day the year "oh yes, 
> so important topic, we also agree someone(tm) should fix this!!1!" , and the 
> rest of the year continue using flights also for KDE activities ("it's 
> quicker 
> & less expensive, sorry") or buy that new device because it is more powerful 
> ("I could not stand the old one, sorry").
> 
> I would find it ridiculous and would be embarrassed to see someone doing this 
> in my name (as active contributor to KDE software projects), when it's not 
> backed by official applied policies. You are actually harming the strike, and 
> shadowing those people who are not just signaling, but serious by what they 
> do.

As a very active member of the climate movement in several
organizations, my time spent there being the main reason why I didn't
run for another board term, I disagree.

Of course KDE needs to care about our own environmental impact, which is
why we have the ongoing discussion about an environmental policy (it's
currently happening on the KDE e.V. members list because we first
thought about a KDE e.V. policy), and yes, we should do even more.

However, that should not keep us from participating in this campaign.
Promoting the Global Climate Strike today through our channels (it has
to be today, since the strike is tomorrow!) could in itself have an
effect. This is not about a grand gesture, this is about informing our
audience about the strike.

Since I am deep in the "climate bubble", Friday the 20th of September
has been red in my calendar for months and I've been hearing about it
every day since then.
Outside of that bubble, however, apparently it's by far not well known
enough.

My hypothesis is that there are a relevant number of people in our
target audience who care enough about the topic that they might join the
strike, but not enough to already know about it.

If informing our audience about the strike gets some people to learn
about and join it, it's been worth it.

> Act first, then demand acts from others, please. And yes, I am aware there 
> are 
> individuals here who privately act with environment in mind (he, I would 
> consider myself one). But as organisation KDE does not really care currently. 
> So it should not pretend it does.

We should not demand anything from anybody, of course, but we can tell
people that this crucially important thing is happening, and we support it.

> Like, are KDE's products evaluated in hindsight of their impact on 
> environment, other than side-effect of economically importance to be short on 
> need of device resources?
> Is e.V. travel support making sure people tried hard to pick the most 
> environment-neutral traffic way (where possible to tell), instead of just 
> looking at money?
> And do KDE make sure its servers are run on environment-neutral resources? 
> If not, shutting them down on strike would be an act indeed, there I agree ;)

All of these are important, and I want to make 2019 the year where KDE
significantly boots our environment protection efforts, but I'd see
informing peoplke about the Global Climate Strike as an integral part of
that effort, not as something we could only do after we've finished the
other things.

Cheers,
Thomas

Communication training at Akademy on Friday

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

Dear KDE community,
Since the Nonviolent Communication training last Akademy was received
very positively, and both those who attended it and those who didn't
have the chance to attend expressed that more communication training
would be useful, we decided to invite Tilman Krakau, our trainer from
last year, to give another training (this time not limited to NVC, but
communication in general) this year.

The training will happen at Akademy on Friday, September 13th.

The training will be split into a basic and extended part, so that
people who leave around noon on Friday can still at least participate in
the first part.

If you are interested in (further) communication training, please add
yourself to the list of participants at
https://community.kde.org/Akademy/2019/TrainingCommunication

(The wiki page will be filled with more details soon, but I wanted to
inform you as soon as the day was set so that you can consider it in
your travel plans.)

Cheers,
Thomas

Re: Invent/gitlab, issues and bugzilla

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On 7/3/19 9:05 PM, Luigi Toscano wrote:
> Boudewijn Rempt ha scritto:
>> On woensdag 3 juli 2019 20:23:41 CEST Nate Graham wrote:
>>> On 7/3/19 11:53 AM, Albert Astals Cid wrote:
 If the new is much better than the old, let's just remove the old.

 As said, having two things that do the same is just confusing for everyone.
>>>
>>> I would tend to agree, and having two is super confusing.
>>
>> But are they the same things? I need both user reports and developer 
>> tasks/projects. The only task-like system github offers is the issues 
>> system, isn't it? 
> 
> Yes, but my point is that gitlab issues have been used also for bugs so far.

It seems like we all agree on the problem (different KDE projects using
different tools for bug reporting by users), but not on your proposed
solution (disabling issues in GitLab completely) since that would affect
our use of GitLab Issues for internal issue / task tracking.

So, proposed alternative solution: We make sure that all projects that
want a public-facing bug tracker have a product on bugzilla, and that
they communicate that as the only bug tracker to users for the time being.

Then we can still use GitLab Issues for internal purposes.

And evaluating whether we want to switch over to GitLab Issues for
public-facing bug tracking eventually would be an independent discussion.

Would that work?

Cheers,
Thomas

Re: Contributor training feedback data

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On 6/30/19 11:33 AM, Kenny Duffus wrote:
> On Saturday, 29 June 2019 23:33:13 BST Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
>> We (the board) have not decided yet which trainings to offer at this
>> year's Akademy (but we have decided that we do want to offer trainings
>> in general!). We've gone through the survey results, thought about what
>> made sense to us as well and where we might find suitable trainers, and
>> are now in the process of trying to find trainers.
>>
> 
> Hi
> 
> Unfortunately this looks like it will result in similar problems with 
> training as last year where many people couldn't attend things they were 
> interested in
> 
> If people don't know well in advance (months) what training there will be 
> and on what days, they can't plan their dates for travel & accommodation 
> at Akademy

Good point. We could speed up the process by getting the community
involved in finding and getting in touch with trainers, so it's not all
on the board.
We'll see if we can find a good process for that.

Cheers,
Thomas

Re: Testbed Discourse Server For Trial discuss.kde.org.uk

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On 7/1/19 9:02 AM, Valorie Zimmerman wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> On Sun, Jun 30, 2019 at 10:48 AM Luigi Toscano  <mailto:luigi.tosc...@tiscali.it>> wrote:
> 
> Nate Graham ha scritto:
> > On 6/29/19 4:04 PM, Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> >> Hi Jonathan,
> >> Thank you for setting this up!
> >> I've recently had the opportunity to experience Discourse in
> action in
> >> another community, and found it to fulfill most of the things we
> found
> >> lacking in both of our current forum and mailing list software (which
> >> makes sense given that they're both age-old and haven't seen much
> - if
> >> any - exciting feature development in years).
> >> So I (personally, not speaking for the board) would really like us to
> >> test it out and see if we can replace first our forum and
> hopefully some
> >> day Mailman with Discourse.
> >> Thanks,
> >> Thomas
> >>
> >
> > +1, I'm also quite in favor of this. Having used it in other
> communities, I
> > find that it works well as a sort of half-forum-half-mailing-list
> tool that
> > can succeed in replacing both.
> 
> I may have already asked this: do we have a plan to evaluate also
> hyperkitty
> (mailman 3 frontend) before completely replacing also the mailing
> lists? It
> provides a forum-like interface.
> 
> -- 
> Luigi
> 
> 
> I'm using the Mailman 3/hyperkitty for genealogy mail lists at
> Rootsweb.com. I was not in on the setup, which IMO is not done very well
> at Rootsweb, so maybe these comments are unfair.
> 
> So far though, I Do Not Like MM3, or hyperkittly. If there is a way to
> administer lists via the commandline, as we have now with Listadmin,
> I've not found it. Hyperkitty (besides being an extraordinarily bad
> name) is not a good forum replacement at ALL. The search barely works,
> for starters. True, the way our KDE list archives is set up is bad as well. 
> 
> That said, I'm not sold on Discourse. I've tried the one ubuntu has set
> up [1], and have not yet figured out how to get the email interface to
> work correctly. Aha, while clicking around in it I see that they didn't
> enable that feature. I find Discourse hard to move around it. I keep
> having to mess with the URL to get back to Home. So far, old mailman
> lists + IRC/T/Matrix wins. 
> 
> Whether Discourse could replace our KDE forums is an open question.

I haven't really tried Discourse's mailing features yet (apart from
getting digests of new forum messages), all I can say is that the forum
part is far better than our current forum (which isn't even
mobile-friendly at all).
That's why I said "forum first, mailman maybe at some point in the future".

Re: Contributor training feedback data

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On 6/20/19 6:22 PM, Roman Gilg wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> last Akademy there were some contributor trainings going on. And
> afterwards there was a poll on how people liked it.
> 
> It this poll data available somewhere? And what trainings are planned
> for Akademy 2019?
> 
> Thanks in advance.
> 
> Roman

Hi Roman,
Sorry for letting you wait so long for an answer. At first I wanted to
wait until I had time to do a proper analysis of the results, but then I
realized that I wouldn't find that time in the foreseeable future.
That's why I now decided to just put the raw data CSVs as well as PDFs
with the reports generated by LimeSurvey, plus a quantification of the
open answers to what training topics people wished for on share.kde.org.
You can find everything here: https://share.kde.org/s/2cxNCTLe3k9SEwf

We (the board) have not decided yet which trainings to offer at this
year's Akademy (but we have decided that we do want to offer trainings
in general!). We've gone through the survey results, thought about what
made sense to us as well and where we might find suitable trainers, and
are now in the process of trying to find trainers.

I hope this helps you.

Cheers,
Thomas

Re: Testbed Discourse Server For Trial discuss.kde.org.uk

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On 6/19/19 5:44 PM, Jonathan Riddell wrote:
> I've set up a Discourse server for a trail to see if it's something we
> should add to KDE's infrastructure.
> 
> Discourse is a modern Free Software web forum and mailing list app.
> 
> Give it a trial now at http://discuss.kde.org.uk/
> 
> If you want to be an admin do ask me.
> 
> If you want a new Category (equivalent to a forum topic or mailing list)
> do ask me.
> 
> There's no integration with identity (yet) so you'll need to set up a
> new account.
> 
> If you want to use it as a mailing list replacement you need to Watch
> the category.  Categories will need to have an e-mail address added to
> be able to start new threads on from e-mail so ask if you want that.  To
> get a mailing list experience turn it on in Preferences -> emails ->
> Enable mailing list mode
> 
> Eventually I would like to see this replace forum.kde.org
>  and allow projects to move their mailing lists
> over to it as they wish.
> 
> Jonathan

Hi Jonathan,
Thank you for setting this up!
I've recently had the opportunity to experience Discourse in action in
another community, and found it to fulfill most of the things we found
lacking in both of our current forum and mailing list software (which
makes sense given that they're both age-old and haven't seen much - if
any - exciting feature development in years).
So I (personally, not speaking for the board) would really like us to
test it out and see if we can replace first our forum and hopefully some
day Mailman with Discourse.
Thanks,
Thomas

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

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Samstag, 11. August 2018 14:25:16 CEST Valorie Zimmerman wrote:

> In addition there is the widespread opinion that amateurs are better
> than professionals for KDE, and that if there are professionals
> working on software, that the volunteers will leave. In fact, this
> idea seems widespread in the FOSS world. From what I have seen,
> professionals can *increase* volunteer contributions, by laying the
> groundwork for successful onboarding, by paying attention to details
> which volunteers left undone or did improperly, by doing work that no
> volunteers have the skills or interest in doing, in ensuring that
> documentation is up-to-date, by thinking of tasks such as training
> sessions for bug-triage, documentation writing, packaging, testing
> days and so forth.

Hi Valorie,
Thank you for bringing this topic up!

Interestingly, in almost all conversations I had at Akademy about this topic, 
people were actually very positive about the prospect of growing an ecosystem 
of companies around KDE. Maybe it's the difference between the people who are 
still active and want to see people spend paid time on KDE, and those who are 
mostly watching KDE from the sidelines and want to go back to "the good old 
timeṣ"™ when KDE was just a bunch of enthusiastic geeks who wanted to change 
the world as a hobby.

For those people who claim that having paid people work on a Free Software 
project will inevitably kill all motivation for volunteers, let's look at some 
examples within or close to KDE:

1. Plasma: If you look at the percentage of regular Plasma developers who are 
employed by Blue Systems, you could indeed think that nobody wants to work on 
it as a volunteer anymore.
However, the reality is the other way around: It's not that volunteers stay 
clear of Plasma because it has so many paid developers, it's rather that 
whenever a very active Plasma contributor is looking for a job, chances are 
high that they get that job from Blue Systems, to be able to spend more time 
doing what they've been doing before as volunteers. Kai Uwe or Roman are the 
latest examples.
In fact, as far as I know, all of the Plasma developers who work for Blue 
Systems have started working on Plasma as volunteers and then got hired by 
Blue Systems.

2. Krita: Krita has become very popular as a volunteer project, until it grew 
to a point where it became difficult to sustain it purely with volunteer work. 
The team started the Krita Foundation to raise money to pay for 1.5 (or 2.5, 
different sources have told me different numbers) people to work on it.
It continues to grow, and I have not heard of volunteer contributions going 
down since then.

3. ownCloud / Nextcloud: ownCloud was envisioned as a company-driven project 
from early on, but always aimed to have a healthy base of volunteer 
contributors. However, their "open core" model with a mandatory contributor 
license agreement, together with a decision-making process that wasn't as open 
as outside contributors had hoped, resulted in the community not shaping up as 
envisioned.
So what Frank did was fork out Nextcloud, without a CLA, fully open source and 
with more focus on community, but still with a paid core team. As far as I 
know, this has worked out exceptionally well and they now have both a 
commercially successful company _and_ a big, happy volunteer community.

4. Kontact: The current business client for the Kolab server is still based on 
Kontact, yet most of its development is currently volunteer-driven. 

5. KOffice / Calligra: Their story is very complex, so much so that I wouldn't 
dare trying to retrace it from my limited insight into it. I'd rather leave 
that to the team. I'm just listing it here so that people won't think I've 
left it out on purpose.

What I gather from these examples is that having a company involved in the 
development of a KDE- or KDE-related project does neither guarantee its 
success nor its failure. Whether it's a positive or negative influence (or 
both) very much depends on the way that the company engages with the 
community.
If the company takes full control of development and only maybe accepts a 
small patch here and there from outside volunteers, then of course volunteer 
contributors will lose their motivation pretty quickly.

If, however, the company makes sure that people employed by it still consider 
themselves as part of the community just like everybody else - which is what 
Blue Systems does, for example - they can happily coexist with volunteer 
contributors.

I - this is my personal opinion, not necessarily the board's stance - fully 
agree with Valorie that a healthy ecosystem of companies and/or foundations 
around KDE, with paid contributors collaborating with KDE's volunteers, would 
not just be a good thing, but actually necessary for us to be able to compete 
with other products (be they FOSS or proprietary) that are doing the same.

So what I'd like us to do, instead of cowering in fear of the dangers 

Re: Twitter access

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Mittwoch, 18. Juli 2018 15:16:39 CEST Jonathan Riddell wrote:
> I'll stop doing KDE promo again then.  KDE shouldn't have unnamed
> higher powers who block community contributions.
> 
> Jonathan

Hi Jonathan,
Nobody has wronged you. There are no unnamed higher powers blocking community 
contributions. As Paul has explained in detail in his reply to your email, 
there is a standard procedure within the Promo community that everyone 
follows. You are not treated any different from the rest of the team.

It's a team effort, and as long as you can act as part of that team, your 
contributions are valued and welcome like everyone else's.

We are finally at a point where we have a promo team truly acting as a team, 
and it would be great if you could be part of that team.

Best,
Thomas
 
> On 16 July 2018 at 10:26, Jonathan Riddell  wrote:
> > Hi KDE community I'd like to request access to post on the
> > @kdecommunity Twitter account.  This is to make announcements of
> > Plasma releases, our flagship product.  I already do this on G+ and
> > Facebook.  I'm told there are higher powers who have to approve this
> > but I've no idea who they are or how to get a message to them, they
> > seem to have not received my requests so far.  I've been an active
> > contributoir to kde-promo for about 15 years after the only
> > contributor.
> > 
> > Jonathan

Re: What could be helpful to get contributor training on?

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

> On 9. Mar 2018, at 09:48, Boudewijn Rempt  wrote:
> 
> On Thursday, 8 March 2018 22:39:08 CET Lydia Pintscher wrote:
>> 
>> The board.
>> 
> 
> Ah. I'm sorry -- that wasn't clear at all to me in the original mail. I just 
> was really surprised because it didn't seem to have had much to do with what 
> was discussed on the e.V mailing list. But it's clear now, at least to me.
> 
Sorry for the bad communication. I failed to set the context properly before 
asking for input.

Re: What could be helpful to get contributor training on?

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

Hi Paul

> On 9. Mar 2018, at 09:22, Paul Brown <paul.br...@kde.org> wrote:
> 
> On jueves, 8 de marzo de 2018 21:40:00 (CET) Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
>> Dear KDE community,
>> With the $200k donation from the Pineapple Fund [1], we have some money
>> available which we can invest in KDE’s future. We are currently thinking
>> about what to best invest in, and one of the ideas was to pay for
>> professional training in some skills for contributors. For that, we’d like
>> to know which skills would be most useful for us to have in order to take
>> KDE further?
>> 
>> This can be soft or hard skills, but it would probably make sense to train
>> things which we don’t already learn naturally from our collaboration
>> anyway.
>> 
>> So, what do you think?
>> 
>> Thank you in advance for your input,
>> Thomas
> 
> Hello Thomas,
> 
> Would these courses have to be distance, online learning? Or could they be 
> intensive, on-site courses organised at KDE gatherings, like Akademy, 
> something like two day workshops?
> 
The thought process is currently at the stage of "Using funds for training 
might be a good idea”, so from the board’s perspective, anything is possible :)
We’d have to see what would be the most efficient/effective overall.

> On my wishlist would be:
> 
> - *Creative writing* - to help everybody improve their blogging and 
> presentation-composing skills. 
> 
> - *Public speaking* - to help everybody deliver better talks.
> 
> If we are going to try and captivate larger audiences, we want to be able to 
> communicate better. Having developers, that already have a deep knowledge of 
> their own technology, be able to explain it in clear and interesting way, 
> will 
> help with that at internal and external events.
> 
> I know for a fact that Sun used to do this for people they sent to speaking 
> venues, and you could always tell. 
> 
> I know many people think they can write because the have knowledge of 
> spelling 
> and grammar, or speak in public because they have... well, mouths, but this 
> is 
> a fallacy. There are plenty of things to learn to know how to structure and 
> compose a text, be it for a blog post, product announcement or script for a 
> presentation; as well as plenty of techniques you can acquire to make your 
> talks more interesting, bot at the organisational level and during the 
> execution.
> 
> I, for one, would love to attend courses on this.
> 
Thank you for these ideas!

What could be helpful to get contributor training on?

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

Dear KDE community,
With the $200k donation from the Pineapple Fund [1], we have some money 
available which we can invest in KDE’s future.
We are currently thinking about what to best invest in, and one of the ideas 
was to pay for professional training in some skills for contributors.
For that, we’d like to know which skills would be most useful for us to have in 
order to take KDE further?

This can be soft or hard skills, but it would probably make sense to train 
things which we don’t already learn naturally from our collaboration anyway.

So, what do you think?

Thank you in advance for your input,
Thomas

Call for Sessions for LibrePlanet 2018

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

Dear community,
John Sullivan, the Free Software Foundation's representative in our Advisory 
Board, pointed us to the Call for Sessions for the 2018 edition of the FSF's 
annual LibrePlanet conference [1] and invited us to send in sessions. The call 
ends Thursday, November 9th, 2017 at 10:00 EST (14:00 UTC), 
So if you have an interesting topic for a session at LibrePlanet and would be 
able to be in Cambridge, MA on March 24th and 25th next year, please send in 
your proposal now!
Cheers,
Thomas

[1] https://my.fsf.org/node/18

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Re: Is there interest in participating in Google Code-in this year?

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Fri, Oct 13, 2017 at 10:28 AM, Jens Reuterberg  wrote:
> Well so I can't do much in that area I feel - unless its open to design tasks.
> If that is the case ("design tasks" is ok), count me in.

It _is_ open to design tasks! This is actually the category where we
usually have most trouble finding tasks, so yes, you'd be definitely
most welcome to participate if we appplied.

Re: time to review the goal proposals

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Mittwoch, 4. Oktober 2017 01:29:50 CEST Valorie Zimmerman wrote:
> Wow, this is a GREAT lineup of possible goals. It will be difficult to
> choose just one. On the other hand, we will have this list as a
> resource when it's time to choose the next goal.

The plan was to choose three, actually, not just one.
See http://blog.lydiapintscher.de/2017/08/20/evolving-kde-lets-set-some-goals/

Re: Let's set some goals

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

I’ve also snuck in another goal today ( https://phabricator.kde.org/T7126 ),
sorry for being a bit late.
Cheers,
Thomas

> On 30. Sep 2017, at 18:05, Lydia Pintscher  wrote:
> 
> On Sat, Sep 30, 2017 at 3:48 PM, Andy B  wrote:
>> Are you ok that I submit my proposals on Monday? I am traveling at the
>> moment, but I really want to turn something in.
>> 
>> Thank you
> 
> Ok. But please get it in on Monday.
> 
> 
> Cheers
> Lydia
> 
> -- 
> Lydia Pintscher - http://about.me/lydia.pintscher
> KDE e.V. Board of Directors / KDE Community Working Group
> http://kde.org - http://open-advice.org

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

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

> On 30. Aug 2017, at 01:34, Thomas Pfeiffer <thomas.pfeif...@kde.org> 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


I think I have now incorporated all of your feedback into the proposal.
If you like the result, it would be cool if you could add yourself to the "I am 
interested” or ideally the "I am willing to put work into this” sections of the 
ticket.
If you have more input for improving the proposal, keep it coming!

Re: Randa Meeting: Notes on Voice Control in KDE

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

> On 16. Sep 2017, at 00:08, Aditya Mehra  wrote:
> 
> Hi Everyone :), 
> 
> Firstly i would like to start of by introducing myself, I am Aditya, i have 
> been working on the Mycroft - Plasma integration project since some time 
> which includes the front-end work like having a plasmoid as well as back-end 
> integration with various plasma desktop features (krunner, activities, 
> kdeconnect, wallpapers etc) . 
> 
> I have carefully read through the email and would like to add some points to 
> this discussion (P.S Please don't consider me partial to the mycroft project 
> in anyway, I am not employed by them but am contributing full time out of my 
> romantics for Linux as a platform and the will to have voice control over my 
> own plasma desktop environment in general). Apologies for the long email in 
> advance but here are some of my thoughts and points i would like to add to 
> the discussion: 
> 
> a)  Mycroft AI is an open source digital assistant trying to bridge the gap 
> between proprietary operating systems and their AI assistant / voice control 
> platforms such as "Google Now, Siri, Cortanta, Bixbi" etc in an open source 
> environment.
> 
> b) The mycroft project is based on the same principals as having a 
> conversational interface with your computer but by  maintaining privacy and 
> independence based on the "Users" own choice. (explained ahead)
> 
> c) The basic ways how mycroft works:
> Mycroft AI is based of python and runs four services mainly: 
> i) websocket server more commonly referred to as the messagebus which is 
> responsible for accepting and creating websocket server and connections to 
> talk between clients(example: plasmoid, mobile, hardware etc) 
> ii) The second service is called the 'Adapt' intent parser that acts like 
> an platform to understand the users intent for example "open firefox" or 
> "create a new tab" or "dict mode"  with multi language support that performs 
> the action that a user states. 
> iii) The third service is the STT (Speech to text service): This service 
> is responsible for the speech to text actions that are sent over to adapt 
> interface after conversion  to text for performing the' specified intent
> iv.) The fourth service is called "Mimic" that much like the  "espeak TTS 
> engine"  performs the action of converting text to speech, except mimic does 
> it with customized voices with support for various formats.  
> 
> d) The mycroft project is based on the Apache license which means its 
> completely open and customizable by every interested party in  forking their 
> own customizable environment or even drastically rewriting parts of the back 
> end that they feel would be suitable for their own user case environment and 
> including the ability to host their own instance if they feel mycroft-core 
> upstream is not able to reach those levels of functionality. Additionally 
> mycroft can also be configured to run headless 
> 
> e) With regards to privacy concerns and the use of Google STT, the upstream 
> mycroft community is already working towards moving to Mozilla deep voice / 
> speech as their main STT engine as it gets more mature (one of their top 
> ranked goals), but on the side lines there  are already forks that are using 
> STT interfaces completely offline for example the "jarbas ai fork" and 
> everyone is the community is trying to integrate with more open source voice 
> trained models like CMU sphinx etc.  This sadly i would call a battle of data 
> availability and community contribution to voice vs the already having a 
> google trained engine with advantages of propitiatory multi language support 
> and highly trained voice models. 
> 
> f) The upstream mycroft community is currently very new in terms of larger 
> open source projects but is very open to interacting with everyone from the 
> KDE community and developers to extend their platform to the plasma desktop 
> environment and are committed to providing this effort and their support in 
> all ways, including myself who is constantly looking forward to integrating 
> even more with plasma and KDE applications and projects in all fronts 
> including cool functionality accessibility and dictation mode etc. 
> 
> g) Some goodies about mycroft i would like to add: The "hey mycroft" wake 
> word is completely customizable and you can name it to whatever suits your 
> taste (what ever phonetic names pocket sphinx accepts) additionally as a 
> community you can also decide to not use mycroft servers or services to 
> interact at all and can define your own api settings for stuff like wolfram 
> alpha wake words and other api calls etc including data telemetric's and STT 
> there is no requirements to follow Google STT or default Mycroft Home Api 
> services even currently.
> 
> h) As the project is based on python, the best way i have come across is 
> interacting with all plasma services is through Dbus interfaces and 

Re: RFC: Small change to KDE Manifesto Commitments

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

> On 15. Sep 2017, at 04:34, Valorie Zimmerman  
> wrote:
> 
> On Thu, Sep 14, 2017 at 4:17 PM, Albert Astals Cid  wrote:
>> El divendres, 15 de setembre de 2017, a les 1:10:32 CEST, Boudhayan Gupta va
>> escriure:
>>> While we're at it, might I suggest also changing the first line to
>>> "[Respect/Abide by] the KDE Code of Conduct" instead of "Support"?
>> 
>> Any linguist on the room?
>> 
>> Can you explain why you think it matters?
>> 
>> Cheers,
>>  Albert
> 
> I'm not a linguist, but if we are making other changes, then I support
> making the change from "support" to "respect and abide by" which is
> stronger and more specific.
> 
> The suggestion to add "Support the KDE Vision and Mission" is a good
> one, so I support both changes.
> 
> Valorie

I’m also for adding the Vision / Mission support and for strengthening the 
wording on the CoC, though I find “respect and abide by” a bit too much. I 
thought Boudhayan was just suggesting to use either of those.

So maybe “abide by”, as that already for me kinda implies “respect” (we’re not 
exactly the kind of people who abide by rules they don’t even respect).

Re: Randa Meeting: Notes on Voice Control in KDE

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

> On 15. Sep 2017, at 12:54, Sebastian Kügler  wrote:
> 
> Hey!
> 
> Interesting discussion. Did you guys factor in the work done by Mycroft
> on that front? I think there's a great deal of overlap, and already
> some really interesting results shown for example in the Mycroft
> Plasmoid:

Exactly. Please do not reinvent the wheel here. This is a job for Mycroft, 
which has already solved the vast majority of problems you’d need to solve, and 
is already proven to work in Plasma.
Duplicating that work would just be a waste.

The big problem that Mycroft currently has is that it uses Google for the voice 
recognition, but our goal there should be to push for adoption of Mozilla 
Common Voice in Mycroft, instead of redoing everything Mycroft does.

So yea, I’m 1.000% for allowing voice control in KDE applications as well as 
Plasma, but I’m 99% sure that the way to go there is Mycroft.

Cheers,
Thomas

> On Friday, September 15, 2017 9:39:13 AM CEST Frederik Gladhorn wrote:
>> We here at Randa had a little session about voice recognition and
>> control of applications.
>> We tried to roughly define what we mean by that - a way of talking to
>> the computer as Siri/Cortana/Alexa/Google Now and other projects
>> demonstrate, conversational interfaces. We agreed that want this and
>> people expect it more and more.
>> Striking a balance between privacy and getting some data to enable
>> this is a big concern, see later.
>> While there is general interest (almost everyone here went out of
>> their way to join the disussion), it didn't seem like anyone here at
>> the moment wanted to drive this forward themselves, so it may just
>> not go anywhere due to lack of people willing to put in time.
>> Otherwise it may be something worth considering as a community goal.
>> 
>> 
>> The term "intent" seems to be OK for the event that arrives at the
>> application. More on that later.
>> 
>> We tried to break down the problem and arrived at two possible
>> scenarios: 1) voice recognition -> string representation in user's
>> language 1.1) translation to English -> string representation in
>> English 2) English sentence -> English string to intent
>> 
>> or alternatively:
>> 1) voice recognition -> string representation in user's language
>> 2) user language sentence -> user language string to intent
>> 
>> 3) appliations get "intents" and react to them.
>> 
>> So basically one open question is if we need a translation step or if
>> we can directly translate from a string in any language to an intent.
>> 
>> We do not think it feasible nor desirable to let every app do its own
>> magic. Thus a central "daemon" processes does step 1, listenting to
>> audio and translating to a string representation.
>> Then, assuming we want to do a translation step 1.1 we need to find a
>> way to do the translation.
>> 
>> For step 1 mozilla deep voice seems like a candidate, it seems to be
>> quickly progressing.
>> 
>> We assume that mid-term we need machine learning for step 2 - gather
>> sample sentences (somewhere between thousands and millions) to enable
>> the step of going from sentence to intent.
>> We might get away with a set of simple heuristics to get this
>> kick-started, but over time we would want to use machine learning to
>> do this step. Here it's important to gather enough sample sentences
>> to be able to train a model. We basically assume we need to encourage
>> people to participate and send us the recognized sentences to get
>> enough raw material to work with.
>> 
>> On interesting point is that ideally we can keep context, so that the
>> users can do follow up queries/commands.
>> Some of the context may be expressed with state machines (talk to
>> Emanuelle about that).
>> Clearly the whole topic needs research, we want to build on other
>> people's stuff and cooperate as much as possible.
>> 
>> Hopefully we can find some centralized daemon thing to run on Linux
>> and do a lot of the work in step 1 and 2 for us.
>> Step 3 requires work on our side (in Qt?) for sure.
>> What should intents look like? lists of property bags?
>> Should apps have a way of saying which intents they support?
>> 
>> A starting point could be to use the common media player interface to
>> control the media player using voice.
>> Should exposing intents be a dbus thing to start with?
>> 
>> For querying data, we may want to interface with wikipedia, music
>> brainz, etc, but is that more part of the central daemon or should
>> there be an app?
>> 
>> We probably want to be able to start applications when the appropriate
>> command arrives "write a new email to Volker" launches Kube with the
>> composer open and ideally the receiver filled out, or it may ask the
>> user "I don't know who that is, please help me...".
>> So how do applications define what intents they process?
>> How can applications ask for details? after receiving an intent they
>> may need to ask for more data.
>> 
>> There is also the kpurpose 

Re: Survey for prioritization of requirements for an IM/chat solution for KDE

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

Here are the results of the survey:
https://sessellift.wordpress.com/2017/09/05/results-of-the-requirements-survey-for-a-kde-wide-chat-solution/
Now it's time for us to find a solution that fits the profile!
Cheers,
Thomas


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

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

> On 30. Aug 2017, at 22:10, Alexander Neundorf  wrote:
> 
> 
> Not to forget Kitware, which is strong in Open Science and research.


…which is why it already said in the proposal
"Much of the software they use is already Qt-based (see e.g. Kitware)” :)

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

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

> On 30. Aug 2017, at 22:09, Alexander Neundorf  wrote:
> 
> On 2017 M08 30, Wed 16:20:07 CEST Luca Beltrame wrote:
> ...
>> In fact I think it would be worthwhile to present such options. I've
>> seen KDE software used in places I did not expect (e.g. a research
>> institute in agrobiology I visited a few years ago).
>> 
>> That said, I think it would be also a good idea to see "what makes our
>> software palatable for R" (which is potential reason 2 in your Phab
>> task). At least in my field (bioinformatics) most do not even know it
>> exists.
> 
> Maybe most of them are using Windows ?
> The full proposal also mentions Plasma, which basically means we would not 
> only try to get them to use KDE applications, but also to switch their OS to 
> Linux...
> So, does this goal include supporting Windows as a first class target 
> platform 
> ?

Excellent point!
I’d clearly say yes, it should also support Windows as a target platform!
As I said in the proposal, I had wanted to use Kile and RKWard on my Windows 
machine at the university (which I could not switch to Linux because of 
institute policy) but I couldn’t because it was too difficult for me to make 
them run there.
So providing better Windows support for the scientific apps we have would 
certainly be a valuable goal.

I have now added

  - Make sure that our relevant applications are easy to find and install on 
Windows, since many researchers and students are still locked into Windows

to the possible solutions for reason 2

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

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

> On 30. Aug 2017, at 07:21, Luca Beltrame <lbeltr...@kde.org> wrote:
> 
> Il giorno Wed, 30 Aug 2017 01:34:37 +0200
> Thomas Pfeiffer <thomas.pfeif...@kde.org> ha
> scritto:
> 
>> 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
> 
> Interesting. I've been using (and having colleague using ;)KDE software
> for a while in a small research no profit.

Cool!

> A question arises: is this
> aimed at technical fields like CS and the like, or all research in
> general?

Establishing our software in the technical (or I’d “hard sciences” in general, 
because all scientists nowadays need some programming knowledge) is certainly 
most effective for recruiting code contributors, but I would certainly not 
restrict the effort to them.
WikiToLearn, for example, is useful for all fields, and so is Kile (though 
there are certainly fields where TeX is not as common as in the more technical 
fields). And RKward is useful for all social sciences.

And I think there are enough benefits to establishing ourselves in all fields 
of research to make it worthwhile.

> 
> Depending on the field, things may be slightly different wrt
> requirements.
> 
True.

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

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

> On 30. Aug 2017, at 03:12, Valorie Zimmerman <valorie.zimmer...@gmail.com> 
> wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Aug 29, 2017 at 4:34 PM, Thomas Pfeiffer
> <thomas.pfeif...@kde.org> 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.

Thanks!

> I think Wikitolearn is a natural part of KDE
> leadership here,

Yes, absolutely! Of course I had WtL in mind as well when developing the idea, 
but then totally forgot to add it to the proposal. Shame on me. I’ve fixed that 
now.

> 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
> entire research cycle. I can't tell if they have an FOSS connections
> or not, but that orientation to openness and sharing is built into the
> scientific process and the academy.
> 
They have “Free and open source” written on their front page, so they’ve at 
least heard of the concept ;)
Open Science in general does not necessarily have to include FOSS, but for 
anyone who takes it seriously, it kinda does, because sharing your data and 
step-by-step process while still using software that does things you cannot 
check partially defeats the purpose of the whole endeavor.

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

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

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

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Re: Survey for prioritization of requirements for an IM/chat solution for KDE

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Freitag, 25. August 2017 12:46:16 CEST Kenny Duffus wrote:
> On Friday, 18 August 2017 01:11:39 BST Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> > Hi everyone,
> > I've finally managed to enter all of our proposed requirements for a
> > KDE-wide primary IM/chat solution into a tool for creating Kano
> > surveys:
> > 
> > http://www.kanosurvey.com/?id=3959
> 
> Do you have a planned "closing date" for the survey to let people know
> when they should make sure they have done it by?

I have now finally found the time to blog about the survey and there I have 
given people time until Thursday to fill out the survey.

Cheers,
Thomas

[1] 
https://sessellift.wordpress.com/2017/08/28/the-quest-for-a-common-chatim-solution/



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Survey for prioritization of requirements for an IM/chat solution for KDE

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

Hi everyone,
I've finally managed to enter all of our proposed requirements for a KDE-wide 
primary IM/chat solution into a tool for creating Kano surveys:

http://www.kanosurvey.com/?id=3959

The Kano model [1] categorizes features not just in "must have" and "nice to 
have" but into five categories along two dimensions.
This results in a more holistic view on the requirements, at the expense of 
making the survey quite long because participants have to rate each feature on 
two dimensions.

So, please fill in the survey, but be aware that overall you'll have to answer 
a whopping 106 questions (rating 53 requirements on two dimensions each), so 
please reserve enough time.
The survey took me 13 minutes to complete, but of course I've already read the 
requirements countless times, so you might need a bit more time.

Thank you in advance for your participation,
Thomas

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kano_model

Re: Telemetry Policy

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

> On 17. Aug 2017, at 17:38, Mirko Boehm - KDE <mi...@kde.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi, 
> 
>> On 17. Aug 2017, at 01:46, Thomas Pfeiffer <thomas.pfeif...@kde.org 
>> <mailto:thomas.pfeif...@kde.org>> wrote:
>> 
>> Hi Valorie,
>> Even if opt-out for some data is legally and even morally fine, it does not 
>> align with the values we communicate to our users:
>> Unlike Mozilla's Mission, our Vision mentions privacy explicitly, and we're 
>> striving to make privacy our USP.
> 
> We seem to assume a contradiction between telemetry and privacy. I believe 
> this is a knee-jerk reaction. We can implement telemetry in a way that 
> privacy is not violated. In fact, I would say that it follows from our vision 
> that we should do this.
> 

The problem is: I expect users to have the same knee-jerk reaction. I don’t see 
us being able to explain to users that actually their privacy is perfectly safe 
before they freak out.
Privacy-minded Free Software users have freaked out in the past over things 
which objectively speaking were not a huge deal.
It’s emotion more than rational arguments

Re: Telemetry Policy

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Mittwoch, 16. August 2017 09:33:02 CEST Valorie Zimmerman wrote:
> Hi all, Mozilla has done a lot of work on telemetry, and we might be
> able to use some of their findings. On this page:
> https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Data_Collection they break down the
> data they might possibly collect into four buckets - technical (such
> as crashes), user interaction, web activity, and sensitive (personal
> data).
> 
> This bit might be relevant to our discussion: "Categories 1 & 2
> (Technical & Interaction data)
> Pre-Release & Release: Data may default on, provided the data is
> exclusively in these categories (it cannot be in any other category).
> In Release, an opt-out must be available for most types of Technical
> and Interaction data. "
> 
> I think the entire page might be enlightening to this discussion. I
> believe our analysis of needs should be more fine-grained, and that
> some parts of what we need can be "default on" especially for
> pre-release testing. For releases, we can provide an opt-out.

Hi Valorie,
Even if opt-out for some data is legally and even morally fine, it does not 
align with the values we communicate to our users:
Unlike Mozilla's Mission, our Vision mentions privacy explicitly, and we're 
striving to make privacy our USP.

Therefore I agree with others who replied in this thread: We should respect 
privacy unnecessarily much rather than too little.

In the end, of course, it's a matter of how we present this opt-in. If it's an 
option buried in some settings dialog, we might as well not do it at all.

If we, however - like Firefox does -, pfominently present that choice to users 
the first time they run one of our applications or desktop environment and try 
to make clear why that data collection is important for us, I don't see why we 
could not convince a relevant number of users to opt in.
Sure, we'll get less data than with an opt-out scheme, but let's try it out 
first before we go for the option that carries a significant PR risk.

> Other more sensitive data will need to be opt-in. I think it's a
> mistake to treat all the data we might want all in the same way.

Content (web activity for Mozilla) and personal information should not be opt-
anything but not collected at all.

Cheers,
Thomas

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

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

Hey everyone,
just a quick progress update:

I have now cleaned up  https://notes.kde.org/p/KDE_IM_requirements by removing 
duplicates, removing all discussion / comments (so only plain requirements are 
left) and rewording most requirements to that they have a somewhat common 
wording.

The next step will be to turn this into a Kano survey which will be used to 
prioritize them (will do that tomorrow).

Cheers,
Thomas

Re: [kde-community] Re: radical proposal: move IRC to Rocket.Chat

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

> On 15 Aug 2017, at 12:09, Jonathan Riddell <j...@jriddell.org> wrote:
> 
> On 15 August 2017 at 10:44, Thomas Pfeiffer <thomas.pfeif...@kde.org> wrote:
>> The VDG has contributed to the Etherpad, so their requirements are covered 
>> in there.
> 
> How to evaluate if Matrix/Riot covers them?  Stuff like "Have a UI
> that someone who is < 20 years old and cares about the looks of a UI
> would use" is hard to evaluate and much of the rest is also about feel
> which is hard to quantify.

That one was my initial copy & paste from the mailing list thread. I admit it’s 
not very good and I’ll have to make it more objective. Other VDG members were 
better at that because they didn’t come from the emotion-laden email thread.

In general the Etherpad has to be cleaned up, the more discussion-y parts have 
to be removed.

I’ll go over it tonight and make sure it’s in a usable shape, but any help with 
that is welcome, so everybody please feel free to edit anything that isn’t an 
objective requirement to turn it into one, and just delete the comments.

Re: [kde-community] Re: radical proposal: move IRC to Rocket.Chat

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

> On 15 Aug 2017, at 11:42, Jonathan Riddell  wrote:
> 
> On Fri, Aug 11, 2017 at 09:49:11PM +0900, Eike Hein wrote:
>> 
>> I've given some more thought to Matrix as a contender and I'm
>> increasingly liking this option among the available contenders.
> 
> We have the possibility of moving to Matrix and allowing individual
> IRC channels to move to real Matrix channels in their own time.
> 
> But alas we've still not heard from the groups who have chosen not to
> use IRC to see if it would interest them. VDG, Promo, anyone?
> 

The VDG has contributed to the Etherpad, so their requirements are covered in 
there.

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

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Dienstag, 15. August 2017 00:47:15 CEST Lydia Pintscher wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 14, 2017 at 4:48 PM, Mirko Boehm - KDE  wrote:
> > I have seen only agreement and support for the porposal. What would be the
> > required steps to make an official announcement, and encourage people to
> > participate?
> 
> If I get at least two people to agree in this thread that they will
> submit a goal I commit to making the process work according to the
> proposed timeline.

*raises hand* I will.

> Next steps after that would be imho:
> * set up some infrastructure (wiki or phabricator) to collect goal ideas
> * seed with first goal ideas if possible
> * announce and promote via email/blog/social media
> * set up infrastructure to do the voting

Sounds good!

Re: radical proposal: move IRC to Rocket.Chat

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Donnerstag, 10. August 2017 18:40:34 CEST Christian Loosli wrote:
> Am Donnerstag, 10. August 2017, 17:25:14 CEST schrieb Jonathan Riddell:
> > LibreOffice are having a similar discussion
> > 
> > https://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/projects/msg02257.html
> > 
> > They want to continue using IRC though which means fragmentation would
> > continue.
> 
> Maybe someone should inform them that there are bridges available to avoid
> that.
> 
> But maybe they'd simply ignore that, multiple times, and go on, as some
> people seem to do in this thread as well *shrug*

Who ignored the possibility of bridges?
Where does Martin Steigerwald's impression come from that people want to make 
this an "either/or decision"?

The only person who seems to want to get rid of IRC is Jonathan, because he 
thinks bridges have a negative impact on the experience of both sides of them.

I never said that. Martin Klapetek never said that.
Yes, we both think that IRC is not suitable as the _only_ chat tool for a 
community in 2017.

Why do people feel something is threatened without people threatening it?

Puzzled,
Thomas

Re: radical proposal: move IRC to Rocket.Chat

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

> On 10 Aug 2017, at 15:27, Marco Martin  wrote:
> 
> On Wed, Aug 9, 2017 at 7:57 PM, Albert Astals Cid  wrote:
>> You can't expect me to read a 200 messages backlog in 20 channels just in 
>> case
>> something important was said while i was away.
>> 
>> Also one of the reasons of why i hate to use Telegram for anything that
>> "actually matters" is this "always on" feature.
> 
> that's sooo true for me as well :)
> and i guess it's the exact opposite of why so many people prefer
> telegram over irc, but on my end, i *love* that when i'm offline, i'm
> really offline
> 
I get that point. The thing is that people who have grown up with modern IM 
systems have a different mindset. They are used to not missing anything while 
away, they just expect things to be that way.

You always have the option to temporarily mute your IM app’s notifications, 
though, but you can’t set “office hours” and people don’t get a notification 
when they try to ping you while you have it muted.
We could add “Provide easy way to set availability times and communicate 
non-availability to others” to the requirements list, though. Slack has that, 
and it’s really useful especially when you use it for work.

Re: How about an inclusive "and" approach instead of fighting IRC versus something new? (was: Re: Collecting requirements for a KDE-wide instant messaging solution)

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

> On 10 Aug 2017, at 10:22, Luigi Toscano  wrote:
> 
> Il 10 agosto 2017 10:24:08 EEST, Martin Steigerwald  ha 
> scritto:
>> Martin Klapetek - 09.08.17, 16:12:
 But KDE is not a tech startup. As people correctly wrote, KDE has a
>> very
 long
 history and contributors of all age. I'd rather be that than one of
>> the
 many
 tech startups with a bunch of little to no experience but fancy new
>> chat
 systems, to be honest.  Do we really want and need to cater these
>> mystical
 tweens so much?
>>> 
>>> Yes. Old contributors will slowly fade away for various
>>> reasons, be it life, be it lack of energy, be it other commitments.
>>> Who's going to pick all those projects up after them? I'd like
>>> to think that young enthusiasts with lots of energy and potential,
>>> exactly what those heroes starting the original KDE were.
>>> And I think we should strive to attract younger talent that can
>>> be in it for the long run.
>> 
>> Well, I wonder since reading several posts here about one thing:
>> 
>> To from reading this post and other posts I got the impression that is 
>> absolutely needs to be black or white:
>> 
>> *Either* IRC and nothing else *or* something new and nothing else.
>> 
>> Seriously?
>> 
>> I mean: Seriously?
>> 
>> 
>> There has been almost completely unnoticed posts mentioning bridges. Is
>> none 
>> of this bridges capable to work well enough for KDE community use
>> cases?
> 
> I see it differently; I see people wanting something that also works with IRC 
> (so bridges, starting with the ones that already works) and people that don't 
> want IRC even if it's working in the background without then having to care 
> about it.

Who did ever say that? I certainly didn’t.
Throughout the entire discussion, I have always been 99.99% certain that we 
will end up with something that’s bridged to IRC.
Why would we not? There is not really a downside to it as long as the bridge 
works well, is there?

What I’ve argued strongly against is the standpoint that we should stick with 
the status quo.

Please participate in the requirements Etherpad (Was: Re: radical proposal: move IRC to Rocket.Chat)

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

Just in case my other email linking to the Etherpad was overlooked by some of 
you because it was buried too deep in the thread:

Let's make this discussion productive by collecting the requirements KDE has 
for a chat / IM system to become our standard in this document:

https://notes.kde.org/p/KDE_IM_requirements

This is supposed to be the basis for our evaluation and ultimately decision, 
so if you don't contribute, you don't get to complain later ;)

Cheers,
Thomas

Re: Collecting requirements for a KDE-wide instant messaging solution

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

> On 09 Aug 2017, at 16:19, Eike Hein <h...@kde.org> wrote:
> 
> On August 9, 2017 4:28:49 PM GMT+09:00, Thomas Pfeiffer 
> <thomas.pfeif...@kde.org> wrote:
>> On Mittwoch, 9. August 2017 02:14:44 CEST Jonathan Frederickson wrote:
>>> On 08/08/2017 06:19 PM, Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
>>>> - Support for a decent set of Emoji (not just the ones you can
>> create
>>>> using
>>>> ASCII chars).
>>>> Using Unicode to display them is probably okay, as long as users
>> can
>>>> choose
>>>> them from a menu in the client instead of having to paste them from
>>>> KCharSelect.
>>>> This, too, might sound like nice-to-have for many, but not having
>> them
>>>> would cut us off from the younger generation. Yes, they use them
>> even in
>>>> a "professional context". Believe me, I'm seeing it in action every
>> day
>>>> at work.
>>> I'm not sure custom emoji should be a requirement. That pretty
>> heavily
>>> limits your options, and even some of the major chat platforms
>>> (WhatsApp, iMessage, Hangouts) don't support this.
>> 
>> That's why I wrote that Unicode is okay. Unicode now has quite a range
>> of 
>> emoji and that set is growing steadily, so that's fine. Not optimal
>> because 
>> they're black and white, but fine. 
>> Just not only ASCII ones.
>> 
>> Custom emoji are nice, but definitely not a must.
> 
> This is technically completely wrong - nothing prevents Unicode emoji from 
> being colored, there are multiple color font technologies in use and Linux 
> toolkits support some of them.
> 
> A "Unicode emoji" is just a number encoded to a bit sequence. How it's 
> displayed once found is up to the client. Unicode is just how you agree on 
> exchanging and storing the character.
> 
Actually I realized this myself today when I actually looked at examples of 
Unicode emojis in some standard fonts and saw that yes, those were colored.

Okay cool then Unicode it is :)

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

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

> On 09 Aug 2017, at 09:57, Adriaan de Groot  wrote:
> 
> Can we please keep this thread limited to collecting-requirements, and 
> therefore arguing over which requirements are required or what their weight 
> is? That, rather than re-hashing the discussion elsewhere on which platform 
> with which sub- and superset of features is popular in which location.

You are right, inviting people to challenge my proposals right away wasn’t such 
a good idea in hindsight.

Furthermore, this sub-thread has reminded me again that while email is great 
for having permanently and publicly archived discussions, it is terrible for 
collecting information (any chat protocol would be equally terrible for that, 
of course) because contributions by different people tend to become spread over 
multiple emails.

So to fix this as well as to keep information gathering separate from 
discussion, let’s do the former in a format that makes more sense for it:

https://notes.kde.org/p/KDE_IM_requirements

Once we’ve agreed on a list (if we ever do), it could make sense to move that 
to the Community wiki for searchability and everything, but for brainstorming 
Etherpad usually works better.

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

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Mittwoch, 9. August 2017 09:36:42 CEST Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> On Mittwoch, 9. August 2017 01:59:00 CEST Christian Loosli wrote:
> > PS: on the importance of emojis and (animated) stickers: I can see why
> > people want them for friends and family, I love the sticker packs I have
> > on
> > Telegram. But why it is mandatory in a somewhat more professional
> > environment is a bit beyond me, people also still use e-mail despite it
> > neither supporting stickers nor emojis  (Well, unless html mails, but
> > thank
> > god that at least there we agree that it is an abomination)
> 
> It's just that young people do _not_ use email unless absolutely forced to.
> There is a reason why it can take days until someone replies to an email on
> the VDG mailing list, while the various Telegram groups the VDG is in are
> buzzing with activity.
> Or why my coworkers (professional environment, but a gaming company so
> predominantly people younger than me) hardly ever send an email but do
> everything on Slack.
> 
> Emoji certainly are not the only reason for that, but they are an important
> contributor to making communication on Telegram or Slack feel more natural
> than fun than email. Email is not fun at all.

I meant ore natural _and_ fun than email, of course. And here we have another 
thing  feature I sorely miss whenever I have to use one of the old 
communication protocols: The ability to edit my messages.

Re: radical proposal: move IRC to Rocket.Chat

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Dienstag, 8. August 2017 23:52:40 CEST Christian Loosli wrote:

> > Looking at #kde-devel just now it says:
> > <-- swati_27 (uid130066@gateway/web/irccloud.com/x-abaollxcgicrxgwg)
> > has quit (Quit: Connection closed for inactivity)
> > <-- nowrep (~david@kde/developer/drosca) has quit (Quit: Konversation
> > terminated!)
> > <-- stikonas (~gentoo@wesnoth/translator/stikonas) has quit (Quit:
> > Konversation terminated!)
> > <-- soee_ (~s...@bmi112.neoplus.adsl.tpnet.pl) has quit (Quit:
> > Konversation terminated!)
> > --> soee (~s...@bmi112.neoplus.adsl.tpnet.pl) has joined #kde-devel
> > 
> > Show that to most people and they'll just not want to know what it means
> 
> Good thing every single client coming to mind has a feature to hide these,
> including the official KDE client Konversation.
> 
> http://wiki.xkcd.com/irc/hide_join_part_messages
> 
> I'm rather sure that most other protocols, at least Telegram most certainly
> does, do also show when someone joined or parted a group, mind.
> The part they might hide is the  nick!ident@host part. This is client
> dependent, some do and quite a lot of them can hide it. So I wouldn't really
> recommend switching to a completely different protocol due to "shows
> additional info when someone joins or leaves the group".

The bigger issue seen in what Jonathan pasted isn't that IRC clients show when 
people join or leave a group. The issue is that it shows when people close 
their IRC client. And the problem is not that it shows them, but that this is 
_relevant_ because it means they can't follow the conversation anymore.

That's not the case for modern protocols where people only stop seeing the 
conversation if they actively leave the group (which is whey they do show 
that, but it happens far less often than people quitting their IRC client).

And see my requirements email for my reply to "But we have a ZNC instance". 

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

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Mittwoch, 9. August 2017 01:59:00 CEST Christian Loosli wrote:

> PS: on the importance of emojis and (animated) stickers: I can see why
> people want them for friends and family, I love the sticker packs I have on
> Telegram. But why it is mandatory in a somewhat more professional
> environment is a bit beyond me, people also still use e-mail despite it
> neither supporting stickers nor emojis  (Well, unless html mails, but thank
> god that at least there we agree that it is an abomination)

It's just that young people do _not_ use email unless absolutely forced to. 
There is a reason why it can take days until someone replies to an email on 
the VDG mailing list, while the various Telegram groups the VDG is in are 
buzzing with activity.
Or why my coworkers (professional environment, but a gaming company so 
predominantly people younger than me) hardly ever send an email but do 
everything on Slack.

Emoji certainly are not the only reason for that, but they are an important 
contributor to making communication on Telegram or Slack feel more natural 
than fun than email. Email is not fun at all.

So unless someone can give me an example of an organization younger than 10 
years, with predominantly people younger than 25, which uses email as their 
main format of text communication, I maintain my statement. 

Re: Collecting requirements for a KDE-wide instant messaging solution

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Mittwoch, 9. August 2017 02:14:44 CEST Jonathan Frederickson wrote:
> On 08/08/2017 06:19 PM, Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> > - Support for a decent set of Emoji (not just the ones you can create
> > using
> > ASCII chars).
> > Using Unicode to display them is probably okay, as long as users can
> > choose
> > them from a menu in the client instead of having to paste them from
> > KCharSelect.
> > This, too, might sound like nice-to-have for many, but not having them
> > would cut us off from the younger generation. Yes, they use them even in
> > a "professional context". Believe me, I'm seeing it in action every day
> > at work.
> I'm not sure custom emoji should be a requirement. That pretty heavily
> limits your options, and even some of the major chat platforms
> (WhatsApp, iMessage, Hangouts) don't support this.

That's why I wrote that Unicode is okay. Unicode now has quite a range of 
emoji and that set is growing steadily, so that's fine. Not optimal because 
they're black and white, but fine. 
Just not only ASCII ones.

Custom emoji are nice, but definitely not a must.

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

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

Hi everyone,
now that hopefully most of the emotional arguments in fiery support of one 
protocol or another have been exchanged, I'd suggest we move things towards a 
practical approach and ask ourselves:

What are the requirements that KDE has for an instant messaging / chat system 
for it to be viable as our main channel for real-time communication for the 
foreseeable future?

Here is what I could come up with, feel free to add new requirements or 
challenge the ones I'm listing.

Must-have:

- FOSS clients or at least API available for desktop as well as mobile
These clients must 
 - have a UI that someone who is < 20 years old and cares about the looks of a 
UI would use (or if those don't exist, we need to have people willing and able 
to write them before switching) 
 - run smoothly on computers that can run most other KDE software, without 
eating all of their memory

- FOSS server implementation
(this might look like a nice-to-have for some, but if we'd require everyone in 
KDE to use it, it's not optional)

- Ability to use without having to create a new account just for that.
We could force contributors to sign up for something, but we'd increase the 
barrier of entry if we'd make it mandatory for everyone who's just curious 
about what's happening in KDE.
Identity would suffice, as everyone who does anything with KDE has an Identity 
account anyway.

- Permanent logs across mobile and desktop clients without the need for users 
to set up anything.
That means ZNC does not count unless we implement it in a desktop as well as 
mobile client in a way that is completely friction-free for users

- 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

- Support for a decent set of Emoji (not just the ones you can create using 
ASCII chars).
Using Unicode to display them is probably okay, as long as users can choose 
them from a menu in the client instead of having to paste them from 
KCharSelect.
This, too, might sound like nice-to-have for many, but not having them would 
cut us off from the younger generation. Yes, they use them even in a 
"professional context". Believe me, I'm seeing it in action every day at work.

- User avatars
Again, must-have if we want to reach the younger generation

- Uses a port that is open even on educational networks

- Channel listing
So that every public channel can be easily found


Nice-to-haves:

- Bridge to IRC
For the transitional period or for people who just refuse to change their 
habits

- Full name display
Makes things feel more trustworthy

- Integration with our development tools such as Phabricator

- Web client
Very handy if you are at a device which isn't yours and quickly want to check 
up on things

- Stickers
People love them when they have them, but they survive without them.

---
I'm sure I've forgot many things, but this (already quite long) list should 
give us a good start.

Looking forward to a productive discussion,
Thomas

Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Mittwoch, 21. Juni 2017 22:41:04 CEST Albert Astals Cid wrote:
> El dilluns, 29 de maig de 2017, a les 21:17:29 CEST, Lydia Pintscher va
> 
> escriure:
> > Hey folks,
> > 
> > Last year we have talked a lot about KDE's vision, fleshed it out and
> > wrote it down: https://community.kde.org/KDE/Vision I am proud that we
> > have done that. However the work does not end there. We have the
> > answer to the question "why are we here". We still need the answer to
> > the question "how do we achieve our vision". We've had an insightful
> > survery among our community and users and a lot of discussions around
> > that. This was then all further discussed in a sessions at QtCon in
> > Berlin. After that smaller groups have sat down to take all the input
> > and refine it, but then the process got stuck for several reasons. At
> > the last board meeting the board and sebas sat down again and looked
> > at where we are wrt distilling all the input. It turns out we are less
> > far away than we thought. We took the input from the session at
> > Akademy and polished the wording slightly. We then analyzed it more
> > and figured out the issue that had been bugging us with the existing
> > draft: It was mixing mission and strategy. We split it up and this
> > seems to work much better.
> > 
> > I'd like to invite you all to take a look at the current draft and
> > provide your constructive feedback so we can use this as the basis for
> > our work for the next years.
> > 
> > https://community.kde.org/KDE/Mission
> 
> Great work :)
> 
> I could nitpick, but that's just the engineer in me wanting it to be
> 0.01% better, don't think it's worth our time so I should
> not have said i could nitpick :D

If your nitpicks come with concrete suggestions for improvements, then they 
are more than welcome! It's a draft, after all.
If they are small, likely uncontroversial things, you can also directly edit 
the wiki page if you like, whatever you prefer.

Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

> On 13 Jun 2017, at 15:29, Sebastian Kügler  wrote:
> 
> On dinsdag 13 juni 2017 14:16:25 CEST Kenny Coyle wrote:
>> Thanks for putting this together, I can only see it being positive going
>> forward.
>> 
>> The text itself is very clear and concise.
>> 
>> On the last section about promoting development, I'm wondering if it's
>> worthwhile having a statement about the infrastructure that KDE maintains
>> and develops? How about the following:
>> 
>> To promote the development of Free and Open-Source Software, KDE
>> …
>> maintains reliable technical infrastructure to support the community,
>> evolving with the community
> 
> I think that fits well into the strategy part. I wonder if we should 
> explicitely mention that we want this infrastructure to be based on Free 
> software and open standards as much as possible, since that's come up over 
> and 
> over again in the past when we discussed important infrastructural changes. 
> (Own git vs. github, phabricator vs. other tools, etc.)
> 
> What do others think about this?

+1
If we have that in our strategy document, it should make such discussions 
easier in the future.

Re: Kirchentag in Berlin

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Montag, 1. Mai 2017 17:48:18 CEST Irina Rempt wrote:
> I've been to a Kirchentag already -- in München -- and I'd certainly like to
> go again! Only I'm almost 60 and have a bad back, I don't think I can sleep
> on the floor in a school gym for 5 nights and not end up broken. Now trying
> to find out if I have friends in Berlin who will offer me a real bed.
> 
> Here's the 2010 post from my defunct blog that I reposted for the purpose:
> http://www.valdyas.org/fo3/kirchentag-2010/
> 
> Irina

There are many KDE folks living in Berlin. Shouldn't be too hard to find 
someone to offer you a bed...

Re: KDE at FOSDEM 2017 wrapup

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Montag, 6. Februar 2017 18:04:16 CET Lydia Pintscher wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 6, 2017 at 1:16 PM, Jonathan Riddell  wrote:
> > Sadly no women at the party again which was commented on social media,
> > la presidencia stood us up for VLC.
> 
> Important diplomatic mission ;-)  I'll be working on this cloning
> thing until next year.
> 
> Thanks a lot for organizing, Jonathan, Pau and everyone else who helped!

Unfortunately I couldn't be there, so I can only extend my thanks to everyone 
involved.
Great job!

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

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

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.

Re: We now have an Advisory Board

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On 27.09.2016 17:52, victorhck wrote:

in the article:
https://dot.kde.org/2016/09/26/announcing-kde-advisory-board
the LiMux link points to itself.


Thanks, fixed.
I removed the link because I could not find a proper project website for LiMux, 
and just linking to the Munich website feels too generic.

We now have an Advisory Board

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

Dear KDE,
in case you haven't read the Dot article [1] yet:
KDE now has an Advisory Board, consisting of KDE e.V.'s Patrons as well as 
organizations using our software on a large scale (currently LiMux) and other 
NGOs with visions/missions similar to ours. The list of members is on the 
Advisory Board page [2].


On our side we have a contact person for each organization on the AB in the 
Advisory Board Working Group [3].


We hope the Advisory Board will provide us insights into what the world needs 
from us as well as closer collaboration with our allies in general.


Cheers,
Thomas

[1] https://dot.kde.org/2016/09/26/announcing-kde-advisory-board
[2] https://ev.kde.org/advisoryboard.php
[3] https://ev.kde.org/workinggroups/abwg.php

Re: Creating a map of KDE contributors?

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On 20.09.2016 14:06, Luigi Toscano wrote:

On Tuesday, 20 September 2016 13:42:35 CEST Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:

Hi everyone,
I recently realized that unless you ask fellow KDE contributors personally
where they live, you don't really know where over the world (or even in
your home country) KDE is spread.

[...]

So, two questions:
1. Does that make sense to you?


We had a "heat-map" of committers in the old commit-digest:
https://commit-digest.kde.org/issues/2014-11-16/
So yes, it makes sense.

Also, for example:
https://www.debian.org/devel/developers.loc


2. If yes: Does anyone know of a piece of code that allows people to enter
their city of residence and then show people on a map (ideally as an OSM
overlay), or could otherwise maybe create it?


If it's not for the fact that sysadmin want to replace identity, a custom
field there with the city and/or coordinates and some script to grab them,
convert into geojson, and it's really easy (read: few lines of code) to setup
a map with leaflet.

http://leafletjs.com/examples/geojson.html


If I read the documentation [1] correctly, Phabricator (which would replace 
Identity) allows custom fields in user profiles, so we could still do that.



[1] https://secure.phabricator.com/book/phabricator/article/custom_fields/

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

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

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  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.
Therefore, we are now trying to find out whether the general direction that the 
draft is going into makes sense.

Input on that is of course welcome!
Cheers,
Thomas

[1] https://community.kde.org/KDE/Mission

Re: KDE Licensing Policy Updates

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

Certainly not. AGPL is like GPL in that sense, with the extra rule
that you must publish the source code even if you're only giving
access over the network and not distributing binaries.

I don't think an AGPL library makes much sense though.


​ALGPL makes sense then :)
​


On the other hand: Is Qt still used much for web services? And if so: Are our 
frameworks of much use for those?


I think this might be more of an edge case. I suppose that if we're doing web 
stuff, it's more likely to be full applications rather than libraries.

Re: KDE Licensing Policy Updates

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On 20.09.2016 19:52, Nicolás Alvarez wrote:

2016-09-20 14:04 GMT-03:00 Jonathan Riddell :

Added:
''Applications which are intended to be run on a server'' can be
licenced under the GNU AGPL 3.0 or later
Rationale: KDE Store code is under AGPL
Question: should this be an option or a requirement for server software?

I agree with this change, but I think it should remain an option.


I would support making it mandatory, actually, or at least recommended, because 
for an end user a web service based on GPL software is no better than one based 
on proprietary software, because they cannot tell what software it is they're 
interacting with. Therefore, the AGPL closes an important hole in FOSS web services.


I don't feel very strongly about this, but to me it would make sense to at least 
recommend AGPL for web software we produce.

Re: Creating a map of KDE contributors?

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On 20.09.2016 13:49, Jonathan Riddell wrote:

Gnome already do this
https://wiki.gnome.org/GnomeWorldWide

Nice!
Though a zoomable map would be nicer, because on that map it's a bit difficult 
to distinguish cities in more crowded countries.

Creating a map of KDE contributors?

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

Hi everyone,
I recently realized that unless you ask fellow KDE contributors personally where 
they live, you don't really know where over the world (or even in your home 
country) KDE is spread.


I think this is a pity, given that knowing that would allow us to, among other 
things

- show the world how globally wide-spread KDE is
- make it easier to organize local events (like release parties or just local 
meetups)

- determine who could help with local FOSS events where KDE could participate
- pick locations for sprints or conferences depending on minimal overall travel 
effort


Therefore, I would like to create a map of KDE contributors' home towns (the 
towns/cities would be enough, no need to know the precise location). Ideally it 
would be possible for people to decide whether they want their name to show up 
publicly, or whether they just want to show up as an anonymous contributor.


So, two questions:
1. Does that make sense to you?
2. If yes: Does anyone know of a piece of code that allows people to enter their 
city of residence and then show people on a map (ideally as an OSM overlay), or 
could otherwise maybe create it?


Cheers,
Thomas

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

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On 21.08.2016 22:17, Alexander Neundorf wrote:

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
:)


just arrived back home. :-)
That's actually a very similar issue to what I have at work: while following
wishes from existing users certainly makes those happier, but is this actually
the right way if you want to reach people who are not yet using this software
? (serious question, not rhetoric)

Alex


Doing what current users want just because they want it is a way which is 
unlikely
to lead to long-term success. However, the community came to similar preferences
as the users without knowing what preferences the users have.

If I were to decide, I'd have set different preferences, but setting a Mission 
which
the community does not agree with is not useful in a volunteer-driven community.
If all most contributors want to focus on desktop Linux, I can say that KDE 
should
focus on mobile all day, without any effect.

Official "Going to Akademy" banner by Ivan Čukić

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

Dear community,
as most of you know, each year, there is a banner for people who go to Akademy 
to put into their blog posts (or on their social media profiles or wherever) so 
that the world sees which cool people they can meet there if they're going, 
and/or donate to KDE so those people can meet.
Usually, the VDG (or previously thw Oxygen team) creates those banners. This 
year, however, Ivan Čukić of Plasma fame made a banner which the VDG liked so 
much that we'd like everyone to use it.

You can find the banner on https://community.kde.org/Akademy/2016
Happy word-spreading,
Thomas

Cleaning up mailing lists?

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

Hi everyone,
recently I went through lists.kde.org and saw that there are lots of lists there 
for some short-term projects in the past, or for projects which have long since 
been abandoned.
Given that it probably doesn't give a good impression if someone subscribes to 
one of those lists only to notice that nothing has happened there for years, 
would it perhaps make sense to clean up our mailing lists, killing those that 
are not used anymore?

Cheers,
Thomas

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

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

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 :)

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

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On 29.07.2016 23:27, Alexander Neundorf wrote:

Yes, probably.

How to interpret other results ?

E.g. "Importance of goals".
Do we consider the difference between 4.5 ("read as many users as possible"
and "convince users to switch away from proprietary") and 5.5 ("do our part to
promote Free...") as significant ?
If so, how does that fit together ? Could it be interpreted as that users of
proprietary OS are not that important to us (3rd option), and we also don't
want to make them switch to free OSs (5th option), while it is important for
us to promote free software (4th option) ?


That is indeed where we have to decide what to make of the results. I would not
recommend to exclude anything from the Mission which scored significantly above
the scale midpoint (which is why I did those tests). We may give those things 
which
scored significantly higher than others greater weight in the wording, but if 
something

is considered as more than averagely important by the community, why should
it not be part of the Mission? Nobody said that only the most important things 
can
be part of a Mission statement.

The aim of this survey was not to identify only the most important goals. The 
aim
was to confirm if the community agrees with us that the goals we identified are
indeed important, and it did so at least for all of the main goals.

About the "make users switch" vs. "promote free software": There are other ways 
to
promote Free Software (like we do with mentoring and advocacy) than directly
convincing users to switch away from proprietary software.

Actually I'm a bit surprised that "reach as many users as possible, regardless
of which OS" got such a relatively low score, because to me this question
translates to "do we want to provide (our part of) freedom to as many people
as possible (even if they still use a proprietary OS kernel underneath) ?"
So it seems we don't want to.


We _do_ want to. If we didn't, it would have scored below the midpoint of the 
scale
on average. What I'd read from these results, though, is that providing 
excellent
software on Free OSes is _more important_ to the community than getting on
as many platforms as possible, which should be reflected in the Mission 
statement.

One thing stands out quite clear: "provide stable and reliable software" got
the highest points.

Yes, it seems that KDE is aware that higher quality standards should be a clear
focus for the future, which makes sense and is something that would certainly
sit well with the public, too.

I'm a bit surprised that "aim for a presence on mobile devices" got a
relatively low score. But that seems to match the (compared to GNU/Linux) low
score for Android.


I'm not _that_ much surprised. Again: The score does not mean that the community
does not want presence on Android, but if it had the same priority to 
contributors as

desktop Linux, we would already be seeing _far_ more Android apps from KDE.

Presence on Android is clearly seen as an above-average priority, so it should
definitely be part of the Mission, but it's also clear that the community still 
sees

desktop (Linux) computers as more important.

The even lower score for "embedded" confirms the impression I have in this
regard from our community.


Yes. This is why I did this survey: I (and certainly some others) do think that 
embedded
is an important area for the future, but it makes little sense to put it in the 
Mission

of the majority of the community does not really care about it a lot.
The Mission is not fixed for eternity, so should that priority ever change for 
the
community, the Mission will reflect that change.

The relatively low result for "use new online services created by KDE" and the
relatively low result for "offer our own web-based services" seem to fit
together.


Indeed. Web services were considered "moderately important" on average by
the participants of the survey, so that certainly does not mean that web 
services are

not welcome in KDE, but they are not considered important enough to shift
resources to them from client software.

I find it noteworthy that we (developers, and even more users) consider the
BSDs and even "Other Free OS" as more important target platforms than Windows.


Indeed. It seems like KDE cares more about a completely Free stack than about
reaching as many users as possible, as already seen in the first question.

The "How much do you agree.." page is a bit complicated.
I guess it means that we want to try to concentrate on "important"
applications (so we cover the common needs of normal users), and that we
should keep the focus on Qt.


Yes, those two seem to be rather clear-cut.

The "focus on GUI" vs. "any useful software"... does that have to be
considered also taking into account the relatively low score for web-based
services ?


Yes, that point is indeed interesting. It does indeed look like having a GUI is 
less important

to us than running on user's systems instead of the cloud.

Alex, going on 

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

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

For those who follow these lists only through archives or digests and therefore 
did not get the attachment, here's the link to the PDF:

https://share.kde.org/index.php/s/JAefwOmCRSB6qp9
and the original ODP:
https://share.kde.org/index.php/s/O3KZRDECua8h9wF
Cheers,
Thomas
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Re: [kde-community] Results from the Mission Survey

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On 29.07.2016 08:57, Mirko Boehm - KDE wrote:

Hello Thomas,


On 29 Jul 2016, at 01:04, Thomas Pfeiffer <thomas.pfeif...@kde.org> wrote:

I'm sorry for taking so long with the survey analysis (analysis and 
documentation of survey results always end up taking longer than expected), but 
now finally I've prepared a presentation of the results of the first round of 
analysis of the survey I did for input on KDE's Mission statement.
This is just plain results, no interpretation.
I said "first round" because I'm ready to do perform further analyses if these 
results leave important questions open (if they can be answered from the data, of course).
If you'd like me to dig deeper somewhere, feel free to tell me!

Excellent work, thanks. And there are some interesting insights already. 
Besides minor differences, contributor and user interests are pretty much 
aligned, for example. Or that we are good at retaining long-term contributors.
Yes, I found the alignment between user and contributor attitudes pretty 
striking as well. Pretty much the only area where there are bigger differences 
are priorities for target platfroms, but that might be a bit of a chicken and 
egg problem: Since we're currently mostly targeting Free OSes, our userbase uses 
mostly Free OSes, so that's what they care about.

If anybody would like to get the raw data to do their own analyses, that's of 
course possible as well.

I would definitely be interested in the raw numbers. How can I access them?

Sure, you can find the ODS file here: 
https://share.kde.org/index.php/s/rmC88ki4ZmSdxei
And here is the R workspace and scripts I used for preparing the datasets and 
doing the inferential statistics (though I'm not sure how much others could make 
of it, it's not exactly well documented to be honest): 
https://share.kde.org/index.php/s/V8nX1jxeucr7YG8


Cheers,
Thomas
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Re: [kde-community] KDE Sysadmin and GPG Encryption

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On 27.07.2016 00:17, Jeff Mitchell wrote:

I would avoid reading much, if anything at all, into what Boudhayan wrote, 
both from the perspective of the sysadmin team and even Boudhayan himself.


--Jeff


I don't see any "reading into" in any of the replies so far. People have just 
reacted to things that Boudhayan wrote very explicitly in his email.


Pretty bad things could be "read into" that email easily, if one wanted to. I'm 
glad nobody did that, we've had enough drama on this list in recent months.
I don't see why we should avoid reacting to what was explicitly said, though, 
and that's what people did.


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Re: [kde-community] DigitalOcean is now a sponsor!

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On 05.07.2016 21:36, Boudhayan Gupta wrote:

Hi Guys,

I'm excited to announce that DigitalOcean is sponsoring the KDE
Community. Under their open source software sponsoring programme [1],
they've very kindly set us up to use computing resources free of
charge.


Awesome news! Is this sponsorship already "public" from their side
(I don't see KDE on the list you linked to)?
And if it is: Would they like us to keep it low-profile or talk about it?
My first gut reaction would be to head over to G+ and spread the good
news, but of course I'd only do that if they want us to.
Cheers,
Thomas
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Re: [kde-community] Randa Meetings fundraising - please spread

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

Hi Sandro,

going to the fundraiser website, I noticed that it is out of date:

It still talks about Randa 2016 being in the future. Shouldn't it be updated,

and instead of talking about what we _will_ do there, talk about what _has been 
done_


there, and than changing the message to "If you want us to be able to continue 
doing

such great things, please donate to fund future meetings."

It's not much of a surprise to me that a campaign focused on funding a specific

meeting loses drive after that specific meeting is over. The meeting happened, 
so

obviously we had enough money to do it, now why donate more for it?

If we want the fundraiser to still be engaging, we have to change the message.

Cheers,

Thomas


On 04.07.2016 16:42, Sandro Andrade wrote:

Hi there,

We've reached the last week for Randa Meetings 2016 fundraising [1]
and we're completely behind the goal :( That's mostly because our
audience depletes rapidly after some weeks and we lack some
promotional device (and man-power/energy) to keep pushing it forward.

Now we need to boost its last breath, for example by:

- Writing a nice blog post, everyone is welcome to do that and even
more for those of you who holds a quite popular blog. That's proven to
be quite effective lately.
- Promoting the campaign in regions other than Europe by translating
and spreading.
- If you were in Randa, telling what you achieved and call for donations.
- Doing anything else you feel could help ..

[1] https://www.kde.org/fundraisers/randameetings2016/

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

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On 16.06.2016 13:32, sabayon11 wrote:

Very interesting survey. I found some issues very controversial.

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


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


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


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


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


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


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

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

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


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


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


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


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


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




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


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

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


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


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


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



> Business/ office users

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


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


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



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

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



That is fine, of course, and understandable.
Thank you for your feedback!
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[kde-community] Please participate in our survey for input on KDE's Mission

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

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

[1] https://dot.kde.org/2016/04/05/kde-presents-its-vision-future
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Re: [kde-community] Final review for the KDE Mission survey

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On 13.06.2016 22:42, Alexander Neundorf wrote:

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..." ?
The way the questions and answers were written, they focus more on what to /do 
now/ in order to /achieve our vision in the future/.
Changing that fundamentally would mean having to rewrite the whole survey, and I 
don't think the added benefit is worth that.


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 idea is to get which should be prioritized. If everything gets high scores, 
we'll include everything in the Mission.

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.


I have now:
- ...integrate well with existing online services
- ...use new online services created by KDE for areas where no freedom- and 
privacy-respecting services exist


because I still want to know whether KDE contributors would be in favor of 
creating online services.

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 ?
Your original vision/mission draft mentioned a "classic desktop", which Martin 
found offensive, so I tried to word it differently.
Since it doesn't look like I can find a wording which works for everyone, I'll 
just remove this point since we have the question about desktop as supported 
device class anyway.

Third page
---

"How important are the following aspects..:"

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

Ok, will add that.

"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".

The answer options are randomized for each participant to avoid sequence 
effects.
Unfortunately that also separates opposites, but that is okay from a research 
perspective, especially because opposite questions elicit more honest answers if 
they are not immediately recognized as such.

Yes, it looks weird, but it avoids bias so I'd like to keep it that way.

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

I'll do the latter.

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 ?).


My plan was to send it to
- community
- eV
- devel
- core-devel

And write a Dot article.

I hope to reach most contributors that way.

Thank you for the feedback,
Thomas
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[kde-community] Final review for the KDE Mission survey

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

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.


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

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Dienstag, 24. Mai 2016 01:01:13 CEST Riccardo Iaconelli wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On 23 May 2016 at 19:28, Thomas Pfeiffer <thomas.pfeif...@kde.org> wrote:
> > 3. Added another question for the contributors "Which category or
> > categories of projects have you contributed to most recently?",
> > multi-select, with the options
> > [ ] Plasma
> > [ ] Applications
> > [ ] Frameworks
> > [ ] Meta (sysadmin, web)
> > 
> > I have not mentioned promo, vdg or community/support separately because
> > their work is usually related to one of the project categories. Am I
> > missing other functions which contribute to KDE's producs but do not
> > relate to any of the categories above?
> 
> I am not sure how most WikiToLearn guys would reply here: are we meta?
> We have, roughly developers, infrastructure administrators,
> organizers, promo team and content writers. We do a very different job
> than documenters, translators or other generic KDE meta people. Then,
> why Plasma has its own box, isn't it an application?

You are right, I completely forgot WikiToLearn here!
Are there more projects which do not belong in any of these categories, but 
isn't "meta" either?
 
The reason why Plasma is mentioned separately (and WikiToLearn should be, too) 
is that it might be more important what Plasma contributors think about 
desktop matters than what those not contributing to it think. On the other 
hand, regarding issues like which platforms we want _applications_ to run on, 
the voice of someone who only contributes to Plasma or WikiToLearn might not 
be as important as the voice of someone who actually contributes to 
applications.

Of course we want a vision for all of KDE, but our "who does the work, 
decides" mantra should not be falling behind there.

> I would say you should be identified with the skills you apply, which
> better reflect the nature of our community: programmer, designer,
> promoter, syadmin, translator...

The problem here is that the groups for some roles are too small to guarantee 
anonymity.

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

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Montag, 23. Mai 2016 17:03:11 CEST Martin Graesslin wrote:
> On Wednesday, May 18, 2016 11:43:12 PM CEST Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> > I have created a survey draft at
> > http://survey.kde.org/index.php/858172/lang-en
> > 
> > Now please everybody click through it and give feedback on anything that
> > you think should be changed.
> 
> I have a problem with answering
> "...strive to make our products available on all major Free and proprietary
> operating systems and platforms"
> 
> I'm all for making our apps available everywhere so would go very to the
> left, but for Plasma I would go very to the right. And thinking about it:
> not all products make sense everywhere. No matter how much I strive for it,
> KWin won't run on Windows (probably not even with the new Linux support in
> Windows 10).
> 
> So maybe that needs to be more fine grained? Worded differently?

Would replacing "products" with "applications" work? Since you consider KWin a 
systems component and not an application, this sentence should not be of 
concern to KWin, right?
I mean sure, there are still some actual applications which make no sense on 
Windows or Mac, but I assume there are so few of those that we don't have to 
mention them explicitly in our vision.
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Re: [kde-community] KDE Mission - let's do this! : Feedback on survey draft

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Montag, 23. Mai 2016 07:37:49 CEST Martin Graesslin wrote:
> On Sunday, May 22, 2016 7:29:22 PM CEST Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> > > 1.- I believe that mobile/desktop convergence is not an emerging trend
> > > anymore.
> > > 
> > > 2.- We do an innovative and modern desktop. Even if we do a "classical
> > > desktop", we should not state it that way in our mission. The next few
> > > years should be about keeping what is good about the "old concept"
> > > that took us here and evolving it. We are not dealing with cars from
> > > 1920 here. If we have to use quotes in a Mission statement, a document
> > > that should be crystal clear not just to ourselves but the "external
> > > world"...
> > 
> > This is exactly the kind of question why I've set up the survey: I know
> > that some people still care a lot about the "classical desktop" (i.e. a
> > thing that runs on desktop and laptop PCs) whereas for others, desktop
> > and laptop PCs are just one among many device classes and form factors.
> > 
> > Since the Mission should reflect where the majority of the KDE community
> > wants to go, I want to offer people the possibility to clearly state what
> > they care about more. This is why I have both variants in the survey and
> > we
> > can see which gets what score.
> 
> The mission should also not alienate our developer base. If the mission
> states we aim for a classical desktop I would consider that a punch in my
> face. I'm working full time on a desktop, but I don't consider this as a
> "classical" desktop. I consider my work going on a very modern product, not
> something classical.

Good point, "classical" may have been unfortunate wording (interestingly 
enough, the wording did originally come from someone who seems to actually 
care more about Plasma Desktop than other Plasma shells).
Maybe we can just kick that question out of the survey, given that we ask 
about each device class separately anyway.

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

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

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.

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.
 
> 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?

> 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!

> ++ Free vs Open Source
> 
> I do not like the idea that "Open Source" is the default way for 99%
> of the world to refer to Free Software. Like most of you, I think it
> refers to a wider concept. open does not mean free, right? But,
> specially in commercial environments, that is the current state.
> 
> I propose to use "Open and Free Software", Free and Open Source
> Software" or "Libre Software" instead of "Free Software" .

Ok, makes sense, I'll change "Free Software" to "Free and Open-Source 
Software".

> I think the above changes would help to reduce our gap with the
> commercial world..
> 
> ++ Participation in key forums
> 
> There is something missing to me.
> 
> The Free Qt Foundation has demonstrated to be a key player, we
> participate in other forums How is that reflected in our mission
> for the coming years? Do we want to improve our positioning? How? Is
> it important to us? important enough to be reflected in the Mission
> Statement? Do we participate only to promote Free Software values?

Good point! Any idea how we could phrase that as a question for the survey?
 
> ++ "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 

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

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Samstag, 21. Mai 2016 17:25:06 CEST Marta Rybczynska wrote:
> I get:
> Error
> 
> We are sorry but you don't have permissions to do this.

Ah yes, sorry, I had deactivated it to make changes and then forgot to 
activate it again.
Should work again now!
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Re: [kde-community] KDE Mission - let's do this! : Feedback on survey draft

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Freitag, 20. Mai 2016 00:14:36 CEST Alexander Neundorf wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Wednesday 18 May 2016 23:43:12 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> ...
> 
> > I have created a survey draft at
> > http://survey.kde.org/index.php/858172/lang-en
> > 
> > Now please everybody click through it and give feedback on anything that
> > you think should be changed.
> > 
> > Once it feels like we agree on the survey, I'll publish it on the Dot and
> > on the kde-community and kde-devel mailing lists, hoping to reach most
> > KDE contributors and interested users.
> 
> here are a few comments:
> 
> 
> Section "Support for services"
> --
> - there's a typo "servies"

Thanks, fixed.

> - the first point says "Focus more in [free services]", the third point says
> "Focus on [dominating services]". I would put the "more" also in the third
> point. Or maybe for both use "prioritize support for [Free/dominating]
> services" ?

Good point! I'll go for "prioritize support". It's a bit more difficult 
language, but also more clear on the other hand.

> 
> Section "I consider myself"
> ---
> 
> I consider myself as "formerly very active, now only sporadically active,
> and still cares a lot". Which should I check ?

Hm, so how about
... a regularly active KDE contributor
... a sporadically active KDE contributor
... a formerly active KDE contributor who still cares about KDE

Would that work?

> 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?
 
> 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? 

> * Should there be a question about the group of users ? Or do we just assume
> all users are equally important ? Like
> - home users
> - business/office users
> - schools/universities/(kindergarten ?)
> - developers
> - FLOSS geeks

A question about our target audience makes sense, yes. I've added one with 
these options:

"Regular" home users
Free software enthusiasts
Business/ office users
Students (at schools or universities)
Children
Developers
System administrators
"Specialists" (e.g. scientists, engineers, artists, ...)
Everyone
 
> * 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.
 
> * 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, Pla

Re: [kde-community] possible foss alternative to telegram/slack

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Dienstag, 17. Mai 2016 12:33:25 CEST Nicolás Alvarez wrote:
> 2016-05-17 5:55 GMT-03:00 Marco Martin :
> > Hi all,
> > Right now many groups are using Telegram as their primary communication
> > medium due to some limitations in IRC (mainly due to the ease of pasting
> > images inline the channel and the lack of fancy mobile clients for IRC),
> > there may be other valid reasons i'm not aware of
> > today i randomly stumbled upon
> > http://www.mattermost.org/
> > 
> > it seems to tick all the boxes:
> > * open source
> > * we can self host an instance
> > * fancy mobile and desktop apps
> > * inline multimedia attachments into messages
> > * and most important for us old farts: bridge to IRC :p
> > 
> > didn't try it, just stumbled upon it but may be something to be
> > considered?
> 
> There is no sane option for fancy mobile apps. You either compile your
> own apps, get a developer account on app stores ($99 for iOS, $25 for
> Android), get them through the app store review process, and maintain
> them forever; or you use the official Mattermost apps that are already
> in app stores, and pay Mattermost $20/user/year to send push
> notifications through their servers.

Are you sure about this? From what I've read on their website, only encrypted 
push notifications need a subscription, which is not necessary for talking 
about Free Software anyway, if we're being honest.
None of our current Telegram or IRC communication is encrypted, so why would 
we need encryption for Mattermost?
I cannot see anywhere that the Android app only works at all with a 
subscription.

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

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Dienstag, 17. Mai 2016 22:06:30 CEST you wrote:
> > 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.

I have created a survey draft at
http://survey.kde.org/index.php/858172/lang-en

Now please everybody click through it and give feedback on anything that you 
think should be changed.

Once it feels like we agree on the survey, I'll publish it on the Dot and on 
the kde-community and kde-devel mailing lists, hoping to reach most KDE 
contributors and interested users.

Thank you in advance for your feedback,
Thomas

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

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

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.

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

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Freitag, 13. Mai 2016 11:06:18 CEST Laszlo Papp wrote:
> On Fri, May 13, 2016 at 11:00 AM, Eike Hein  wrote:
> > On 05/13/2016 06:50 PM, Laszlo Papp wrote:
> >> I do not mean to drag KDE experts away, but it seems that freelancing
> >> platforms have become more and more common. Also, many hobby software
> >> projects have undergone some business path. These generally include lots
> >> of FOSS project opportunities these days in my observation, so yeah, the
> >> question is this really: why would you choose working for free rather
> >> doing something similarly interesting for money and probably also with
> >> other experienced engineers?
> > 
> > The answer to this has been the same from the very start: Because you
> > think free software matters.
> 
> I apologise if I had not expressed myself correctly. I do mean working on
> some free software for money compared to working on KDE free software for
> free. So, free software does matter, yet you can get (potentially
> well-)paid in return elsewhere.

Here is my perspective on this: 
I don't know the actual relative numbers, but many of the commercially 
successful open source software projects that I know of have originally 
started without any money involved. Of course some Free Software projects have 
had financial backing from the start, but many start out as a project people do 
in their free time, and then when they realize they can actually make money 
with them, they do so and turn into actual for-profit companies which pay 
people to work on their software.

Even those, however, often still additionally have volunteer contributors, who 
just like the software (which they get for free) so much that they contribute 
to it for free even when others get paid for doing so (although each 
individual usually spends far less time on it than those who get paid for 
doing so). ownCloud is a great example here.

What I mean is, we should not divide the world into "Software people make for 
free" and "Software people make for money". It's not black and white.

So, if we want to reach people who would like to eventually make a living 
working on Free Software (a group to which I clearly belong, and a goal which 
I have currently reached by being employed by Blue Systems), we should not shy 
away from trying to look for ways we can make money from the software we 
produce.

Maybe by attracting not only experienced developers, but also people talented 
in finding ways to make money off Free Software (of course only in ways which 
are compatible with our Manifesto!) we can make more KDE projects generate 
paid jobs.

Cheers,
Thomas

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Re: [kde-community] Open Public Consultation: Revision of the European Interoperability Framework

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Mittwoch, 11. Mai 2016 15:20:29 CEST you wrote:
> On Mittwoch, 11. Mai 2016 11:25:00 CEST Jos van den Oever wrote:
> > The EU is asking input from its citizens on the next version of the
> > European Interoperability Framework.
> > 
> > KDE has a traditional position in Europe and would benefit from a clear
> > direction towards completely open standards (*not* FRAND which make FOSS
> > implementations nearly impossible) and strong preference for FOSS.
> > 
> > I think members of KDE have the right knowledge for filling in this
> > consultation. Please take some time to do so.
> > 
> > http://ec.europa.eu/isa/consultations/
> 
> I just saw that one can also participate on behalf of a "private
> organization". Would it make sense to have someone represent KDE officially
> in addition to the individual participations?
> Someone representing an organization may have more weight for them than
> individual citizens.

Even more: It looks like there are actually different questions depending on 
whether you reply as an individual or on behalf of an organization. Citizens 
only get questions regarding their own communication with public authorities.
Given that, I think it's even more important that someone replies on behalf of 
KDE, so that we can also provide input on the impact which the framework has 
on us as a n organization which produces software.

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Re: [kde-community] Open Public Consultation: Revision of the European Interoperability Framework

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Mittwoch, 11. Mai 2016 11:25:00 CEST Jos van den Oever wrote:
> The EU is asking input from its citizens on the next version of the European
> Interoperability Framework.
> 
> KDE has a traditional position in Europe and would benefit from a clear
> direction towards completely open standards (*not* FRAND which make FOSS
> implementations nearly impossible) and strong preference for FOSS.
> 
> I think members of KDE have the right knowledge for filling in this
> consultation. Please take some time to do so.
> 
> http://ec.europa.eu/isa/consultations/

I just saw that one can also participate on behalf of a "private 
organization". Would it make sense to have someone represent KDE officially in 
addition to the individual participations?
Someone representing an organization may have more weight for them than 
individual citizens.
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Re: [kde-community] KDE Mission - let's do this!

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Montag, 9. Mai 2016 22:49:15 CEST Alexander Neundorf wrote:

> > Let's finish our mission before we lose interest ;)
> 
> thanks for pushing :-)
> 
> No objections from my side, just a few thoughts, in no specific order:

Glad to hear :)

> * I don't like the term "reach  where they are", to me this always
> kind of implies that the person in question is currently somehow in a wrong
> place (in German: "die Leute da abholen, wo sie sind" :-/ )
> Basically this is the "everyone" from the vision.
> So maybe
> "To be able to make the software available to everyone, KDE"... ?

There are actually slightly different underlying positions concerning 
priorities:
I assume that for both of us, a perfect world would be one where everybody 
used exclusively free software/hardware/services/content. We both know that 
this will probably never happen, so we have to aim for something more 
realistic. And this is where our priorities diverge:
- For me, it's more important to get people away from as much non-Free stuff 
as possible
- For you, it's more important to get our Free stuff to as many people as 
possible

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?

> * To me, "classic desktop" does not really fit into "reach users where they
> are"

Ok, so where would you put it? I'm open to any suggestion here.

> * One could argue that to provide control, freedom and privacy for users,
> KDE's products do not only need to have those properties, but the products
> actually need to cover a substantial range of the users needs.
> IOW, e.g. by offering a range of niche nerdy applications, let's say 3D
> printer software and a desktop ruler, we wouldn't do much to achieve our
> vision.
> So, should there be some mention of what we want to "produce" ?
> Something like desktop, office, education, creation, etc. ?

Even "niche nerdy applications" do contribute to our vision, but of course the 
more users, the bigger the impact.

The question is, though: Does the "substantial range of the users needs" 
really need to be covered by KDE software? For example, there is still no 
advanced photo editing software from KDE, because the Krita team decided that 
GIMP has that need covered just fine and Krita should focus on digital painting 
instead. 

I, personally, think that the goal should be that /Free Software/ covers all 
common user needs. Whether that software is made by KDE, GNOME, GNU, TDF, 
Apache, any other organization or an independent project does not matter that 
much to me.

Of course there are some applications which greatly benefit from a very tight 
integration with the desktop environment or other applications, and it makes 
sense to offer these from one source, but that group might not actually be all 
that big.

That said, I have nothing against offering some examples of areas we think we 
should cover, I just won't be the one to provide them.

> * you mention "embedded". I haven't seen any comments here e.g. from KF5- or
> plasma-developers expressing strong interest.

I'd like to keep it in unless someone says they explicitly do not want to 
target embedded. The mission should not just reflect what we're already doing, 
but what we _should_ be doing, after all.

> * "on major [...] OS" -> "on all major [...] OS" ?

Ok.

> * "have consistent [...] interfaces", "available on major [...] OS, e.g. by
> applying Qt" can easily be interpreted that Qt (and our set of libraries) is
> used to achieve portability and consistent user interfaces, which could
> easily be interpreted as e.g. a gtk-application is not part of our
> mission...

As far as portability (especially towards mobile platforms) is concerned, GTK 
is indeed not the toolkit of choice. In the mobile space, Qt (or more 
specifically QtQuick) seems to have pretty clearly won against GTK.

I don't see how mentioning Qt as an example of a toolkit that helps us with 
that effort would exclude GTK applications. If someone would ask us what 
toolkit to use for a new KDE application, we'd still very likely recommend Qt, 
though.

Maybe I'll just spell out "for example" because that makes it harder to miss 
than "e.g.".

> * the two last points of "to create a convincing user experience" are quite
> generic and inconcrete, i.e. they don't add much tangible

They are, but I think they are important as reminders that we should not 
oppose things which are out of our comfort zone.

The last point is mostly to make sure we keep doing what we're doing in that 
regard, the third is remind us not to repeat our mistakes from the past (like 
being wy too late to the mobile party)
 
I think both points are important. Suggestions for how to make them more 
tangible are welcome!

> Alex

Thank you for the input,
Thomas


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Re: [kde-community] Telegram Relay Service

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Montag, 9. Mai 2016 20:07:02 CEST Bhushan Shah wrote:
> On Mon, May 9, 2016 at 8:03 PM, Thomas Pfeiffer <thomas.pfeif...@kde.org> 
wrote:
> > Stupid question: How does one file a ticket for sysadmin via Phabricator?
> > All I've ever used to file sysadmin tickets is
> > https://sysadmin.kde.org/tickets/ and https://sysadmin.kde.org/ does not
> > mention Phabricator tickets at all. Is this process documented somewhere?
> 
> https://phabricator.kde.org/ -> Click on Plus button at top right ->
> New sysadmin request

Thanks! Is this supposed to replace the old ticketing system or only be used 
for specific things?
In any case, it should be documented on sysadmin.kde.org

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Re: [kde-community] Telegram Relay Service

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Freitag, 6. Mai 2016 17:58:46 CEST Boudhayan Gupta wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> KDE Sysadmin is excited to announce the availability of a Telegram <->
> IRC relay service. We now have the capability to sync messages both
> ways between an IRC channel and a Telegram group.
> 
> Currently, this service is being used by #kde-soc and #kdevelop. If
> there are any KDE IRC channel that has an equivalent group on Telegram
> and would like to sync messages between the two, please file a
> Sysadmin Ticket on Phabricator with the name of the IRC channel and
> the name of the Telegram group, and we'll set up the sync service for
> your channel.

Stupid question: How does one file a ticket for sysadmin via Phabricator? All 
I've ever used to file sysadmin tickets is https://sysadmin.kde.org/tickets/ 
and https://sysadmin.kde.org/ does not mention Phabricator tickets at all.
Is this process documented somewhere?
Thanks,
Thomas
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Re: [kde-community] KDE Mission - let's do this!

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Freitag, 29. April 2016 14:32:33 CEST Olivier Churlaud wrote:

> > As Aleix said, what do you mean exactly with that ?
> > I could interpret it as
> > - sources are available
> > - it is easy to build
> > - it's highly configurable
> > - data is stored in easily accessible formats (text, or documented binary,
> > or binary with low level tools, etc) ?
> 
> I think the 2 first are normal for FOSS. What we should emphasis on is
> more the 3rd and 4th point. 3rd for users to have more power, 4th for
> them to be sure that if one day KDE dies (not soon hopefully :D), their
> data are not lost.I like your draft.

Makes sense. How would you phrase the two points?

> > 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 ?
> 
> I like this draft and everything you answered. I think one should
> emphasis on the libraries as well in order to show that our target users
> are not only end-users but developers as well.
> I would really like that someone who uses Qt is able to say "Oh the KDE
> Frameworks are great, let's reuse that instead of rewritting from
> scratch!" Like people use V-PLay or what not based on Qt.

See my reply to Alex' email for that.

> Something else: I'm not sure it should be part of the mission: the way
> to achieve all this? Having common user interface design (work with the
> VDG), same type of configuration windows (use Frameworks libraries),
> having webpresence (up to date websites, documentation online,...).
> I write this last part (webpresence) because I think it's somewhere we
> are not so good at, and being part of the mission could put some
> incentive on it. We really need that to get more users IMOH.

Good points!
This is kind of a "third level", because it describes how we want to achieve a 
good user experience.

I think we definitely should document those things clearly. The question is if 
they should go into a third document (which could be called "Strategy") in 
order to not make the mission too long, or if it should be right there with 
the mission. I'm a bit unsure here, as both alternatives would have benefits 
and drawbacks.

Thank you for the input,.
Thomas
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Re: [kde-community] KDE Mission - let's do this!

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Donnerstag, 28. April 2016 22:43:02 CEST Alexander Neundorf wrote:

> 
> Does the order of the sections imply priorities ?
> E.g. "tinkering" comes before "presence on all device classes" ?

Not really, I just put them in the order they came to my mind. If you think a 
different order makes more sense, I'm absolutely fine with that.

> > To provide control, freedom and privacy, KDE's products
> > - allow users to "tinker" with them
> 
> As Aleix said, what do you mean exactly with that ?
> I could interpret it as
> - sources are available
> - it is easy to build
> - it's highly configurable
> - data is stored in easily accessible formats (text, or documented binary,
> or binary with low level tools, etc) ?

I had all of them in mind (except "easy to build", but tha's just because I if 
I build software myself, I always use scripts that make it easy to build, 
anyway).
Should we put all of them in separate bullets instead?
 
> > - apply open standards to prevent "lock-in"
> > - integrate well with existing online services sharing the same values, or
> > create their own where those do not exist
> 
> I wouldn't want to restrict us to integrating well with online services
> which share the same values.
> This implies to me that good integration with e.g. Facebook or being able to
> use a kdepim client to connect to an Outlook server is not a top priority
> for us. Both are ...very important for a large set of users. More or less
> everybody is on Facebook, if you need to work with an Outlook server at
> your job it would be great to be able to do that using at least a client
> which gives you freedom and privacy.

From my perspective, integrating well with services that track users to sell 
information on them and/or lock them into a certain ecosystem does not promote 
users' control, freedom or privacy at all.
That's why for me, integrating with those is purely a part of "reaching users 
where they are", not of giving them control, freedom and privacy. See also my 
reply to your other email.

> > - provide users with _at least_ the features and quality they expect
> > coming
> > from non-free products
> 
> Well, we have the advantage that our software is free, so we offer freedom,
> independency and (if we are successful with that) privacy, something
> non-free software just can't do. If our software is also stable and
> reliable then, I can very well live with software which has somewhat less
> features than non- free products.

While I, as a user, have the same perspective as you do, I fear that this is 
not ambitious enough given our goal is to give control, freedom and privacy to 
_everyone_ . If we think that freedom and privacy should be enough to convince 
people, we only reach those who value these highly. All those for whom they 
are nice, but not very important won't sacrifice functionality or quality for 
them.

> > - be at the forefront of emerging trends like mobile/desktop convergence
> 
> Boring engineer speaking:  Nice goal. Not sure how realistic this is.
> We have only a very limited number of full-time developers, so aiming for
> very advanced, complex solutions can quickly require more resources
> (developer time, for new devices also actual money) than we have.

"Be at the forefront" may be a bit marketing-speech, but currently, 
convergence is clearly a goal for us, for Plasma as well as applications.
Kirigami is all about convergence, and there are several convergence-ready 
applications currently in development.

I think it KDE would be in a much better place right now if we had embraced 
emerging trends like cloud, mobile and now convergence earlier. Especially 
young developers want to do things which are hip and cool _now_, not things 
that were hip and cool five years ago.

If we don't even aim to embrace emerging trends due to our limited man-power, 
we create a nice little self-fulfilling prophecy / vicious circle for 
ourselves.

> > - integrate well with other Free products to complete the experience
> > 
> > To reach users where they are, KDE
> > - strives to make our products available on major Free but also
> > proprietary
> > operating systems and platforms, mostly by applying Qt as a technology
> > that
> > allows easy portability
> 
> I'd simply put "Free and propriety" instead of "Free but also proprietary",
> so they both sound like equally first class target platforms.

We obviously have different opinions here. While I agree with you that 
proprietary platforms should get much more attention from us than they do now, 
I'd still like to give Free platforms a higher priority, because according to 
our vision, that's where we want people to end up eventually.
 
> > - aims for a presence on all relevant device classes (desktop, mobile,
> > embedded)
> 
> To me this means e.g. that we'll try to get our applications running on
> Android (good !). Is this how this is intended ?

Android is a platform, "mobile" is a device class. Android is certainly a very 
important 

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

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

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.

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
- 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
- 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
- be at the forefront of emerging trends like mobile/desktop convergence
- 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
- aims for a presence on all relevant device classes (desktop, mobile, 
embedded)
- continues to offer a "classic desktop" product which makes the switch from 
proprietary operating easy
- 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,
Thomas
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Re: [kde-community] A new home for Mozilla Thunderbird at KDE?

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Dienstag, 26. April 2016 16:03:43 CEST Jos van den Oever wrote:
> Hello KDE-ers,
> 
> Mozilla Thunderbird is looking for a new home [1]. They are evaluating a
> number of options. KDE was not in the initial list of options, but I think
> KDE and Thunderbird would be an excellent fit.
> 
> This mail goes to kde-community@kde.org and to a number KDE members that
> work on email. Please respond to kde-community to keep the thread on one
> place.
> 
> I would like to hear what you think about the idea of Mozilla Thunderbird
> joining KDE next to KMail, Kontact, Kube, and Trojita. I think we can all
> benefit from being in one community and infrastructure.
> 
> Best regards,
> Jos
> 
> https://lwn.net/Articles/685060/

I'm all for offering Thunderbird to join KDE!
This is not because I wouldn't believe in our own E-Mail offerings (otherwise 
I wouldn't be part of the Kube team as well as mentor a university project 
within KMail, would I?), but because KDE has never had a problem of being home 
to multiple applications in the same area, and I think they'd be more likely 
to benefit from one another than to "cannibalize" each other.

I also believe that showing a welcoming attitude towards popular projects 
looking for a new home can only benefit us in general.

Cheers,
Thomas
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Re: [kde-community] user stats for Neon

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Mittwoch, 20. April 2016 15:49:12 CEST Agustin Benito (toscalix) wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> (long mail)
> 
> I went through this same discussions a few years ago in openSUSE. Let
> me outline my personal experience/point of view through that
> experience.
> 
> At some point, openSUSE was in crossroad and those involved in taking
> action, including myself, were not able to agree on the diagnosis of
> the situation. So it was impossible to agree in the next steps.
> 
> In short, my take on that situation was:
> 
> no data -> no common language -> no objective analysis -> no shared
> diagnosis -> no alignment  -> no improvement
> 
> I took the decision to collect and analise data as a key input for
> taking decisions. We worked with UID in combination with existing
> download/page hits numbers to support answers to simple questions
> first and more complex ones over time.
> 
> Leaning from what happened to Canonical in a similar situation a
> couple of years earlier, some requirements were established. The main
> ones I remember were:
> 
> - Transparency about:
> 
> * How we were going to collect the data.
> * What was going to be used for.
> 
> - Publication of the process to collect the data and the mechanism to
> disable it in your computer.
> 
> - Publication of the analysis on regular basis.
> 
> - Protect the raw data so it could not be used for any other purpose.
> We applied measures to ensure that no identification was possible,
> like linking UID to IP and geo info, in the line of what Kevin pointed
> in a previous mail in this thread.
> 
> Despite our efforts to implement a perfect process, trust on those
> handling the information was a requirement for this action to succeed.
> This is always going to be the case, right?
> 
> I had to suffer strong criticism back then, even in public, specially
> from relevant community members. Many did not trust me nor those
> handling the info. Others simply did not understand the need and
> potential impact that this measure would have for the project. Some
> also feared that the project would start becoming "data driven"
> instead of "people driven".
> 
> The impact of the action has been huge. In my opinion, way bigger than
> most think, specially at that time.
> 
> What today is Tumbleweed, Leap would have been different, way
> worse, without the learning process those involved back then in
> openSUSE delivery went through as a consequence of this action. We
> talked less and less about our personal experiences and impressions
> and more and more about the interpretation of the data. A first and
> necessary step towards reaching a common diagnosis.
> 
> Over time, this action stopped being controversial. I think that now
> the outcome of this action is seen within openSUSE as an asset.
> 
> Fedora recently presented at FOSDEM similar analysis to the one done
> by openSUSE. They even extended it and agreed on the potential impact
> in the decision making process that this action will have in the
> future of the project.
> 
> KDE will be criticized too. Even some of our community members will
> claim that our core principles are being violated. But in my opinion,
> those criticisms are unfair, at least until the result of this action
> is evaluated. The risk to screw it up is there, but risk is something
> that can and should be managed.
> 
> No doubt that privacy is a core value in Free Software. I assume it
> and defend it. But understanding how our software is consumed and by
> who, instead of pretending we know what users want and how they use
> KDE, is essential to improve, to increase the value we provide to
> them.
> 
> In summary, to me back then, it was a matter of putting our users and
> the project first, even before my personal values. It was a tough
> decision but I would take it again.
> 
> So my suggestion is:
> 
> * Let's do our best to be transparent about our goals, process and output,
> 
> * Let;s provide a simple way for those who think that collective
> ignorance is an affordable side effect of privacy to not participate
> on the data gathering, They have the right to think that way and we
> should respect it. We should work hard to prove them wrong. We have no
> spurious intentions.
> 
> * Let's make sure we establish a trusted process and rely on trusted
> people for this action. We already has proven in other areas that we
> can trust ourselves when dealing with sensitive topics/info.
> 
> * Let's assume we will be criticized for this. We will need to put
> energy in explaining our intentions and motivations but that will
> never be enough for some, even if we succeed.
> 
> But let's also assume also that:
> 
> * Ignorance is already hurting us. Again, no, we do not know what our
> users want and how they consume our software. This ignorance has deep
> consequences for the project.
> 
> * Even if we share a vision, it will be impossible to align as a
> community if we do not agree where we are. Speak the same language is
> a 

Re: [kde-community] user stats for Neon

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Freitag, 15. April 2016 17:46:45 CEST Albert Vaca wrote:
> What's the problem with pinging the Neon servers? Any system already does
> way more than that when checking for updates, not to mention when you
> connect to a website, or even IRC.
> 
> How can this ping be violating any privacy if we don't even need to store
> the IP, just a unique ID? We can even generate the ID ourselves so it can't
> be matched with other sources. I don't see how this can have any impact to
> privacy nor any other use than counting people using Neon.
> 
> I don't understand this extremism and I'm sad to see it in our community,
> specially when other free projects like Firefox have been collecting way
> more complex analytics (opt-out) for a while with a positive impact for
> them.

Firefox uses a pretty obvious opt-out, though. Yes, the box is checked by 
default, but it shows it explicitly to users at the first run, they don't have 
to actively look for it in the settings.

I am all for more analytics (probably more than many others, given that I'm a 
user researcher), we really need that, but users have to be clear about what's 
going on. Firefox provides that. This sort of opt-out would be fine with me, we 
really just have to make it very obvious.

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Re: [kde-community] user stats for Neon

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Donnerstag, 14. April 2016 14:36:21 CEST Jonathan Riddell wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 14, 2016 at 04:18:30PM +0200, Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> > Any potentially privacy-sensitive information transfer should be opt-in,
> > not opt-out.
> > I'd assume that the vast majority of users will allow it (given that it's
> > not personally identifiable and they trust their distro), but opt-in puts
> > you on the safe side.
> 
> What's privacy sensitive about it?  It's a machine ID but not linked
> to any other information other than IP address and there's no personal
> information we can link it to.

It's still a unique identifier which can be used to track the machine. We might 
then combine it with others who also only collect the machine ID to create a 
profile.
People can be very sensitive about these topics, especially since we've made 
privacy-aware users our main target audience.

As I said: the vast majority would give us their consent anyway, but it just 
comes across as "nicer" if we ask.

Martin's suggestion with "Make it explicit on the download page that we 
collect these data, and allow users to switch it off in privacy settings if 
they don't like us to do it" works as well, but then users would need to have 
a chance to turn it off /before/ the ID is sent the first time.
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