Re: Post-MegaRelease projects

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Friday, 23 February 2024 03:27:00 CET Jin Liu wrote:
> Another thing I'd like to explore is to have some universal way to
> programmatically change KDE settings.

This is a thing that I'd really like to have -- but probably cannot contribute 
to -- also for Calamares (a Linux distro installer). It runs the plasmalnf 
tool (if configured to set up KDE Plasma) but that's something of a hack. I 
also get regular feature requests "configure  in Plasma" which I can't 
do, since the configuration is opaque to me.

[ade]

Re: Copyright years (and minimizing the burden on developers and maintainers)

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Saturday, 4 February 2023 20:58:30 CET Toni Asensi Esteve wrote:
> Do you think that changing and reviewing too many changes every year is
> worth it? What do you think that would be better?

One of the best places *right now* to ask this question is the Legal & 
Licensing room at FOSDEM, in Brussels, where the top legal(-ish) bods are 
gathered. It is *certainly* not worth the effort to go through and touch all 
the years in one big commit at the start of the year. You may want to do it 
when doing meaningful commits, or when a new contributor shows up, but we can 
place a lot of trust in the revision-control system keeping track of this 
instead of editing a fragile text header.

[ade]

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Welcoming Thiago Sueto, documentation contractor

[Adriaan de Groot]

Hi KDE community,

KDE e.V. supports the KDE community in what it does -- making KDE software and 
all the things around it. KDE e.V. employs people to organize events (and help 
out with sprints), integrate hardware (if you are a vendor of a new device), 
measure the ecological impact (via the KDE-eco initiative), promote KDE in the 
media, and now also to write documentation.

The documentation position is one that fits in a multi-year project. We started 
with gathering requirements and outlining a specific plan of improvements for 
the documentation, then hired for documentation writing and tooling 
improvement. Now Thiago joins us for the next steps, which means using the 
improved tools and writing improved documentation.


Welcome Thiago (in CC) as our documentation-writing and -coordinating 
contractor. He's pushed API documentation forward, written tutorials, has a 
giant Kirigami MR ready and has been helping Nate with goals documentation as 
well.

You can find @herzenschein in the KDE documentation Matrix channel,

https://matrix.to/#/%23kde-docs%3Akde.org?
via=kde.org=libera.chat=matrix.org=pyra.sh

and all over MRs in invent.k.o.

[ade]

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Re: BSD 3 Clause?

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Wednesday, 21 December 2022 10:12:03 CET Ingo Klöcker wrote:
> So, unless you must use BSD-3-Clause, please stick to BSD-2-Clause.

This, twice.

Keep in mind, also, that SPDX lists a half-dozen BSD-3-Clause variants. Do not 
use them at all. If you must use a BSD-3-Clause (because upstream, or 
whatever), use only this one https://spdx.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause.html .

Prefer https://spdx.org/licenses/BSD-2-Clause.html in all cases where a simple 
permissive license with no patent language is desired.

[ade]


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Re: Season of KDE 2023, perhaps?

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Wednesday, 2 November 2022 14:01:51 CET Johnny Jazeix wrote:
> This is a shameless copy-paste from Adriaan last year:

You absolutely have my blessing for that. I won't have time this year at *all* 
for SoK things, but wish all y'all the best in finding cool things to work on 
(my attention might be pointed at "finding a way to host a sprint at my 
office", for instance).

[ade]


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Reminder: Akademy visas

[Adriaan de Groot]

Just a general reminder: if you're asking for a visa for Akademy, be on time. 
We (well, Akademy folks) will be contacting the people that have already asked 
for one Real Soon for details.

[ade]

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Season of KDE 2022, perhaps?

[Adriaan de Groot]

Hi all,

Season of KDE happens when we want it to, if we want it to.

SoK is a mentorship-and-participation programme, where we encourage new 
participants in KDE software. Take a look at
https://season.kde.org/
for more details.

For the start of this season, we're looking for people who would be willing to 
administer the season -- that is, keep track of mentors and students, chase 
content and update websites and wikis, and eventually arrange to send off some 
swag to the participants. You would be working with Adam Szopa, the funniest 
of KDE contractors.

Later on we'll be looking for mentors (in previous years, december-january) so 
if you have a KDE thing going on and would like to introduce new participants 
to it, step up or shout out.

[ade]

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Re: Extending the license policy to include Apache-2.0

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Wednesday, 15 September 2021 21:42:24 CEST Alexander Potashev wrote:
> Parts of https://invent.kde.org/websites/aether-sass/ are licensed
> under Apache License 2.0. This disagrees with the KDE licensing
> policy.


> """
> 4. Source files that are part of a library with a public API which is
> part of the KDE Platform (kdelibs, kdepimlibs, kde-runtime and KDE
> Frameworks) must be licensed under:
> ...
> [new bullet point] * Apache-2.0: Apache License 2.0 as listed below.
> """

I'm not sure how SASS files would count as *software* released by the KDE 
community and so would need to be licensed under one of the *software* 
(library) licenses. Wouldn't this fall under .. um .. other materials?

The javascript all seems to be GPLv3+

[[ This is entirely independent of whether we'd like to add APL2 to the list 
of acceptable **software** licenses -- I've seen others support it already, 
and I don't have an opinion really ]]

[ade]


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Re: Chat blocking under 16s from KDE

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Friday, 6 August 2021 17:05:46 CEST Kenny Duffus wrote:
> On Monday, 2 August 2021 10:58:20 BST Jonathan Riddell wrote:
> > I've been notified by a 13 year old who wants to help KDE that he is
> > unable
> > to log into our chat setup on Matrix because the privacy policy blocks
> > anyone under 16.
> 
> This message is planned to be removed from our home-server next week by EMS

(Where EMS = Element Matrix Support, the organization hosting and supporting 
KDE's Matrix instances; not Emergency Medical Services, or Extra Mature 
Spinach, or any of a dozen other things those letters might mean)

Thank you, Kenny and Jon, for chasing that through (also for all our future 
young contributors).

[ade]


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Re: kde.modular.im: "I am at least 16 years old. "

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Tuesday, 3 August 2021 10:14:06 CEST Kenny Duffus wrote:
> On Thursday, 21 February 2019 15:21:28 BST Eike Hein wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > the e.V. board will definitely discuss this issue as well in this week's
> > call, to put some thought into the legal side vis-a-vis GDPR compliance.
> > I think the community will here is clear and non-controversial, we
> > collectively just need to think about how to do it properly. We'll
> > report back our findings.
> > 
> > Anyone who has something to contribute (GDPR experts in the audience?),
> > please speak up of course.
> 
> What were the Board's findings?

I'll quote from the "Board call notes 01/03/2019" mail to the e.V. membership 
(so it did not go to -community, but ended up in the private list):

"""
Matrix min age check box / GDPR compliance
We're ok with removing the limit since we are already exposed to
that risk anyway in many other places
"""

and a week later (08/03/2019)


"""
* Matrix age consent
 * We will send an email to ask them to remove it for now
"""

I presume that that (sending email) was done; there was no further follow-up 
on the community (public) or membership (private) lists that I can see.

[ade] (balancing between "that's a private list, no quoting" and actually 
wanting to answer the question)

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Job opening at Tuxedo Computers

[Adriaan de Groot]

For Qt/C++ programmers there's a potentially interesting opening at

https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en/Infos/Jobs/Software-Developers-m/f/d.tuxedo

As described it's a pretty broad opening, but I gather that Tuxedo is also 
doing GUI development.

I'll also remind everyone that https://www.fossjobs.net/jobs/programmers/ is a 
keen place to look (or, if you're recruiting, post) for positions; if you're 
not a programmer, there are a dozen other categories at FOSS jobs.

[ade]

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Re: KDE Documentation & new Job

[Adriaan de Groot]

Dear Carl,

On Monday, 5 July 2021 17:16:20 CEST Carl Schwan wrote:
> Starting next week I will be starting a new job at Nextcloud and
> will be leaving my current job at the KDE e.V.

We're sorry to see you go so much sooner than expected. You crossed off a 
number of items for the documentation tooling contract and so have made things 
better for everyone. We wish you well at Nextcloud, where we will see you 
doing more that vein.

All the best,
Ade, Aleix, Eike, Lydia and Neo (the KDE e.V. board)

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Re: The status of freenode (the IRC network used by KDE)

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Thursday, 27 May 2021 10:58:00 CEST Adriaan de Groot wrote:
> On Wednesday, 26 May 2021 11:36:01 CEST Kenny Duffus wrote:
> > On Wednesday, 26 May 2021 09:56:08 BST Dmitry Kazakov wrote:
> > > Is there any KDE-wide decision on that? Is there any work done on
> > > migration
> > > from freenode to libera?
> > 
> > Only a coordinated change would be good for our community. This would
> > obviously be communicated to the community if everything that we need was
> > prepared  and ready to happen

It **seems** to me that bridging to Libera.Chat is now working normally: I 
have joined #freebsd-desktop:Libera.Chat in Matrix, for instance, and that 
gets me the IRC channel. Some other Libera.Chat channels work too. This 
suggests it's "good enough"?

[ade]

OT: (puts on Calamares hat) For the Calamares project, we've ended up with a 
bridge-bot hosted by one of the project participants, freenode <-> libera <-> 
matrix, so while messy the main conversation can be had in Matrix, natively.

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Re: The status of freenode (the IRC network used by KDE)

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Wednesday, 26 May 2021 11:36:01 CEST Kenny Duffus wrote:
> On Wednesday, 26 May 2021 09:56:08 BST Dmitry Kazakov wrote:
> > Is there any KDE-wide decision on that? Is there any work done on
> > migration
> > from freenode to libera?
> 
> Only a coordinated change would be good for our community. This would
> obviously be communicated to the community if everything that we need was
> prepared  and ready to happen

The board of KDE e.V. endorses such a coordinated move.

(The e.V. exists to support the KDE community; the community doesn't need 
permission for this, but I thought I'd make it clear that the board discussed 
it. If there is something specific needed, then the e.V. can help out -- but I 
think that our group contacts for IRC itself and our IRC friends and Matrix 
folks for bridging are already on it and "just" need to push the button.)

[ade]

PS. FreeBSD also announced a wholesale transition to Libera today. That leaves 
the #kde-freebsd channel in a weird superposition of states :) Channel elders 
have basically decided to migrate to #freebsd-desktop on Libera.

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Re: KDiff3 release

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Monday, 3 May 2021 13:00:11 CEST kde-announce-apps-requ...@kde.org wrote:
>1. KDiff3 1.9.0 released (Michael Reeves)
> 
> From: Michael Reeves 
> 
> KDiff3 1.9.0 is now released.
> It can be found at https://download.kde.org/stable/kdiff3/
> kdiff3-1.9.0.tar.xz.mirrorlist
> 


Yay! This reached our (FreeBSD) packaging yesterday because the tarballs went 
up on the download site. It leaves me *slightly* scratching my head, because 
of inconsistencies -- that's why I'm CC'ing kde-community, where "All about 
the Apps" is a KDE goal topic and it's good to get more exposure.


> Partial Change log:

So, KDiff3 is not part of the KDE Gear process. That's cool -- that's why we 
get separate release announcements for it :)

I see there's a tag on invent, but no GitLab-style release. Have you 
considered doing those as well? It's one way of making release notes easier to 
find (not just hidden on a mailing list like this one).

The AppData release info was bumped, but only on the release branch; that 
means that KDE's apps pages (e.g. https://apps.kde.org/kdiff3/) still show 
outdated information.

I'm a bit confused by the (AppData) "homepage" URL, since that leads round-
aboutly to the apps page; I think my confusion is because that URL is shown as 
"project homepage" on apps.kde.org, but doesn't effectively do anything. (So 
it's more a website-generator confusion than about your specific app)


Hopefully my comments & questions can lead to better releases for all, both 
Gear and independents without saddling you with any additional work.

[ade]

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Re: All About the Apps Goal

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Friday, 23 April 2021 11:58:07 CEST Jonathan Riddell wrote:
> KDE's All About the Apps Goal hopes to use modern methods of getting our
> apps to users.

Let's reboot this conversation and the discussion in the MR. I'll give it a 
shot:



===
The KDE community selected "All About the Apps" as one of its goals (https://
kde.org/goals/). Part of that goal is pushing new packaging formats (snaps, 
flats and appimages). Part of it is improving application metadata -- and 
showing that on apps.kde.org.

When pushing new packaging formats, there's a big difference to "traditional" 
packaging where a source tarball is thrown-over-the-wall to distros, who then 
do their thing with it. New packaging formats (which coincidentally are all 
containerized) put the packaging description into the source repository, 
because the "target distro" is known, as part of that new format.

Effectively, this means that individual apps can opt **in** to a new format by 
adding the snap, or flat, or appimage description files to the source 
repository. There are a couple of apps that have done this already.

For apps that do this, and **also** are part of the Release Service -- er .. 
part of KDE Gear, making use of the release service -- there is a spot of 
friction: the release scripts bump versioning information in CMake, set tags, 
make tarballs for "traditional" over-the-wall packaging. The release scripts 
do **not** update the new format information.

This MR adds one feature to the release script: for apps that have opted in to 
snap (by putting snap-info in the source respository) that use the release 
service, the version information is also bumped in the snap-info. (Again, 
requires the app to opt-in to snap, and also to opt-in to release service)
===



Is **that** what you're trying to achieve?

[ade]

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It *is* all about the apps! (Apps goal)

[Adriaan de Groot]

KDE has many fabulous applications, and getting them from our source-control 
system to people's desks and laps is -- in many ways -- the whole **point** of 
the KDE community. It is now *much* easier to find the applications -- on the 
website [2] and though Discover and GHNS. There's a workboard [3] with lots of 
individual tasks to pick, for specialists in all kinds of different OS- and 
packaging technologies.

[1] https://community.kde.org/Goals/All_about_the_Apps
[2] https://apps.kde.org/
[3] https://phabricator.kde.org/project/board/313/

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Compose all the things! (Wayland goal)

[Adriaan de Groot]

The future (of X11) is here [1]. It has been here for years, really. Wayland 
work grinds along, with Plasma working along with defining new Wayland 
protocols, bugfixes all over the stack and application-mulching too. For the 
people who "Wayland all day" the goal has been reached, maybe, but there's 
still plenty to do.

[1] https://community.kde.org/Goals/Wayland


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Watch all the things! (Consistency goal)

[Adriaan de Groot]

One of the KDE goals these years is the "Consistency" [1]. Niccolò has been 
doing really cool things all *over* the place, most recently with a video 
series.

There is Niccolò's blog-page-like-thing with all the videos [2], and Niccolò's 
YouTube channel [3] is worth a look, too. If you don't see the planet.kde.org 
posts highlighting the video's, this is a great introduction. There's a bunch 
of getting-into-development video's, which can help you (yes, you) to 
contribute to the consistency goal itself: either by submitting change-
requests or writing-up and writing-about.

[ade]

[1] https://community.kde.org/Goals/Consistency
[2] https://write.as/niccolove/
[3] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCONH73CdRXUjlh3-DdLGCPw


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Yay for Merge Requests (Doc Writer)

[Adriaan de Groot]

You know what's cool? The community stepping up to help with things.

I added the Documentation Writer job ad to the e.V. site yesterday, and I 
copy-pasted part of the text from the PDF into markdown for the post. There 
was a typo in there (that none of the board proof-reading had spotted; it's 
still in the PDF too).

Rik, Jonah and Albert stepped up to report, repair and merge. You know who you 
are, and you helped out to make things a tiny bit better even in these trying 
times.

Thanks,
[ade]

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Thank you, CWG

[Adriaan de Groot]

Earlier, on this list, Jos van den Oever wrote:

> In KDE, there is CWG of which we can be proud that deals with 
> situations like this with respect for the people on all sides of 
> a situation.

Which was well said, and I think it deserves repetition: the existence of the 
CWG is an important part of out community ethos. We *have* an independent 
group to deal with situations. That group is voted in by the membership, the 
group provides reporting (in so far as that is possible) for transparency, and 
it functions as part of our moral compass.

The KDE Manifesto is another part of that compass.

So I'd like to say thank you to the CWG, its few and beleaguered members, for 
donig the hard work (and for putting this list in moderation for a while).

[ade]

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Qt6 ports of applications

[Adriaan de Groot]

Hi all!

I'm starting to see Qt6-based applications in the Open source wild. For 
instance,

https://github.com/qxmpp-project/qxmpp/releases/tag/v1.4.0
https://audacious-media-player.org/news/51-audacious-4-1-released

These are generally "preliminary Qt6" versions, since there's no packaging of 
Qt6 that I'm aware of. It's cool nonetheless, to see that some things can port 
over easily.

We have a wide and deep tech stack, with some tricky compatibility 
requirements of its own, but there's movement towards KF6 at
https://community.kde.org/Sprints/KF6/
https://community.kde.org/Sprints/KF6/2021Virtual
(note to someone: turn "KF6" into a proper landing page with pointers to sub-
pages)

My own little corner of the world, Calamares, has backwards compatibility with 
Qt 5.9 in its current branch (yes, ugh) but you can bet your binaries that I'm 
eager to get to a new minor version branch / bump where I can jump to 
currently-supported Qt 5.15 and later.

[ade]

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Re: The Qt Company is looking for a Community Manager

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Monday, 8 March 2021 01:30:58 CET Aleix Pol wrote:
> Here's more information:
> https://www.qt.io/open-positions/community-manager-1614870577

I'd like to hightlight some of the tasks in this role:

As a Community Manager we expect You to:

Encourage use of Qt in various open-source projects
Help in creation of materials for users and contributors
Increase visibility of the Qt Project
Foster a welcoming atmosphere for new contributors
Make sure existing contributors feel appreciated and acknowledged
Participate in managing the contribution framework
Encourage contributions from partners, customers and open-source users
Look after our community related systems

This reaches beyond KDE to the other Open Source users of Qt: Musescore, 
VirtualBox, QGIS, to name just three that I happen to use.

It *says* Oulu or Espoo, which seems a little bit odd in this modern world, 
but Oulu seems like a nice place (compared to in Canada, where 65 degrees 
north will put you in Great Bear Lake).


[ade]

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Re: [OT] Hybrid open-source licenses?

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Sunday, 24 January 2021 20:36:28 CET Bogdan Tanygin wrote:
> Maybe you could advise whether it's worth digging in the following
> direction? I'm thinking a lot about the possibility of introducing a
> certain deserved reward of the open-source community efforts to an OSS
> license itself while keeping the open-source spirit unchanged. 

As Johannes Zarl-Zierl already said: the general advice when drafting a new 
Open Source license is "don't". More specifically, "don't". After that, 
there's a fairly straightforward process if you *actually* are interested in 
Open Source. I don't doubt your intentions, but I mention it because there are 
a fair number of licenses that enter this process not for the Open Source 
aspect, but for business-model reasons want an Open Source label.

Anyway: the steward of the Open Source definition, which is what just about 
everyone follows, is the Open Source Initiative. See
https://opensource.org/licenses
and in particular, on that page the link for the review process,
https://opensource.org/approval

In the past, organizations and individuals would write licenses themselves; 
nowadays you are recommended to lawyer up *first* so that you don't make basic 
mistakes in license drafting that would get the license rejected out-of-hand. 
There's a few hundred "top names in Open Source lawyering" around the world, 
there should be one near you (not that physical proximity matters much, 
really).

> Something
> like a permissive license except the case of intellectual property selling
> decisions by some of the contributors of the project and its forks.
> Business operations should be kept fully royalty free though. I drafted
> some license text
> .

Before even looking at this: "Open Source" does not allow field-of-use 
restrictions; remember also the Four Freedoms, where freedom zero is the 
freedom to use the software, for any purpose. As soon as you add "this 
software cannot be used for .." you're steering very close to the edge. See 
e.g. MongoDB, Elastic, ... with the SSPL which is **not** Open Source.

So now -- I'm not a lawyer, although I've been hanging out in this space for a 
long time -- I'm going to read the license and give some comments.


> I'm trying to avoid the dual-licensing approach, and to introduce some
> license which includes both elements per se. I'm also trying to avoid some
> issues faced by Qt or MariaDB. Such attempts have been made a few times
> (like Sourcegraph’s Fair Source License, Cockroach’s Community License,
> etc.).

Paragraph line 13:
- I think you'll find enough folks who disagree with the premise ("leave few 
possibilities").
- I do like the quick sketch of the inbound-and-outbound license problem with 
dual-licensing.

Paragraph line 15:
- The comparison with MLM is apt. You *do* know that MLM is a much-reviled 
organizational structure, known more for being exploitative than empowering?
- So the BOSS license is concerned with the "value chain" of forks (presumably 
also re-packaging and simple distribution, since it can be really hard to tell 
a fork from a non-fork -- I wonder if there's a language mix-up here, where 
"fork" on GitHub is something you do as a matter-of-course, while "fork" in 
older Free Software conversation is a project-maintainence action that is 
unusual.)

Paragraph line 17: it would be convenient to indicate where the text of APLv2 
is being used verbatim, just so reviewers can think "we know this bit already"

Paragraph line 47:
- If you are an individual (a natural person) contributing to the work, you 
may not die unless your heirs / executors are able to enter into contract 
negotiations with the stated contributors.
- If you are contributing as an organization, then M needs to know that 
negotiations with an unnamed, possibly growing group of stated contributors 
may be necessary at some point in the future.

I think this paragraph opens up a giant can of Bobbitt Worms, which are 
singularly unpleasant. I suppose that submitting work without becoming a 
stated contributor might reduce the administrative burden downstream, although 
in some (many?) jurisdictions you hold copyright even withou the magic 
incantation of being a stated contributor.

Brighter people than me have said "Open Source is not a business model". All-
in-all I think this license won't fly for general Open Source work -- I have 
doubts it would pass the OSI -- but it might vaguely make sense to use for a 
work that is developed by an industry consortium, with funding and contracts 
between the first-generation contributors so that clause 2 does not trigger 
meaningfully for them. Oh, and clause 2 only triggers on copyright transfer, 
so the license also does not solve the thing SSPL tries (and fails) to solve 
which is using unmodified software as a business / service.

I can see a profitable (for lawyers, paper-pushers and hangers-on) side-
venture 

Re: [OT] Opinions about licensing approach for permissive/weak-copyleft projects

[Adriaan de Groot]

Hi Filipe,

On Tuesday, 17 November 2020 19:27:32 CET Filipe Saraiva wrote:
> The reviewer proposes an approach for software licensing. In summary,
> s/he believes that if the project is using exclusively permissive or
> weak copyleft licenses, there is no need to put a license for the entire
> project.

I'm having a lot of trouble figuring out what the actual proposal *is*. It may 
be getting lost in paraphrases (I commend you on being very careful and 
paraphrasing when asking about papers that are under review).

One question to ask is "how can we tell if a project is using exclusively 
permissive or weak copyleft licenses?" Actually, we could take a step back and 
ask what the relationship is between "project uses a license" and "license 
applies to a software product published by project". A single project may 
produce more than one software product (see KDE, for instance).

OK, but suppose we know that the software product is intended to be licensed 
under (permissive or weak-copyleft) license L.

> On his/her words: "You don't need to specify a package-level license.
> What you can do is put a "default" license to your package which would
> mean that in the absence of a license in a file, that file would be
> under this license. This allows not having to specify the license in all
> files (although that is the recommended way of doing things). Note that
> this default license should be permissive or weak copyleft."

This is confusing: a "package-level license" to me sounds like something that 
is not at file-level. And then a "default" license is .. a license that is not 
at file level.

So I read this as "you don't need an overall license for the product, just put 
an overall license on the product!" Combined with the assertion in your first 
paragraph that you don't need an overall license on the product, now I'm 
*doubly* confused.


Given the "This allows .." note, though, I'm going to think that the intended 
use is:

- don't tag each and every file with license L
- do put license L somewhere

This sounds exactly what .. everyone has been doing since the '90s? A top-
level COPYING file and then little or no notice in the files themselves. I 
think Andreas Cord-Landwehr has already spoken to that: that's exactly what we 
(as KDE) are trying to **stop** doing. The REUSE.software folks (as pointed 
out by CoLa) have a good write-up why.

Also, what's special about permissive or weak-copyleft that makes this a good 
idea for them, but not others?


> I understand that his/her suggestions make sense (this would allow novel
> tools to improve license visualization, like that color bar that GitHub
> uses for programming languages could be used),  but I also wonder
> whether this would make sense in practice (this would require that all
> source code files are properly licensed).

And this explanation turns it around completely again, to tagging each-and-
every-file. I'm now either triply- or quadruply- (depending on whether 
confusion is linear or quadratic) confused.

The guiding principle for license-tagging right now is:
- assume the file is the atomic level of software distribution
- license each file
- put the license information **in** the file if possible
- make the license information machine-readable

Deriving package-level license information or aggregated license information 
from files tagged well is .. well, not simple, but doable, as CoLa's tooling 
has shown.

Oh, and as far as REUSE.software and/or Debian licensing tools go, a dep5 file 
with

Files: *
License: CC0-1.0
Copyright: no

is the kind of "default license" that is being suggested, and I think that 
that's a **bad** idea for the individual contributor, who now has a blanket 
that they don't control and have not explicitly accepted, covering their code. 
Informed consent is, IMO, hard to demonstrate with that kind of blanket.

[ade]

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LAS is on!

[Adriaan de Groot]

If your second-half-of-the-week isn't booked yet, tune in to the Linux 
Application Summit! It's online this year (rather than in lovely Barcelona, 
like last), and is a lot like Akademy except the broader *application* 
ecosystem on Linux, of GNOME and KDE and other apps.

Blurb:
Applications are the foundation of the user experience and can be 
appreciated in all types of Linux environments. It is this reason that 
building a common app ecosystem is a valuable goal. At the Linux Application 
Summit (LAS), we will collaborate on all aspects aimed at accelerating the 
growth of the Linux application ecosystem.



Overview:
https://linuxappsummit.org/

Get the schedule here:
https://conf.linuxappsummit.org/event/1/timetable/#20201112


(Our own Aleix Pol and David Edmundson are speaking and probably other friends 
that you have, that I have, within the Linux app ecosystem but that are hard 
to spot on the schedule because there's rarely names attached to talks -- but 
that's also good because it takes away bias from the people speaking and you 
can judge on the title + abstract instead)

[ade]

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Re: Call for Mentors (and Admins) for Season of KDE 2021

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Saturday, 24 October 2020 13:44:10 CEST Carl Schwan wrote:
> > -   added Calamares projects (there's a dozen hacktoberfest issues
> > available, all of which are also suitable SoK things)
> 
> Thanks a lot for this  We are still looking for mentors so if anyone has a
> bit of time and good ideas of potential projects, please consider mentoring
> for SoK 2021.

In retrospect I'm less sure about this: the 2018 announcement talks about 40- 
and 80-day projects, which the Calamares jobs emphatically are **not**. Maybe 
I'm getting this confused with Code-In or something where the emphasis is on 
smaller contributions and getting started in development.

With Calamares development typically being on a 14-day cycle, I'm not sure 
that *anything* I can come up with would actually consume that much time.

[ade]

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Re: Call for Mentors (and Admins) for Season of KDE 2021

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Thursday, 10 September 2020 16:11:08 CEST Caio Jordão Carvalho wrote:
> As discussed in the SoK/GSoC BoF that we had yesterday, our plan is
> to start the next edition of Season of KDE soon. But first we need to
> include
> some ideas in our ideas page and, most importantly, *we need mentors*! So

I couldn't tell if SoK was moving forward or likely to happen this year, but 
since I wrote up a bunch of starter-issues for Calamares (close-to-a-KDE-
project) for Hacktoberfest (not-a-KDE-activity) which also fit the SoK theme, 
I did the following:

- updated SoK wiki front (https://community.kde.org/SoK) to mention 2021
- added a general About page
- added Calamares projects (there's a dozen hacktoberfest issues available, 
all of which are also suitable SoK things)

I did not:
- even try to update https://season.kde.org/ (because Drupal, so it's not 
something I think I can reach)

The s.k.o site makes it look like December 2019 is in the future, which is 
kind of confusing. It'd be better to have it showing, say, the text "SoK 2020 
is over, we're collecting ideas for 2021, the fancy JavaScript wheel-calendar-
thingy is switched off but take a look at the Wiki for now" so it's clear 
where we're at.

[ade]

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Re: BoF Notes: How Python can help KDE Development?

[Adriaan de Groot]

On 2020 setula d. 12id 23:02:27 CEST Ingo Klöcker wrote:
> On Samstag, 12. September 2020 16:13:29 CEST Cristián Maureira-Fredes wrote:
> > * Kross
> > 
> >   - Since it's based on QtScript, there might an option to evaluate of
> >Python can replace it, since QtScript
> > was deprecated.

Kross also has some Python2 stuff in it, and I understood that Kross is 
unlikely to make it to KF6 (perhaps due to QtScript being deprecated), so 
there's multiple reasons not to invest in that.

> >   - A similar project on this topic is PythonQt [3]
> > 
> > [3] https://mevislab.github.io/pythonqt/Examples.html
> 
> I have worked many years with the maintainer of PythonQt (Florian Link,
> awesome developer and person) and have made extensive use of PythonQt for
> scripting MeVisLab (a Qt-based application framework for medical imaging
> applications).

That's interesting: PythonQt was also used by Calamares (Calamares also uses 
Boost::Python, so offering two ways to embed Python into the C++ application). 
PythonQt support is deprecated and will be removed, for two reasons:

1 - nobody was actually using the Qt / UI parts of it to do UI scripting in 
Calamares, so the extra API and dependency was not useful, and
2 - PythonQt is packaged inconsistently and/or weirdly by Linux distro's, 
which makes it hard to depend upon.

That might be a chicken / egg situation though: if it's not packaged, people 
won't use it either. I see that Calamares still refers to a SourceForge home 
for it -- that's an indication of how old and unmaintained that part of the 
Calamares code is. However, after chasing a few redirects, I end up on GitHub, 
with no tags, no releases and no indication of anything newer than Qt 5.12 in 
that repo. (And it uses QtScript, it seems, although an own-copy)

Perhaps that project needs some extra help with documentation and 
presentation?

[ade]

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OSI "State of the Source" CfP closes soon-ish

[Adriaan de Groot]

Hi all,

If you've given thought to presentations at Akademy -- for the KDE community 
-- you might also want to think about the Open Source Initiative online 
conference as well; this happens in the same time frame, and it's general OSS 
(with an emphasis on licensing) rather than KDE-focused. The CfP is still open 
for a little more than a week: 

https://opensource.org/StateOfTheSource

[ade]

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Re: The KDEPIM / Akonadi situation

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Saturday, 13 June 2020 18:21:24 CEST Volker Krause wrote:

> Thanks Ade! It looked like Dan had fixed the build error this morning
> though, I see things being green here:
> https://build.kde.org/job/Applications/view/
> Everything/job/akonadi/job/kf5-qt5%20FreeBSDQt5.14/ - where did I miss the
> Accounts issue?

I guess it's all good then. I can't build (as in "the build fails") Akonadi in 
a dirty environment (as in "with older frameworks and pim bits installed"), 
but with enough goes-round, or a clean environment, it's good.

Anyway, don't hesitate to tug at my sleeve in #kde-devel.

[ade]

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Re: The KDEPIM / Akonadi situation

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Saturday, 13 June 2020 09:29:36 CEST Volker Krause wrote:
> I have finite time and prioritized what seemed to have most wide-spread
> impact (all of Android and all of Flatpak vs. Akonadi/FreeBSD),

And, as time and circumstance permits, the PIM team prods me and/or tcberner 
to take an extra close look.



There is a peculiar cascade going on here, which **isn't** especially PIM-
related. 

1) kaccounts-integration has a binary-incompatible change going on: it changed 
to
explicit GetCredentialsJob(Accounts::AccountId id, QObject *parent = 
nullptr);

from 

explicit GetCredentialsJob(const Accounts::AccountId , QObject 
*parent = nullptr);

2) For whatever reason, **older** kaccounts-integration is installed on the 
FreeBSD builders before Akonadi builds; this puts the old headers in /usr/
local/include

3) I don't know if new accounts-integration builds before Akonadi; if it does, 
I don't know where it is installing its headers.

4) When building Akonadi, it has /usr/local/include in its search path 
**ahead** of any paths that might point to the "new" accounts-integration 
headers. So it picks up the old definitions, then bails out when it tries to 
link to the new libraries.



I can reproduce the problem locally with kdesrc-build.

Possibly Linux CI doesn't get the same problem, because it doesn't need to 
have extra system header locations (i.e. /usr/local/include) put onto the 
search path, and so an older installed accounts-integration just lives in the 
"default bits" which are searched last.


So if anything, what we're seeing here is a BIC that falls over because too 
many pieces have to move at once, on a platform that has some special 
considerations, that none of the PIM developers are on all the time. If you 
want to get on their case at all, do it for "ask [ade] or tcberner earlier", 
although in this particular case it wouldn't have sped things up: it's 
saturday afternoon, and now I have time to look into this.

[ade]



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Re: Akademy 2020 Survey

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Wednesday, 13 May 2020 11:14:06 CEST mary.allyson.alexand...@gmail.com 
wrote:
> We want to hear from you! There is still time to tell the Akademy Team and
> Program Committee what you would like to see at Akademy 2020! Don’t wait!
> It only takes a few minutes to fill out the survey
> !

I'll confirm this really does only take a few minutes, and it's quite useful 
to help the programme committee (( hides the hat )) pick cool talks for 
Akademy this year.

Speaking of picking cool talks: we could pick yours! But you do have to send 
it in :)

[ade]

Re: Information regarding upcoming Gitlab Migration

[Adriaan de Groot]

On 2020 prilula d. 29id 06:46:55 CEST Bhushan Shah wrote:
> We have gotten a request for namespacing from projects on multiple
> occassion, in cgit our workaround has always been that we prefix the
> repo name with namespace- (i.e wikitolearn-courses-backend).
> 
> While this works out with our current workflow, it is not really
> optimal. I've also mentioned various new contributor focused
> requirements which lead us to this proposal for structuring in previous
> emails.


Your mention of namespaces reminds me that there was **also** a discussion in 
this thread about workboards and reviews.

GitLab can have **one** workboard per group. So depending on how the 
categories / namespaces work out, we have choices in the overall number of 
workboards:

 - one big one (flat)
 - one per (sub)group / namespace

We should look at this as well. Arguments I've seen in this thread

 - one big one is unmanageably large
 - (sub)communities have asked for smaller (split) workboards
 - split workboards make it harder to work over group boundaries
 - one big one allows moving reviews and tasks to where they belong

(The last point is "because there are no group boundaries").


>From the sound of it (without re-reading this entire thread today) it's a 
distinction between generalists and specialists and a good workflow depends on 
what it is you're trying to coordinate (drat, another "it depends" issue).

[ade]


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Re: Information regarding upcoming Gitlab Migration

[Adriaan de Groot]

On 2020 prilula d. 28id 13:35:22 CEST Ben Cooksley wrote:
> Would some form of git alias/custom command script that works similar
> to the following be suitable?
> 
> git kde-clone skrooge
> 
> That script would then search the appropriate groups (ignoring any
> personal repositories including forks), find the necessary repository
> and perform the clone as appropriate for you. Should it find multiple
> results it would output it's results and then exit with a failure
> (giving you names and the clone urls to pick from manually)

That'd actually be pretty cool.

As a standalone script it'd be useful to migrate existing checkouts, so that's 
shooting two birds in one foot. And then you can have a somewhat structured 
namespace, still with simple lookup and unstructured names (until, as Bhushan 
points out in a different message in this thread, you get non-unique labels 
when decomposing structures names).


[ade]


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Re: Information regarding upcoming Gitlab Migration

[Adriaan de Groot]

There are a whole bunch of considerations and use-cases being discussed at 
once in this thread, and Leinir's post made me think a bit about different 
actors can interact with "the collection of repositories".

One actor is "tooling", as Albert has pointed out. Whatever the resulting 
structure is, it needs to be communicated to tool authors on time for tools to 
be updated, released, and rolled out for use. Tools mentioned so far:
 - kdesrc-build
 - i18n / scripty
 - release scripts
The tools don't have An Opinion regarding the layout, they just need to be 
updated.

A tool-like actor that I don't think has been mentioned so far is "existing 
checkouts". I have a src/kde with all the bits I've looked at "recently". 
There may even be some SVN checkouts there -- I'm willing to forget about 
those. Surprising and annoying me every time I update those sometime in the 
future is not good, but it's only going to annoy me once (per repo, so at most 
143 times for my clones).

I'd be *vaguely* worried about existing crontabs and automatic jobs that we've 
forgotten about, or which others have forgotten about. Those aren't fixable in 
the face of any changes to repositories, anyway.


Turning to human actors, who are the more interesting ones,

On 2020 prilula d. 28id 10:38:36 CEST Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen wrote:
> On Monday, 27 April 2020 21:25:09 BST Albert Astals Cid wrote:
> > El dilluns, 27 d’abril de 2020, a les 13:58:02 CEST, Bhushan Shah va
> > > On Mon, Apr 27, 2020 at 12:38:42PM +0200, Aleix Pol wrote:
> > > > Does this mean that to clone it we'll have to go "git clone
> > > > kde:games/knetwalk" or something along the lines?

> > > > If that's the case I'd much prefer if we didn't do this, at the moment
> > > > it's already uncomfortable for me to remember the URL for some of the
> > > > repos (e.g. is it sysadmin/ or not?), this will only increase the
> > > > problem and I personally don't see the advantage.


Humans come in all shapes and sizes; here's one called Aleix who likes to 
remember the name of a thing, one single label. (Ironic: this particular Aleix 
is also labelled "Aleix Pol" and possibly "Aleix Pol Gonzales") The question 
I'd ask is "in what **context** do you need to remember the URL of a repo?" 
and for that matter: "why is 'knetwalk' an obvious thing to remember, and 
'games/knetwalk' not-obvious?"

Context here can mean many things. In this thread we've had mentioned:
 - people just browsing and wanting A Big List
   Here a hierarchical approach means more clicks and navigating a tree,
   rather than a flat structure.
 - people browsing for a known label
   Using ^F in a flat list or some search field (see also Ian Wadham's
   message just now) doesn't seem *that* different to me, although I've
   got to give ^F the benefit of speed and simplicity.
 - developers sharing a task list and reviews

.. probably more. Some of these roles have, depending on the chosen solution, 
problems that can be solved with a *technical* addition 
(bigflatlistofrepositories.kde.org .. or whatever), others are going to need a 
social solution.



Personally, I'm with Leinir here:

> Just adding my "i don't use kdesrc-build, and git clone kde:x everything
> myself" voice, here. 

Perhaps it's the "old school", but kdesrc-build doesn't do anything for me. 
I'm intermittently interested in the source of some random part of KDE -- 
generally because it's mentioned on IRC -- and then I need that source where I 
can look at it. Whether it's 'git clone' or 'kdesrc-build --just-the-source-
please' doesn't matter much.

If there's any compiling to be done, the less magic there is between me and 
the compile, the better.

So, yeah: `git clone kde:x` all the way, but I'm also not really invested in 
the structure of the label x, or the precise configuration of kde:.


> Now, if a simple(ish) script can be created to make
> something akin to the kde: rewriting work, even if what it really does is to
> search gitlab and create a clone with the appropriate command, i could deal
> with that, but having the ability to simply ask for the project name is
> more than a little useful.

I think we shouldn't underestimate how names are a social construct, though: 
the current flat structure comes after a structured SVN naming epoch. But I'd 
totes +1 a search-and-redirector, especially if it means I can write `git 
clone kde:peruse` and the resulting .git/config has followed the redirects and 
whatnot and ended up with `url: kdeforreal:audio/peruse`

(That said, bigflatlistofrepositories.kde.org .. or maybe call it cgit.kde.org 
.. could be a particular view onto gitlab which does flattening and search, 
but only if there's people around to create it and maintain it)

[ade]

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Re: Akademy 2020 Online

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Thursday, 16 April 2020 11:09:19 CEST Jens wrote:
> On onsdag 15 april 2020 kl. 11:11:19 CEST Kenny Duffus wrote:
> > Hi
> > 
> > We will be hosting Akademy 2020 online between Friday 4th and Friday 11th
> > September
> > 
> >   https://dot.kde.org/2020/04/15/dont-miss-akademy-2020-going-online
> > 
> > We will be adding more details to the website over the coming weeks.
> > 
> >   https://akademy.kde.org/2020
> 
> Do you need like... ehm a wallpaper or SDDM background or maybe an avatar
> that people joining get for free instead of like a T-shirt?
> 
> You know logo design and maybe some nice graphics and trying to make it in
> to a "if a tshirt was in fact a wallpaper" kind of thing? I mean it doesn't
> replace a physical object but it could be fun.
> 
> /Jens (who is totally psyched about an online event)

If we can end up with a collage of Akademy people all with the official 
Akademy wallpaper, that'd be awesome!

(I am also always a Jens-art fan)

[ade]

Re: Qt, Open Source and corona

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Wednesday, 8 April 2020 21:06:12 CEST Eike Hein wrote:
> That is to say to others -- Qt Open Governance has been a
> collaborative and coordinated effort with close
> communication and will continue to be.

KDE e.V. has a statement about it as well, 

  https://ev.kde.org/2020/04/06/changes-in-qt-and-the-kde-free-qt-foundation/

with this closing paragraph:

===
Regardless of the future developments in this area, KDE continues to move 
forward with the guarantee that the KDE Free Qt Foundation will defend the 
rights of Free Software developers and Open Source software with regards to 
the Qt tool set.
===


[ade]

-- 
Adriaan de Groot, board member, KDE e.V.

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Reminder, FOSS-North march 29th

[Adriaan de Groot]

Hi KDE folks,

Just a reminder that there's a KDE community event for whoever would like to 
participate, at the end of March in Gothenburg, Sweden. If you'd like to 
present something, meet Swedish KDE or FreeBSD people, or just have coffee and 
cake with Open Source people, do stop by -- or propose a presentation.

https://community.kde.org/Promo/Events/FossNorth

[ade]

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Reminder: FOSS-North

[Adriaan de Groot]

Hi all,

Almost lost in all the OMGFOSDEM noise, is FOSS-North, which returns this 
year. The CFP is still open .. only for a short while more, so if you're in 
the area, do send something in. Or if you're not in the area.

There will be a KDE community day / micro-sprint at the event as well, so let 
me know if you'd like to help out there (e.g. by eating swedish pastries).


KDE Event page:
https://community.kde.org/Promo/Events/FossNorth#2020

Conference site:
https://foss-north.se/2020/index.html

Call for papers:
https://foss-north.se/2020/contribute.html#papers



[ade]

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Re: A safe haven for the community's memories

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Monday, 27 January 2020 07:27:42 CET Piyush Aggarwal wrote:
> > Almost always, photographs, videos and other forms of digital memorabilia
> > are so badly dispersed among the attendees, many of us have barely any
> > photographs from the event. The only way to get the photos we want is by
> > immediately getting the photographs on our phone then and there, during
> > the
> > event. The alternative after the event concludes and everyone is back home
> > safely, is to expect the sender to send the photographs as a mail
> > attachment or some other way that is generally a pain.
> > So, this mail thread aims to initiate a discussion on the prospect of
> > setting up a Kloud, of sorts.
...
> > The current best solution as far as I know, is https://share.kde.org ,
> > which is limited to just 100 MB.
> > Would it be feasible for the KDE Community, especially our sysadmins, to
> > host a server for this purpose? :-)
> > 
> > References
> > [1] : https://las2019.bcnfs.org/doku.php?id=wiki:lasphotos

There was a discussion -- it's a sysadmin ticket, I don't know if it's 
readable for all -- at https://phabricator.kde.org/T12026 for a similar 
situation with LAS photos. Not the *same*, though, since that was also for 
"raw" materials to be shared with video editors and other PR people.

[ade]

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Re: Does anyone have experience with kiwitcms -- an open source test case management system?

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Thursday, 9 January 2020 16:15:53 CET Boudewijn Rempt wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I was just pointed at https://kiwitcms.org/ -- finding a way to organize
> testing is something I've felt krita has needed for a long time, and this
> looks pretty comprehensive and integrated. Is there anyone in our community
> who has actual experience with this system? And would other KDE projects
> also be interested in investigating this platform?

My expoerience with it is limited to "asking for, and getting, a test-instance 
for Calamares" and then I ran out of time to really doing anything with it. 
It's pretty cool and the team is responsive and if we were to actually sit 
down and *write some tests* (that's what I lacked the time for) it'd be pretty 
cool.

[ade]

Reminder: please maintain sprints pages

[Adriaan de Groot]

Here's a wee reminder for people who organize sprints to please add a page to
 https://community.kde.org/Sprints
at least naming the sprint and mentioning a result of that sprint. For 2019 
the second half of the year is a bit empty -- only KF6?

The sprints page is one of the places where we can show off what kind of a 
happening community KDE really is.

[ade]

Re: KDE e.V. Community Report for 2018 available

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Wednesday, 27 November 2019 20:05:51 CET Aleix Pol wrote:
> Dear KDE community,
> Some of you already saw it at Akademy, but we wanted to make sure that
> you were all aware of all the great things we did last year 2018
> 
> https://ev.kde.org/reports/ev-2018/
> 
> Please take a look and share far and wide!
> 
> Best regards,
> Aleix Pol i Gonzalez, KDE e.V. President

Thanks Aleix. That's a slick-looking, and extensive, report.

I see there's now a news item (as Albert requested) at
https://ev.kde.org/news.php#itemKDEeVCommunityReport2018
that should help wih making it a little more discoverable. 

For the people worried about the size of the report: Albert (thanks!) has done 
a run of PNG optimizations over the content which should help, but in general: 
it *is* a photo-heavy page (there's about 14MB of photo's referenced, from a 
quick eyeballing -- maybe a recompre4ss-with-more-JPEG-artifacts would help 
there), with lots of scripting to help in the fancy-slickness department. Just 
like the years before.

[ade]

Come to FOSDEM to learn more!

[Adriaan de Groot]

Hi all! We've been confirmed for a booth at FOSDEM 2020, 
  https://fosdem.org/2020/news/2019-11-19-accepted-stands/

This will be in our traditional spot. Here's a reminder to fill in your 
presence at the booth or at talks or just at the largest Free Software event 
in europe.

  https://community.kde.org/Promo/Events/FOSDEM/2020

I'll be attending the FreeBSD event before FOSDEM (with my KDE hat on) and 
then doing a mix of FreeBSD and KDE things during the event and it'd be cool 
to have lots of other KDE people around.

[ade]

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Linux App Summit 2019 -- reports

[Adriaan de Groot]

Hi everyone,

The Linux App Summit happened last week, https://linuxappsummit.org/ .

It's about building up an ecosystem of applications on Linux, beyond the 
"traditional" applications that we deliver, and the way those applications are 
delivered.

Jonathan wrote about it: 
https://jriddell.org/2019/11/18/linux-applications-summit/
I wrote about it: https://euroquis.nl//kde/2019/11/18/linuxappsummit.html

In the media, ZDNet: 
https://www.zdnet.com/article/we-could-still-have-a-year-of-the-linux-desktop/
and also: 
https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-future-of-linux-desktop-application-delivery-is-flatpak-and-snap/
and c't in German: 
https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Linux-App-Summit-Den-Desktop-fuer-App-Entwickler-attraktiver-machen-4592593.html

Overall a good event, and worth watching for it in 2020 (we don't know where, 
yet).

[ade]

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Re: Requesting for guidance

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Saturday, November 9, 2019 10:45:00 PM CET Adriaan de Groot wrote:
> Your message from october seems to have gone unanswered -- sorry about that.

(Well, Valorie and Nate had already answered quickly, which is what I kind of 
*expected* to have happened, but I didn't see those messages before .. and so 
I wrote my response this late).

duh.

[ade]


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Re: Requesting for guidance

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Monday, October 21, 2019 5:34:32 PM CET Yukti Khosla wrote:
> As a beginner, I am a little confused as to how I should start
> contributing. I am well versed in Python, C, C++, and Java.

Hi Yukti,

Your message from october seems to have gone unanswered -- sorry about that. 
The general approach in KDE is that you don't need to ask for permission -- 
just do it. That means that it's also best to "scratch your own itch", which 
means fixing something in a program that you personally use. Many of us got 
started that way.

The KDE Community wiki has a getting-started / get-involved page:

https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved

This can help you figure out what kind of participation you want. For coding 
things, get a development environment set up (in whatever OS you like), clone 
some git repositories, and start building. That's not the easiest way to get 
started, but it's effective for starting code contributions.

There's conf.kde.in in Delhi early in 2020, if you can travel and want to meet 
KDE people, that's a possibility.

[ade]


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Re: General Infrastructure Maintainability: API and EBN

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Saturday, November 9, 2019 10:03:37 PM CET Ben Cooksley wrote:
> The problem isn't just the complicated legacy nature of them, but also
> how fragile and impossible to maintain they are.

Just as an example, the EBN (hm .. I no longer redirect EBN.org to the KDE 
site) still embeds a comment in the front page about a research project that 
ended in 2006 and points to my blog that stopped working in 2011.

I like Alexander's suggestion to make a Phab task for it. I'd dearly love to 
spend some time reinvigorating this stuff, but .. time is precious. I remember 
when re-tooling APIDOX around 2010 that it worked fairly effectively *because* 
we (the university of Nijmegen at the time) had a full SVN repo mirror locally 
for research purposes. That's no longer the case.

[ade]

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Re: Sysadmin Load Reduction: Legacy Compatibility Redirects

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Saturday, November 9, 2019 1:02:01 AM CET Ben Cooksley wrote:
> research.kde.org

This content is on the community wiki. KDE-Research went defunct with the 
death of Claire Lotion and when Paul, Sebas and myself stopped doing (EU) 
research projects around KDE. So I agree with retiring this redirect.

[ade]


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Re: Sysadmin Load Reduction: Legacy Compatibility Redirects

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Saturday, November 9, 2019 1:02:01 AM CET Ben Cooksley wrote:
> solaris.kde.org

As the last maintainer of solaris packaging for KDE, I made that point to 
techbase a long time ago. I agree with retiring this redirect.

[ade]

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Reminder, FOSDEM participation

[Adriaan de Groot]

Hi all,

Here's a friendly reminder that FOSDEM is just three months away; possibly our 
biggest get-together after Akademy. I know there's still QtWS LAS GH KF6 and 
conf.kde.in between here and there, but still: sign up, volunteer, plan your 
attendance early so we all can figure out how to do the things we do, best.

Phab: https://phabricator.kde.org/T11835
Wiki: https://community.kde.org/Promo/Events/FOSDEM/2020#People

We haven't had confirmation of a booth yet, but let's bank on the strength of 
the building K regulars.

[ade]

A reminder for funding applications

[Adriaan de Groot]

Dear KDE community,

Here's a last-minute reminder that you (as an individual developer) can apply 
for funding to work on "cool stuff on the internet". There was a talk at 
Akademy by Michiel, but there are other sources, too. Here are two (with 
deadlines nov. 1 and dec. 1):


> The Internet Freedom Fund is OTF's primary way to support projects and 
people working on open and accessible technology-centric projects that promote 
human rights, Internet freedom, open societies, and help advance inclusive and 
safe access to global communications networks for at-risk users including 
journalists, human rights defenders, civil society activists, and every-day 
people living within repressive environments who wish to speak freely online.

https://www.opentech.fund/funds/internet-freedom-fund/

> Technology without adequate privacy controls affects the quality, intimacy 
and depth of human relationships and of life in general. In our online 
environments we do not just have to deal with those who mean well - our next 
of kin, friends, acquaintances, co-workers or the people we share private or 
professional interests with.

https://nlnet.nl/propose/



[ade]

Re: Participate at the LAS 2019!

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Monday, August 26, 2019 9:44:25 AM EDT Aleix Pol wrote:
> As you'll well know, we're organising the LinuxAppSummit 2019 in
> Barcelona between the 12th and 15th November.

I'd like to help out (independent of whether I send in a talk proposal).

[ade]


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Re: vote invitation sent out for goal voting

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Friday, 23 August 2019 09:13:11 CEST Kai Uwe Broulik wrote:
> > Sorry, these all are... Irrelevant, incomprehensible, ineligible or
> > inconsiderable.
> Care to explain why you think that is?

(Not intending to put words in Boud's mouth here, and trying not to opine on 
any specific goal-proposal)

Well, there are 11 "goals", which vary greatly in detail, scope, and internal 
consistency. The original three goals were relatively high-level; it's 
possible to find a spot for yourself in working towards the goal, regardless of 
your specific skill-set. Some of the new proposals are .. well, suitable if 
you're a specific kind of technical programmer but very difficult to get behind 
if you're not in that specific class.

At least one proposal is such a "do all the things" grab-bag that it's hard to 
figure out what the propsal actually **wants**.

Of the 11 proposals, I found four I would call "goals" at a level of 
abstraction suitable for putting to the global community, a handful that are 
cool sub-projects, and a couple of "lol wut"s.

So I voted (once, although I got two invites to the same KDE address) by 
shuffling things mostly by "this isn't a viable goal" at the bottom.

> > Besides, the previous set of goals has not been achieved by a country
> > mile.
> 
> Ignoring the fact that this isn't a SI unit, this is just not true.

No, no, Country Mile is a beer store in New Hampshire, USA. The proprietor of 
the store has not achieved the KDE goals. That's understandable, maybe we 
should have reached out to them.



This does underscore a philosophical question: the goals were set and voted 
into existence on the understanding that we (grand we, the KDE community) 
would work towards those goals for a few years. I don't think there was a 
"until the goals are achieved" implied; and neither does the end-of-term of a 
goal imply that it is achieved or not-to-be-worked-on-anymore.

FWIW, there are **new** goal proposals which can all be seen as spiritual 
successors to the original three goals. So for the "not achieved and we need 
to keep on towards the original ones" vote, there **are** selections that can 
be made.

[ade]

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FOSS-North report

[Adriaan de Groot]

[[ Since my blog is down, this is the all the report we'll see about FOSS-
North; do read Augustin's notes as well, though, https://toscalix.com/
2019/04/14/scale-summit-foss-north-and-some-routine-changes/ ]]

# Background

The KDE community was invited to the FOSS-North [1] conference again this 
year. Last year I ran the booth there and gave a talk on KDE governance. This 
year I ran a community day event (hackathon/meetup) in cooperation with the 
Gothenburg C++ group (GBG-CPP), and the booth. A last-minute speaker 
cancellation saw me giving a talk anyway, about Calamares (not a KDE project).

Other KDE-related speakers -- not speaking on KDE topics though -- were Mirko 
Boehm and Augustin Benito Bethencourt.

Gothenburg is a beautiful city when the sun shines. Wednesday morning had very 
light snow falling; the beginning of April is not a "good weather" period for 
the city, but it was generally very pleasant. There is a large industrial 
software development community -- Volvo, SAAB, and lots of smaller ones -- 
with a lot of Qt and QML work being done. However, the Open Source bits are 
less well-known, and KDE is just not a thing there. The local GNOME community 
is more active.

Calls for help / participation on the KDE lists led to Mirko and Augustin 
speaking up. Augustin added his RPi bits to the KDE community day. 

# Community day

For the community day I had put together, basically, an onboarding talk of an 
hour and a half of going through tools, techniques, and best practices. I 
showed off kdesrc-build (there's some issues there) and now realise that our 
onboarding docs could still use more technical writing skill. The attendees of 
the community day were largely GBG-CPP folks, with a passing interest in what 
the KDE community is doing and what the frameworks are like. We didn't do much 
technical stuff.

Thanks to Sylog Vaest AB for hosting us (with good coffee, and fruit and 
sandwiches). Like so many consultancies in the Qt space, they have trouble 
finding good engineers with some Qt experience. I reminded them that KDE is a 
good training space and they should send young people to us.

# Conference booth

The Open Source booths this year were "upstairs", away from the main vendor 
floor. Coffee and fika (cake) were served on the main vendor floor. During 
talks 
it was generally pretty quiet, so I went and talked to the various stands. 
GNOME was also there with a booth which had .. four people on it? Bastian 
Ilsoe is local, IIRC, and then some other peeps. They had T-shirts and a bunch 
of stickers and GNOME socks.

The KDE booth had materials re-used from QtWS: a logo banner (but no blue 
table cloth), stickers (Katie, Konqui, and Qt-heart-Konqui), and postcards and 
flyers. I had my own Slimbook, a 7" One Mix laptop, and just-in-case a Rock64 
(but no monitor). Since foot traffic to the upstairs was quite low, I didn't 
run 
specific demos, but mostly said "hi" to people who walked by.

I gave away a handful of stickers, and kept the rest (still about 150 left 
over since QtWS).

Given the level of traffic it's good we didn't really invest in getting a lot 
of 
*stuff* there; all the good Promo goods like A4 stand-ups with promo text, the 
roll-up, table-cloth, T-shirts for sale .. wouldn't have made a big 
difference. Getting the materials there would have been an issue as well 
(well, mostly it would have cost EUR 25 extra for luggage).

Personally I'd like the Open Source booths to fit in with the rest of the 
vendor floor, but that may be a space issue (and the "real" vendors pay money).

# Conference talk

I gave a talk. It wasn't planned, but another speaker fell ill. I did 25 
minutes on Calamares, using the KDE beamer theme and wearing my KDE shirt (and 
telling people that Calamares uses KDE technologies, but isn't a KDE project). 
It went ok.

# Social

There were various social events. There was beer (Swedish-expensive!). I 
chatted with Mikey Ariel, from WriteTheDocs -- you may remember her from 
Akademy in Brno -- and with Carol Chen from RedHat.

For regular conference goers, the line "come home to KDE" still works pretty 
well; that handles "I use i3" as well as "I used KDE 3" people. I also stress 
that the "competition" is proprietary software far more than other Free 
Software desktops. Since FOSS-North had a fairly large number of consultancies 
/ proprietary vendors around, I think it's important to keep pushing the Free 
angle.

I have a handful of business cards, and handed out a bunch of "you should 
think about using Kirigami" notes. I also handed out my old-old KDE business 
cards (with "Vice President" crossed out, to give you an idea of how long I've 
been using them).

# Costs

 - Materials were re-used from QtWS.
 - Travel & lodging EUR 492, which I'm trying to get back from KDE e.V.
 - Beer, food, train to the airport, and incidentals are my own.


[1] https://foss-north.se/2019/

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Re: KDE at Kirchentag in Dortmund

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Friday, 29 March 2019 23:01:27 CET Olaf Schmidt-Wischhöfer wrote:
> If you wish to help organising, then you could maybe look into the KDE
> material that should for the free software sub-booth (best coordinate with
> Johannes, how is from Dortmund and organising that part of the joint booth).

I could catch a train (RE19 to Dusseldorf) down that way, although my German-
speaking skills are peculiar at best. That's if you need more KDE-peeps on the 
booth.

[ade]


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FOSS-North 2019

[Adriaan de Groot]

Reminders, FOSS-North is coming up, april 7-8-9.
https://foss-north.se/2019/

You can come for the community day (7th) and talk about KDE stuff and CMake 
stuff and C++ stuff with bits of the KDE community and the Gothenburg C++ 
group; you can come for the conference (8th and 9th) and see a whole bunch of 
fascinating speakers (ticket required). There will be a KDE booth at the 
conference if you just want to chat with me :)

[ade]

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Re: KDE now has its own Matrix infrastructure

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Thursday, 28 February 2019 16:38:30 CET Jonathan Riddell wrote:
> I get some unitemised t-shirts from old Akademys which is
> appreciated.

.. and leftover QtWS shirts, and some other items that I had made. I forget 
where I reported that -- I can't spot it on this list, so maybe I sent that 
internally to the e.V.

As for stock-taking and finances, Jon wrote on February 6th of this year, after 
FOSDEM, a report on the FOSDEM happenings. It was titled "KDE at FOSDEM 2019". 
It specified stock changes, income, etc. There wasn't a lot of reaction to it.

That same message contained Jon's .. I don't know what to call it, really, 
maybe chip-on-the-shoulder .. grudge-statement about the financial query from 
the e.V. So this thread is beating a dead horse in many ways.

[ade]

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Re: Licensing policy change proposal

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Monday, 28 January 2019 13:23:36 CET Krešimir Čohar wrote:
> Why not? As far as Unsplash goes, their only restriction is not to start a
> competing service, which is not even remotely what we are trying to do.
> Surely that is a reasonable and acceptable restriction. It's not unlike the
> copyleft restrictions ("freedoms") of the GPL.

Here's the thing: we ship Free Software. More-or-less-equivalently, we ship 
things licensed under an Open Source license. And *that* in turn basically 
means "is it OSI listed".

That's a short-and-bureaucratic kind of answer, which I don't particularly 
like.

A related thing: if we ship something, and *downstream* doesn't like it, then 
either they patch it out, or they don't ship our stuff. It's important to ask 
downstreams specifically what they think, when we're re-shipping something from 
upstream under an unexpected license. Debian is one of the most particular of 
our downstreams, so we'd definitely want to check with them.

A related thing: FOSDEM is this weekend, when we have the KDE licensing 
people, Debian, and a room full of lawyers all in one place (-ish). That's 
probably a good moment to inquire.

[ade]

PS. The license seems a bit inconsistent to me: first it grants a very broad 
license and then carves out a specific exception (field of endeavour). It would 
be more tidy if it started with "EXCEPT AS LISTED BELOW (field of endeavour), 
Unsplash grants you ..". It may be feasible to get a specific (i.e. CC-0) 
license applied by Unsplash to these specific (how many, six?) photos, since 
it's unlikely that you can start a competing service with just six photos.

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Re: Coming to FOSS-North?

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Thursday, 10 January 2019 12:35:45 CET Adriaan de Groot wrote:
> Since it's the beginning of the year, let's plan out some events! At the
> beginning of april there's FOSS-North, in the beautiful [1] city of

I have started a page for this under KDE's Promo/Events/ wiki page.

https://community.kde.org/Promo/Events/FossNorth

For the community day part, we can use the opportunity to do a one-day 
hackfest / demonstration of our community and culture and products at a 
friendly company. So you can go in there with a "hackfest with KDE people" 
mindset, or a "show off and network" mindset. Both are possible.

[ade]

Coming to FOSS-North?

[Adriaan de Groot]

Hi all,

Since it's the beginning of the year, let's plan out some events! At the 
beginning of april there's FOSS-North, in the beautiful [1] city of 
Gothenburg. Last year KDE had a booth at the conference, and I gave a talk on 
KDE governance. This year, we can have -- if we plan something -- a community 
day for hacking, and then the conference too. Conference site [2] and my 
bloggy bits from last year [3] are online.

A community day would be a great opportunity to bring KDE / Qt people from the 
nordic bits of the world together -- as well as anyone else who's in the 
neighbourhood.

Please ping me if you're going to be nearby, or might be. A community day 
could include, say, work on CMake frameworks (I know I've seen a lot of ugly 
stuff recently), or doing some VDG-style work on bits and pieces, or straight 
up C++-hacking-with-modern-Qt-slots which needs a little practice with modern 
C++ methods.

[ade]



[1] It's an industrial port, but *also* has lovely parks and a huge hipster 
population, and there's an amazing selection of vegan and vegetarian 
restaurants.

[2] http://foss-north.se/2019/

[3] https://euroquis.nl/bobulate/?p=1848

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Coming to FOSDEM?

[Adriaan de Groot]

Hi all,

Here's a little reminder that there is a FOSDEM coordination page:
https://community.kde.org/Promo/Events/FOSDEM/2019

It would be nice if the list of people were complete-ish, so we (as a 
community) know who to look out for and look forward to. If you're available 
to help at the booth, please say so as well. Jonathan is coordinating things, 
and if we know there are more-than-enough-people to staff the booth, it gets 
easier for everyone since then you don't feel guilty about sneaking off for 
sandwiches and the like.

[ade]

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QtWS attendees

[Adriaan de Groot]

Hi all,

Now that some other events are past, it's time to ramp up preparation for QtWS 
in Berlin. You can find the task in KDE Phabricator at

https://phabricator.kde.org/T9650

and the conference website is

https://www.qtworldsummit.com/2018/berlin/


Most important though, it some enthusiastic people to run the stand. It's only 
one day this year of actual conference, with one day of trainings preceding 
it, so we can do with a slightly smaller staff -- you won't be run ragged over 
several days.

It *is* important to have enough people there to do the spiel and be helpful 
and supportive.

So far, I have Kai Uwe and Helio on the roster (both traveling from Germany). 
And I'll be there (Netherlands). I'd really like to have three more people who 
can be there that day so that we're "clearly present" as the largest community 
contributor to Qt.

[ade]

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Re: pseudonymous contributions to KDE

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Wednesday, September 19, 2018 6:02:22 AM EDT Luigi Toscano wrote:
> Jonathan Riddell ha scritto:
> > On Tue, Sep 18, 2018 at 07:38:35PM +0200, Jos van den Oever wrote:
> >> Can one sign a Fiduciary License Agreement under pseudonym?
> > 
> > Same as above on the whole.  At least in Scotland there's no
> > restrictions on what name you chose to use for any purpose as long as
> > it's not for fraud.
> 
> Can we talk to lawyers and other coding communities? This is not something
> that can be decided just thinking about "more contributions".

The FLA is an agreement between a German organization (that is, the KDE e.V.) 
and the licensor (that is, the contributor who is handing the fiduciary 
license to the licensee). That makes Scottish norms irrelevant -- and part of 
this discussion, too, since it's about what the *e.V.* will (or can) accept. I 
don't know if the FLA contains, off-hand, choice-of-jurisdiction phrasing. 
It's certainly something to discuss with one of our tame lawyers (who are not 
our lawyers in a formal sense).

[ade]

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Re: pseudonymous contributions to KDE

[Adriaan de Groot]

Based on memory, not actual policy:

On Tuesday, 18 September 2018 19:38:35 CEST Jos van den Oever wrote:
> What is the KDE policy on accepting code contributions under pseudonym? I've
> gotten review requests on Rust Qt Binding Generator under a pseudonym. Now
> I wonder if I can accept the contribution. The contributor has, under
> pseudonym, a KDE account.

Grudgingly. We'd much prefer a non-pseudonym.

> Can one sign a Fiduciary License Agreement under pseudonym?

I'm going to say "no" (again, memory, not reading the document closely). 
You're making some kind of legal statement; don't do that with a pseudonym.  
On the other hand, my FLA says "I, Adriaan de Groot" and refers to commits 
done by user adridg, email gr...@kde.org .. which are essentiually pseudonyms 
for me. So ..
 
> The FSF allows people to use a pseudonym publicly but requires that the real
> name of the contributor is on file.

That seems workable.

[ade]


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Re: New KDE.ru website

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Tuesday, 18 September 2018 17:39:37 CEST Ilya Bizyaev wrote:
> Today the Russian-speaking KDE community proudly launches its updated
> website, KDE.ru. 

Вот очен хорошо!

And so, having exhausted all the Russian I can produce at the drop-of-a-hat, 
congratulations on having created a slick and good-to-read site, including 
lots of information about becoming a participant in the KDE community.

>  Cheers, Ilya.

[ade]


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Re: Closing NEEDSINFO bugs after 30 days

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Monday, 17 September 2018 20:01:15 CEST Andrew Crouthamel wrote:
> This is already a policy at many other projects such as The Document
> Foundation, Chromium, and Fedora. Additionally, several of our developers
> within KDE are already doing this.

This depends on the state change *to* NEEDSINFO having a comment or other 
message that is sufficiently directive: "we need  in order to do 
anything with this bug". Or, in general, we'd need to keep in mind that that 
state change needs to have a clear and explicit question towards the reporter.

In my own projects I do tend to to an intent-to-close pass over bugs, adding a 
comment "this will be closed in a week unless you speak up and provide the 
requested information."

[ade] (generally in favor)


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Re: ELC conference

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Saturday, 8 September 2018 10:23:31 CEST Kenny Duffus wrote:
> On Friday, 7 September 2018 21:41:17 BST Adriaan de Groot wrote:
> > So, who's available (24-26 october 2018) and willing?
> 
> According to their website it seems to be Sunday 21st - Wednesday 24th? (+
> extra training day on the 25th)

Yes. I have no idea where I got 24-26 from. It is from 22-24 october (mon-
wed). I personally would be arriving, like, saturday or so to be bright-eyed 
and bushy-tailed when the show starts. Paul will know when the actual booth 
times are.

We'll also have to check what leeway we have to look in on presentations, or 
if we're largely consigned to a vendor role (there's a bunch of diversity 
things I'd be interested in, for instance).

[ade]

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QtWS conference

[Adriaan de Groot]

Hi community,

This year QtWS (the Qt World Summit) is a slightly smaller affair than it was 
last year, 2 days in Berlin. Once again we'd like to be there with a booth, so 
that we can show off our dedication -- and remind people that KDE is a 
constant within the Qt ecosystem. QtWS is an industry conference, it's 
surprising how people either know us really well or not at all, so that's why 
we went all-out last year for a really polished presence. We'd like to do that 
again this year.

I'm willing to coordinate a booth, make sure stuff gets to the venue, etc. but 
we'll need warm bodies there to smile, hand out pamphlets, explain the KDE 
manifesto, etc. etc. Take a look at last year's team, that was great.

So, who's available (5-6 december) and willing?

[ade]

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ELC conference

[Adriaan de Groot]

Hey community,

The Embedded Linux Conference (ELC) is in Edinburgh this year, and we'd like 
to be there with a booth. This is an industry conference, with lots of things 
on the edge of what we usually do: embedded, automotive, aviation .. but all 
stuff that we have some experience in, and in any case as a community we're a 
good "incubator" of C++ and Qt programmers and other contributors, which is 
valuable to industry as well.

To run a booth, we'll need people "on the ground" at the event. I'm willing to 
do the booth coordination, making sure that stuff gets to the venue, etc. but 
we also need warm bodies to do demo work, explanations, and just to be there 
and smile while the booth is open. There's also materials to be made and stuff 
to be printed -- I'll delegate that :) It's a lot like last year's Qt World 
summit event, a few days of hard work, with a payoff in making KDE shine in 
areas that it's not normally all that visible.

So, who's available (24-26 october 2018) and willing?

[ade]

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Re: freenode #live conference in Bristol: speakers, booth?

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Monday, 27 August 2018 13:10:52 CEST Christian Loosli wrote:
> this year the second freenode #live conference will take place in Bristol
> 3rd and 4rd of November, 2018. For details: https://freenode.live/

There's not been a lot of community uptake on this; I think it would be cool, 
though. So, c'mon, who is in the UK and up for a couple of days of Bristol, 
giving a talk maybe, rubbing shoulders with Debian and other friends.

I'm willing to coordinate a booth, handle getting stuff and swag there, I 
could give a talk or two, but I can't do it alone.

Christian, how are talks (lightning talks, I presume), what kind of topics are 
you looking for? The conference schedule is a bit light still.

[ade]

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Re: freenode #live conference in Bristol: speakers, booth?

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Monday, 27 August 2018 13:10:52 CEST Christian Loosli wrote:
> this year the second freenode #live conference will take place in Bristol
> 3rd and 4rd of November, 2018. For details: https://freenode.live/

Huh, if I catch the train right now I could be in Bristol before midnight (my 
measure of "not *that* far away").

> We (freenode) are still looking for speakers and we also have room for
> exhibitors. Knowing that KDE in the past did exhibit at other conferences
> like FOSDEM and also last year at #live: would it make sense to again have
> a KDE stand there, with some promo  / stuff to show?

I think so -- we were at EduCode this week, also an end-users-meet-upstream 
kind of event, which was useful in its own way.

> I think this is not only a great opportunity to present KDE software end
> projects, but also to maintain the very good relationship between KDE and
> freenode, as we (KDE) not only use freenode infrastructure, but also got a
> sponsor and recent donations from the surroundings of freenodians. As I will
> be busy wearing my freenode hat at #live, I'm afraid I can't do the KDE
> part.

Have we got people on the ground nearby? That's always easier than shuffling 
people around the continent.

[ade] (who hasn't got anything scheduled in November, yet :) )

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Re: Nominate key KDE frameworks and packages for inclusion in the OIN Linux System Definition

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Wednesday, 29 August 2018 18:53:39 CEST Mirko Boehm wrote:
> KDE software is covered in the definition, but not in the latest version.
> KDE 3 and 4 packages are included. 

Does any mainstream distro still ship any KDE3 stuff? Does any mainstream 
distro still ship any KDE4 stuff? (FWIW, I've just added deprecation notices 
to all the KDE4 packages on FreeBSD, thinking we were the last to get rid of 
it).

> I would like to see the KDE frameworks
> and key shared libraries included. The system definition includes reusable
> components, applications (“leafs” of the dependency tree) are usually not
> included. The Linux System is updated every 18-24 months. We just finished
> one round of updates, so now is a good time to think about nominating
> updates to the latest versions of “legacy" KDE packages, and nominating new
> packages for inclusion.

Sure, I'd be up for that -- I see Cornelius is, too. We could try wrangling 
the frameworks in, as well as updating KDE4 bits if needed; 17.08.3 was the 
very last update of that stack, we could check if it's in the LSD.


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Re: FOSDEM: call to action!

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Friday, 24 August 2018 21:14:11 CEST Boudewijn Rempt wrote:
> Do we actually have any numbers about how much merchandise we can get
> through during Fosdem? I know that my Krita tat was all gone by the end of
> Saturday...


We can go through a few dozen -- say 40 -- T-shirts if we have the KDE India 
ones in nice colors. A few hundred stickers. Maybe 50-80 pamphlets about KDE / 
Plasma / Join the Game or whatever it is now called.

We had the plush Konqui's, those were really cool.

Hoodies were missed.

So I'd say something like "2 moving boxes full of swag".



As for the table skirt: get something nice-ish, but there's no point in 
aiuming for form-fitted because things are always going to change shape. A big 
blue cloth (2m x 3m) plus a "loper" (40cm x 2m) with a KDE logo on it would be 
really flexible. Perhaps we can sketch some things at our next lunch meeting.

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Re: Lakademy 2018 - Call for attendees

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Wednesday, 15 August 2018 12:27:00 CEST Aracele Torres wrote:
> Hello everyone,
> 
> Just a quick remind that today is the last day to fill this form with your
> info if you are interested to attend to LaKademy 2018.


Oh, that's too bad: I talked with Aracele at Akademy, and weould surely like 
to come, but missed this email message. The website for lakademyy didn't (at 
least when I checked yesterday) mention the event either.

[ade]

> Em qua, 8 de ago de 2018 às 09:55, Camila Azevedo 
> 
> escreveu:
> > projects created by this community. In 2018 we will have its 6th edition
> > here in Brazil, which will take place at the EFI Auditorium of the Federal
> > University of Santa Catarina, in the  city of Florianópolis - SC, from
> > October 11 to 14.
> > It will not be an event with talks or short courses, the  purpose of this
> > event is to serve as a meeting point and socialization of the Latin
> > American KDE community, aiming to strengthen ties of friendship and
> > provide
> > dialogues on experiences of use, creation and  maintenance of applications
> > and projects. During the event days, the entire team will be focused on
> > fully practical hacking sessions.




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Re: FOSDEM: call to action!

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Wednesday, 22 August 2018 21:23:32 CEST Boudewijn Rempt wrote:
> On woensdag 22 augustus 2018 11:54:06 CEST Pau Garcia Quiles wrote:
> > Guys,
> > 
> > I will not be requesting a stand or devroom for KDE, Desktops or
> > anything for FOSDEM 2019. I don't even know if I will be there.
> 
> Aw... We would miss you!
> 
> In any case... This year's stand was a bit bare, and though I were there, I
> got injured and could only be at the stand on Saturday, which sucked. But
> Fosdem is still a place where we as KDE should be.

I'll be there, I ran the stand -- sub-optimally -- last year, because Jonathan 
who had traditionally done things was out of the loop. I probably forgot to 
write up results afterwards, too.

There's a lot more material about FOSDEM booths than is initially apparent. 
There have been threads on various lists about merchandise, too: basically it 
comes down to "print or order stuff locally, get it reimbursed". Just this 
week at Akademy i gave Sune the blue tablecloth back that we used in 2018 
(with "KDE" on the front in Frozen(tm) duct tape).

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

[Adriaan de Groot]

Mostly I'm repeating this item from Cornelius because it follows so well from 
what Valorie *originally* asked, rather than a bunch of misintepretations and 
discussing-something-else.

On Monday, 20 August 2018 10:58:05 CEST Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
> I don't think that anybody has a problem with having a healthy ecosystem of
> companies around KDE. That's not the debate we are having.

The thread started with Valorie exclaiming surprise that there was pushback on 
the entire notion of having companies / paid development around the KDE 
community. Some people have chimed in saying that that's not what they hear at 
all, so at this point I'm inclined to say that Valorie had the bad luck to run 
into one or two grumpy people.

[Disclosure: Cornelius is presumably paid to work on Free Software-ish things 
throughout the week; I am paid to work on Free Software things for at least 
half of the week, and am looking for more.]

But we could run a separate email thread with this question:

 - do we (as a community) want an ecosystem of companies and paid development 
around KDE?

 
> > 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:
> We need to get clear on what we are debating. It's not that paid people are
> a problem. It's about how this is done and who is paying them.
> 
> We have a very conscious standing decision that KDE e.V. does not pay
> developers. This clearly separates paid and volunteer work there so that
> there can be no issue with harming volunteer motivation. We might want to
> revisit this decision but would need to be very clear about the governance
> of this work.

You're right. That's a very separate debate. That question is:

 - are there any circumstances under which KDE e.V. itself should fund 
development, by paying developers directly or hiring companies to do so?

.. and there's a third question, raised by yourself at Akademy and touched by 
Sven just now:

 - if KDE e.V. has money, and doesn't spend it directly on development, how 
can it best support KDE development indirectly?


These are three distinct questions, and really we should be very very clear on 
which one we're tackling (which, thank you, you have pointed out -- as has 
Sune, and others, and now I'm just repeating stuff :) )

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Re: Calling all contributors: Please help us with the EduCode2018 event

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Friday, August 3, 2018 12:38:24 PM EDT Adriaan de Groot wrote:
> > > > On Wed, 25 Jul 2018 at 14:44 Paul Brown  wrote:
> > > > > https://phabricator.kde.org/T8122

>From the "Stuff we need" section:

* Stickers are a sticking point, as always -- perhaps we can do a quick 
"sticker design" BoF at Akademy, and then print off a few hundred locally? 
Whatever is local quick and cheap -- the board has said that moving stickers 
from the KDE office is prohibitively expensive and local groups should be 
printing them themselves (and expensing that).

  There's existing sticker designs somewhere, too, right?

* Monitor is something I can bring -- 25 or 27" fits in my bag, w/ stand, and 
since I'm just taking a train there's no big risks involved (I've taken the 
same monitor by plane to Gothenburg for a KDE stand, too -- silly me when I 
could have borrowed one locally). So there's no expenses needed there.

* Does -edu have a nice wiki landing page? Then a simple QR card would be 
quite nice.

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Re: Calling all contributors: Please help us with the EduCode2018 event

[Adriaan de Groot]

So after double-checking my calendar, I can probably go (conditions are: need 
to check if work is ok and the financials neutral). I'm not logged in to Phab 
now to add comments on the task myself, so I'll throw some comments in mail.

On Friday, August 3, 2018 12:13:48 PM EDT Paul Brown wrote:
> On viernes, 3 de agosto de 2018 17:04:18 (CEST) Adriaan de Groot wrote:
> > On Friday, 27 July 2018 11:35:51 CEST Sivan Greenberg wrote:
> > > I’d do it if I had been living in Europe..sounds like an awesome
> > > opportunity with importance at the educational and societal for the open
> > > nature of education computing.
> > > 
> > > On Wed, 25 Jul 2018 at 14:44 Paul Brown  wrote:
> > > > https://phabricator.kde.org/T8122
> > > > 
> > > > Tomothee can't make it in the end, and Aleix is not sure if he can
> > > > attend
> > > > either. We need people to staff the booth that would like to explain
> > > > to
> > > > teachers, school representatives, parents and students how KDE Edu
> > > > software
> > > > can be helpful educational tools.
> > 
> > Well, Brussels is a few hours by train for me, and I speak all the local
> > languages (some of them badly, though). Let me double-check my calendar,
> > since I've got lots of other things going on, too.
> 
> So far we have three peopl signed up to to go to the event:
> 
> * Aleix, who speaks French
> * Tomaz, who doesn't speak French or Flemmish (I think)
> * And myself, who is in the same poor state as Tomaz

On the 25th it was "Aleix is not sure". But this sounds like a cool booth 
crew.


> Tomaz is talking to a friend who speaks french but has not been able to
> confirm if she can come.
> 
> Hopefully we will be able to convince people with English, but having more
> people that speak the local language, at least for the exhibition part of
> the event on the 27th, would be very helpful.

There's some accomodation already booked, right? Then all I'd need to buy is a 
train ticket (< 60 EUR return), if that accomodation is "for whoever is there 
for the booth and conference".

[ade]


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Re: Calling all contributors: Please help us with the EduCode2018 event

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Friday, 27 July 2018 11:35:51 CEST Sivan Greenberg wrote:
> I’d do it if I had been living in Europe..sounds like an awesome
> opportunity with importance at the educational and societal for the open
> nature of education computing.
> 
> On Wed, 25 Jul 2018 at 14:44 Paul Brown  wrote:
> > https://phabricator.kde.org/T8122
> > 
> > Tomothee can't make it in the end, and Aleix is not sure if he can attend
> > either. We need people to staff the booth that would like to explain to
> > teachers, school representatives, parents and students how KDE Edu
> > software
> > can be helpful educational tools.

Well, Brussels is a few hours by train for me, and I speak all the local 
languages (some of them badly, though). Let me double-check my calendar, since 
I've got lots of other things going on, too.

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Re: Fuzzy searching against KDE repositories

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Sunday, 6 May 2018 17:04:24 CEST Dimitris Kardarakos wrote:
> PS1: If similar projects that I am not aware of currently exist in KDE
> we may consider using them instead of this approach (or join efforts if
> they are compatible). My intention is just to start a discussion about
> how big data, indexing and fuzzy searching may improve onboarding and
> "promotion" work.


Well, Paul Adams (emeritus) and Kevin Ottens have been doing some kind of KDE-
contributor-metrics, finding central people, noticing networks of contributors, 
showing how the split into many git repo's has affected the social cohesion of 
the project, for about 10 years now.

So there is some existing work, although it's focused more on understanding 
what's going on, than on helping out with onboarding.

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FOSS-North

[Adriaan de Groot]

Hi KDE Community and e.V.,

On the weekend of 21-22 april 2018 I traveled to Sweden to the FOSS-North 
conference, in Gothenburg. I went there for two reasons:
 - to give a talk (submitted via the CfP and accepted)
 - to run a KDE booth (asked by the conference org)

The conference had ~150 attendees, 30 speakers, 6 sponsor booths and a KDE and 
a GNOME booth.

# Booth(s)

Gothenburg is a little bit "GNOME country", so it was good to have both 
desktops there. In the run up I had quite a bit of communication with the 
GNOME booth organizer, since community booths take up a lot of time. We agreed 
before hand to take care of each other's stands as needed. Any pictures you 
may have seen of us in a fist-fight are, of course, staged (but I beat the tar 
outta 'em). The community booths, with T-shirts and some computers showing off 
the desktops, did a very small amount of business, but we did have a fair 
amount of people to talk with.

Bastian, the GNOME guy, was looking at other merchandise options and we came 
up with something exquisitely silly, last I saw he was looking at CnC milling 
to make that silly idea come true.

In short, I think the community booths together worked well -- still, you get 
people, young people, coming up and going "huh, huh, GNOME and KDE side-by-
side, when's the fight?" I have *no* idea where this notion of viscious 
rivalry persists.

# Talk

I think my talk went well; it was recorded, so you can probably watch it 
somewhere. It was about KDE governance, but mostly "Free Software project 
Governance 101" with an emphasis on figuring out your moral stance as 
expressed by your license choice, contributor agreement choice (if any), 
organization choice, and manifesto, vision and CoC. A bit touchy-feely and not 
all that concrete.

I gave roughly the same talk two weeks earlier at a start-ups gathering, so 
I've been holding up KDE as *a* way of doing things. We get a lot of things 
right, although the order we did things -- historically -- isn't the order I'd 
recommend nowadays.

# Sales

We sold 3 T-shirts at 200 SEK each (~19 EUR). Gave out some folders, a 
lanyard, some buttons. We didn't have stickers. This continues, IMO, to be a 
real missed opportunity -- stickers are cheap, easy to hand out, colorful, 
etc. I'm seriously envious of the GNOME sticker packs.

# Booth (2)

The booth showed Plasma 5.12 running on low-powered ARM hardware. This was the 
same theme as at FOSDEM, so if you were there, it was the same set=up with 
blinkenlights and a Pinebook running the latest stuff. This continues the 
narrative of "of course Plasma runs also on low-powered devices, that's been 
driving 8 months or so of work on reducing resource use; it really is a lean 
environment." That kind of ties in to something else I noticed: people seem to 
hang on to grudges for a damn long time. "I used KDE 4/6/30 years ago, and it 
was slow". "I once submitted a bug and it was ignored." Bleh.

Now that I'm writing this down here, I realise I could / should have had 
Nate's this-week articles at hand, to better illustrate what's going on and 
what is being improved in the rest of the KDE ecosystem.

GNOME has a nice release-video that they just left looping -- it shows off the 
new stuff, and even if my response to most of the video is "yeah, we had that 
6 months/2 years/30 years ago already" it has movement, it has pizzazz, and 
saves the booth staff from talking about some of the basics.

On the other hand, I had blue blobs and Lays' gource video to talk about long-
term development.

# Booth Resources

The plastic IKEA box for booth-stuff (the roll of duct tape, the kensington 
locks we didn't have to use, pens, badges, etc.) broke on the flight; I'll be 
donating a new one.

Sune's blue tablecloth is still in my possession; it still has "KDE" on it in 
Frozen-brand duct tape (Olaf is so cute!). This could be better.

Left over T-shirts are now at my house, for whatever conference I go to next.

# Wrap-up

I'd like to thank Johan for organizing the conference overall, and Bastian for 
being a good neighbor in the Free-Desktop space. Thanks Helio for also 
spending a lot of hours running the stand.

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Re: Neon Pinebook Remix as part of KDE

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Wednesday, 11 April 2018 23:13:45 CEST, Rohan Garg wrote:

IANAL but you can find the EULA for the proprietary blobs here [1]

[1] http://files.pine64.org/doc/MALI/MALI%20EULA.pdf


Where the relevant bit is this:


[you may ..]

1.1 (ii)
subject to Clause 1.2, distribute the whole of the Software; and/or (b) 
the whole or any part of

the Software together with, or as incorporated into, Applications; and
1.2
If you choose to redistribute the whole or any part of the Software 
pursuant to the licences
granted in Clause 1.1(ii), you agree: (i) not to use ARM's or any of its 
licensors names, logos or
trademarks to market Applications; (ii) to retain any and all copyright 
notices and other notices (whether
ARM's or its licensor's) which are included with the Software; and (iii) 
include a copy of this Licence with

such redistribution.



To me (also NAL, though I play one on TV), that looks like a "yes".

[ade]

Re: Let's get rid of UNCONFIRMED/CONFIRMED

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Tuesday, 10 April 2018 19:18:07 CEST, Nate Graham wrote:

OPEN -> Nobody's looked at it yet
TRIAGED -> Somebody looked at it but couldn't reproduce it yet
CONFIRMED -> Somebody looked at it and was able to reproduce it



Is bugzilla really that hard to configure with a workflow? I ran into this 
recently with the FreeBSD bugzilla as well, where I needed extra 
information and this might be encoded into some fields -- but not into the 
status field, which is infuriatingly "new", "open", "in progress", 
"closed".


TRAC is a bug tracker that does this well: 
https://trac.edgewall.org/wiki/TracWorkflow


The default workflow is pretty straightforward, but it's easy to customize 
to take into account wishlist items, triage and QA teams, etc. And it can 
spit out a diagram of its own workflow if you ask nicely.


[ade]

Re: KDE stand at FOSS-North

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Sunday, 11 March 2018 10:14:13 CET, Helio Chissini de Castro wrote:

Hi Adrian.

In an event to have my talk accepted, i help you on the stand as well.


Helio, my fine Bavaro-Brasilian friend, it would be fun to see you up in 
the frozen North. And we can tag-team the booth them (there is a GNOME 
booth too, also with only a little staff, so we will probably be sharing / 
taking care of each-other's booths at some times).


-A

Re: KDE goals IRC office hour

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Sunday, 18 March 2018 11:43:00 CET, Ilmari Lauhakangas wrote:
Thanks also to 
Raphael Catolino for the original Docker work and for still 
keeping at it. This is valuable not only for KDE, but for 
LibreOffice as well while we evaluate this thing.


So I was just playing with the Janitor service. The KDE container is rather 
broken (no desktop shell packages installed, so you don't get a desktop or 
anything, and if the screen locker comes up, then there's no way to enter a 
password -- keypresses are not registered), so I tried the Thunderbird 
container instead.


What you get is noVNC in a browser tab, to a container instance just for 
you. You get a checkout of the sources of Thunderbird, plus whatever 
development tools you need to edit, build, and test Thunderbird. Well, I 
assume so -- TB itself has no README, INSTALL or HACKING file, and running 
configure tells me that the mail application is missing. But, in theory, if 
I knew how to work on TB, I could.


So it's really cool, actually: "I want to help with " translates to 
"start browser and point at foo-on-janitor", and assuming foo is set up 
there, bam, start hacking already.


It is not really clear how one would submit changes afterwards -- I guess 
it would be useful to have a "log in to GH" or "log in to KDE Phab" link on 
the desktop to make that kind of thing clear to drive-by contributors. 
Afterwards, you can just delete the container and it's gone. This could be 
*really* useful for those drive-by contributors, or people asking "how do I 
get started?" There is a risk, in the sense that pushing one container with 
one set of tools and one underlying distro *might* skew the kind of 
contributors we get.


I suppose we should do FreeBSD + Clang + Plasma as a devel container, then 
new contributors will write non-Linuxism, non-GCCism code without noticing 
what's underneath, right? (I kid, I kid .. syscall numbers don't match up).


Right now the service is invite-only, and some of the user-handling is a 
little weird. Once you're in the system, logging in (in the web browser, to 
be able to manage your containers) works like this:

- enter email address in login page
- get email, which has a one-time link which logs you in
- click on link, and use the resulting browser tab for managing

The (web) UI has a couple of quirks, mainly that clicking on things changes 
the cursor to "forbidden" while things happen, which can take quite a 
while. So sometimes it's click, wait, wait, hope that it completed. I 
understand there are multiple improvements to the web-UI in the works.


My plan right now is to play with the KDE docker file until I get a feel 
for what's actually there, and to massage it (or rather, I'll suggest 
changes to R.Catolino, who maintains that particular dockerfile) towards 
some kind of "you want this workflow" setup. I somehow doubt that setting 
up a container for all possible kinds of KDE development is useful (you can 
already sort of see this in Janitor -- it's not like Rust, Firefox and 
Thunderbird are all jammed into one container, either). So in first 
instance, I'll be aiming for an up-to-date (-ish) Plasma desktop with dev 
tools installed ready to work on KMyMoney and Okular (an arbitrary 
selection).


[ade]

Re: KDE goals IRC office hour

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Friday, 16 March 2018 16:07:20 CET, Adriaan de Groot wrote:
I've now contacted the Janitor folks, so we'll see what can be 
updated and/or revised, and possibly start using it -- since it 
*does* sound like a very interesting service.


Please chime in on the GH issue I've created to discuss this:
https://github.com/JanitorTechnology/janitor/issues/300
or if you want to use KDE infrastructure, please create a task on Phab and 
add that to this thread. The current environment is based on

https://github.com/rcatolino/kdesrcbuild-docker
but we should have a few people -- part of the onboarding taskforce? -- 
look the janitor stuff over at least once.


[ade]

Re: KDE goals IRC office hour

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Friday, 16 March 2018 13:10:02 CET, Ilmari Lauhakangas wrote:
Ooo... k. That is highly weird. I've been wondering, how 
LibreOffice could get with the program "like the kool kids at 
KDE" and now it turns out KDE doesn't know it is in. You're too 
hip for your own good, it seems!


We're so hip, we have a hard time seeing over our own pelvis (I believe it 
was Zaphod Beeblebrox who said that).


I've now contacted the Janitor folks, so we'll see what can be updated 
and/or revised, and possibly start using it -- since it *does* sound like a 
very interesting service.


[ade]

Re: KDE goals IRC office hour

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Friday, 16 March 2018 09:20:26 CET, Ilmari Lauhakangas wrote:

KDE

Efforts:
None
WANTED: Maintaining KDE development environment image
WANTED: Hosting Janitor containers for KDE
Benefits:
Development environments for KDE (hosted by IRILL)

It seems the ball was dropped regarding this. Why? Should be a 
perfect fit for the onboarding goal, no?



I think there was also:

Efforts:
   Missing: telling KDE that this thing exists

Maybe that's a bit snarky, but I can't find any previous mention of janitor 
on any KDE mailing lists. Is it possible that they set this up and then 
forgot to inform anyone? Maybe just the Mozilla tools list? I'm happy *you* 
know about it, and now think "this should be updated, and quick". There 
doesn't seem to be any way to quickly log in -- seems it's still in the 
alpha-invite-only phase.


[ade]

KDE stand at FOSS-North

[Adriaan de Groot]

Hey (or hej),

I have submitted two talks to FOSS-North, a one (or two) day event in 
Gothenburg [1]. I would like to run a KDE stand there, with KDE demos and 
possibly ome merchandise. I brought this up earlier on this list.

The event is april 22-23, that is a sunday and monday. Not ideal, I know .. 
but who in the neighbourhood would be willing to help out at a stand? Surely 
there must be one or two KDE peeps in Sweden, still.

[ade]

[1] http://foss-north.se/2018/

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Reminder for Akademy

[Adriaan de Groot]

Hi there people of the KDE community,


Just a reminder that Akademy this year is reachable, in a big city, and in the 
middle of summer on (near) the banks of a beautiful river.

Akademy should also have a strong programme of talks, workshops, and meetings.

This is where you come in: talk about what you're doing, how you're doing it, 
and why you're doing it. Talk about future plans. Talk about the past. Talk 
about your analysis of the community. This year, the programme committee is 
also offering additional coaching for talks, if you feel you need a little 
extra practice.

https://akademy.kde.org/2018/cfp

I keep putting off submitting my own talks (one on governance, one on 
Calamares, one on FreeBSD) but you should not. A talk submission doesn't have 
to take a lot of effort, if you know what you want to go on about.

The CfP is open until the 12th.

[ade]

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Re: Opportunity: Promo banners for Kdenlive and Krita

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Sunday, March 4, 2018 6:22:48 PM EST Ivana Isadora Devcic wrote:
> Ryan from Inkscape shared this on Twitter - he made some seriously cool
> banners for GIMP and Inkscape, and offered to make them for Kdenlive and
> Krita, among others:
> 
> https://twitter.com/ryangorley/status/969712740817235968
> 
> I jumped in and said I would help him get in touch with the right people,
> so this is my attempt at doing that. :)

Those are very nice indeed (the GIMP and Inkscape ones). The image size for 
the banners, 3' x 7', is 90cm x 213cm.



Personally I'd have really liked to have a Krita banner at FOSDEM to hang up 
behind the booth to make Krita and KDE easier to spot. 


These images are pretty big, that's roll-up-banner size or something similar. 
Roll-ups are hard and heavy but easy to put up somewhere; it's a trade off 
between having that mechanism and having just a (rolled up) loose vinyl sheet 
with the banner which you can put up with sticky tape. (But that's about using 
the banners, once designed).



[ade]



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FOSS-North

[Adriaan de Groot]

While it's -8 in the Netherlands and the whole country hardly knows what to 
do, I'd like to point out it's warmer in Sweden.

There's a one-day conference, FOSS-North, to be held late april. 

http://foss-north.se/2018/

The CfP is still open, so we could send in one or more talks about .. stuff.

I was also approached if KDE (and GNOME) want / can staff a booth at the 
conference, where we could demo .. stuff. Whatever. Experiment with 
merchandise. Show off more Plasma 5.12 LTS improvements. Play with 
electronics.

Would anyone (other than me) be interested in submitting a talk / helping with 
a booth? (I would also use this conference as an excuse to give Sune back his 
blue KDE tablecloth)

Unfortunately, both the PIM and Plasma sprints are that same weekend, so we're 
missing a bunch of potentially interesting speakers.

[ade]

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Re: Mock-up of revised KDE Store

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Friday, February 16, 2018 1:28:39 PM EST Scott Harvey wrote:
> Here you go - a (very) rough draft of what kinds of things we can sell.
> 
> https://www.cafepress.com/bdtokde
> 
> I edited the CSS to add the background image (instead of the drab khaki the
> template used) and threw together a quick header graphic. The Miscellaneous
> section are a few icons from the default Breeze theme. I know they're not
> very "KDE"-flavored, but I figured - why not.
> 
> For someone who asked (can't recall who) - Cafe Press does not have
> embroidery-style patches. Sorry.
> 
> All the prices are shown with zero markup, by the way.
> 
> Feedback and (hopefully) constructive criticism welcomed.


Hi Scott,

I didn't see much in the way of response to your mock up -- well, except the 
question about CafePress's stock and sourcing thereof which isn't directly 
related to the KDE store itself. So I'll take a stab at it:

 - Gosh, it looks all very square and blocky. I think that's because of the 
square-and-sharp-cornered K-logo.
 - It'd be nice if the wallpaper behind the "KDE Store" label somehow matched 
the wallpaper background of the whole page.
 - Perhaps a category "Applications" would work, too, to make some space for, 
say, sporting a Falkon t-shirt or drinking from a KWin mug (if KWin has a 
logo).

And there's probably a little wrangling to do to distinguish the KDE Store 
(for merch) from the KDE Store (store.kde.org, for downloads). Not in a 
legalistic sense, but to make things cross-pollinate.

Thanks for putting this mock up together!

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Re: Invitation to join FOSS Backstage 2018

[Adriaan de Groot]

Somewhere the question got lost about how Agnes was approaching us:
 1. as sponsors / booth purchasers
 2. as a community with something interesting to tell

I read it as (1), and regarding that I think it's safe to say that no, we 
don't want a 3500 EUR booth at a conference. Although if someone describes a 
business case that makes sense of spending money to present ourselves to this 
particular audience, I'll be happy to take that statement back.

On Thursday, February 22, 2018 6:30:08 AM EST Mirko Boehm wrote:
> > On 22. Feb 2018, at 12:20, Paul Brown <paul.br...@kde.org> wrote:
> > On Thursday, 22 February 2018 12:00:01 CET Adriaan de Groot wrote:
> >> On Friday, February 9, 2018 3:33:24 PM EST Agnes Ratajczyk wrote:
> >>> Dear KDE-Team,
> >>> 
> >>> I'd like to invite you to join us for the first FOSS Backstage
> >>> <https://foss-backstage.de/ <https://foss-backstage.de/>> conference on
> >>> June 13&14 in Berlin. It will take place directly after Berlin
> >>> Buzzwords <https://berlinbuzzwords.de/ <https://berlinbuzzwords.de/>>
> >>> and is dedicated to everything related to *Free and Open Source
> >>> Software governance and open collaboration*.
> >> 
> >> It's an interesting)-ish) conference, though not really technical
> > 
> > This should not put us off, Adriaan. We are explicitly looking for non-
> > technical events, even not specifically FLOSS events, where we can go and
> > seek more users.

That's fine, Paul.

> Yes, maybe. If we have relevant issues to share this will be a good
> conference for it. It is about governance and compliance, I am sure we have
> something to present. How about talking about the manifesto and our code of
> conduct, community principles. Any takers?
> 
> I have submitted presentations about compliance tooling and OIN. Hope to see
> you at the event :-)

Well, maybe. I was just preparing a talk on governance, manifesto, code of 
conduct (also the FreeBSD one, which is very very different in wording from 
the KDE bits) for a Dutch thingmabob, I may try to recycle it (and have 
emailed as much to Agnes, in the unlikely event that it was reason (2), 
above).

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Re: Volunteering to update the KDE Cafe Press Meta-Store

[Adriaan de Groot]

Hi Scott,

On Thursday, 15 February 2018 05:15:12 CET Scott Harvey wrote:
> I sent a similar message to the Community Working Group a few days ago, but
> I think that might have been a little too high-level.

Not so much high-level as probably the wrong bunch. The CWG is our group of 
tough community standards enforcers and kindly grandma's. Their remit is not 
one for the store. The kde-promo working group might have been a better bunch.

But the community is the *best* place to suggest this, so you've come to the 
right place.


> create and update a Cafe Press store. I've done several, for groups of
> people taking a cruise together, for my own meager design work, etc. I'm
> pretty familiar with how the site works.
> 
> As it stands now, the KDE store is a little sparse. We need to have the
> blue K-Gear and Plasma icon available on everything from mousepads to
> t-shirts to stickers for our laptops. I'm willing to put in the time to get
> those products set up on Cafe Press. Plus, whatever markup is charged can
> go back to the KDE mothership as a simple form of fundraising.

Just last week I sent a message to this list about revitalizing KDE's 
stickers. Or maybe I thought about sending it, and didn't :S

Getting merchandise right covers a few kinds of products:
 - stickers (lightweight, easy to move around, everyone wants them)
 - t-shirts and hoodies (bulky and annoying, but popular)
 - gadgets and gewgaws

CafePress can do all of those, and slapping the KDE logo on everything is 
quite straightforward. Medium-term, we should do better than that. We have 
some t-shirt designs kicking around, like the Akademy T-shirts we do each 
year, and the KDE India shirt is a perennial popular item.  So working towards 
more designs, or more item-suitable designs, is something that can be done. 
The Visual Design Group (VDG) is our group of tough pixel-wrangling designers 
and kindly grandma's. That's typically where we would turn to develop some 
visuals for products.

A decent CafePress store could satisfy the (latent) desire for merchandise.

Somewhat independently we have the whole merchandise-for-events problem. 
Getting stickers and t-shirts to events is always a logistical problem, so 
much so that it is generally worth finding a local supplier. CafePress has 
decent global logistics, though, so it might -- just might -- make a 
difference if we, say, need 240 t-shirts in Vienna in August.

> What do you think? Is this a worthwhile goal? I don't work, so I've got the
> time. Heck, I'd probably buy a coffee mug for myself.

Well, *I* think it's a worthwhile goal.

Heck, just a decent clear-hard-plastic KDE coffee mug could be a nice thing to 
have (as an environmental statement?) at an event. We had them at some Akademy 
(Mechelen?), years ago, lasted for years.

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Re: FOSDEM retrospective

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 20:15:48 CET tetris4 wrote:
> My main suggestion for future improvement would be to be more prepared and
> strategic. The main question to answer is: What does KDE want to achieve by
> running a booth at a specific event?

Well-said. There's two aspects:
 - why are we here (at this specific event)?
 - what message do we want to spread?

Note that for QtWS those were well-answered, in advance, and Eike 
(coordinator) made sure that the team knew what the answers were. For FOSDEM, 
not so much -- in the course of the weekend we developed a good story for the 
second part, but it would have been good to have that ready at the start.

FOSDEM is perhaps a little special: there's a lot of other nerds there, so the 
questions we get are different and more wide-ranging than we might get at an 
industry event. (e.g. activities, e.g. Sanskrit input methods, e.g. keyboard 
layouts with tall enter keys).

This is partly a thing to coordinate with the -promo team.

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FOSDEM retrospective

[Adriaan de Groot]

# The good

 - We were there
 - We were on time
 - People pitched in amazingly well, and we had the booth staffed with 2 or 3 
people all the time; there was enough overlap also to take an hour off from 
the booth if needed.
 - The materials we brought to FOSDEM were sufficient to build the booth and 
run it, mostly.
 - Cooperation with the GNOME booth.
 - The blinkenlights draw people in, it was amazing (even had people coming 
back to ask what OS was running on the switch, which is a 10 EUR piece of crap 
that I stripped out of its beige plastic case just for looks -- perhaps we 
should have installed a Turris Omnia).
 - The live art demo of Krita on Saturday was *amazing*. The artist was kind 
of hidden behind the monitor, not everyone understood that it was live 
sketching.

# The bad

 - Extra Kensington locks and other security measures were not actually needed 
or used; this is unfortunate, although it means we've got these materials for 
(re)use elsewhere. (This is also good, because it means that security wasn't 
really an issue for us)
 - The booth-box list should have included:
   - scissors
   - A4 sheets with "KDE" printed on them
   - 4 paint clamps (e.g. 
https://www.gamma.nl/assortiment/stanley-veerklemmen-metaal-50-mm/p/B431362 ) 
.. this is FOSDEM-specific as long as 
we're in building K with the windows unavailable for posters.
   - KDE banner of sorts
   - Blue tablecloth (thanks Sune)
 - All the wired networking stuff was useless.

# The ugly

 - The Sun type 5 keyboard I brought was confusing to people who don't know 
where the Caps Lock key belongs (e.g. lower left, because Ctrl is supposed to 
be next to the A). On the other hand, it gave us a chance to say "hey, it's 
KDE, of course it's configurable!"

# The what can be improved

 - Sticker situation (there are other messages about that, too). I remain 
envious of GNOME's sticker selection.
 - Messaging beforehand.
 - Signage (see "banner", above)

# The missing

 - Stickers, T-shirts maybe (I do prefer to be a tech stand)
 - We should have had a plan on what to show on the screens of the desktop and 
laptop machines at the booth. A movie with recent features / neat stuff would 
have been a good addition. Some more applications with actual content would 
have been nice (like Krita).

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A Quick Note on FOSDEM

[Adriaan de Groot]

Whoo! We survived the weekend. I'd like to give an enormous thanks to those 
who helped make the booth happen: Aleix, Boud, Clemens, Ingo, Irina, Jos, 
Jose, Laszlo, Lydia, Neofytos, Petra, Roman, Sune, Timothee, Tobias, Wolthera 
.. I'm sure there are people I'm forgetting to name here.

Also a thanks to the FOSDEM team for making the conference happen once again. 
It was bigger and crowdeder than ever before, but over in building K things 
ran smoothly.

GNOME people lent us some scissors and helped me figure out the firmware for 
the WiFi dongle connected to the ARM boards. Good to see y'alls again.

There will be longer messages about the conference, summaries and reflections, 
to appropriate mailing lists in the course of the day.

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