Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Lydia Pintscher]

On Mon, May 29, 2017 at 9:17 PM, Lydia Pintscher  wrote:
> Hey folks,
>
> Last year we have talked a lot about KDE's vision, fleshed it out and
> wrote it down: https://community.kde.org/KDE/Vision I am proud that we
> have done that. However the work does not end there. We have the
> answer to the question "why are we here". We still need the answer to
> the question "how do we achieve our vision". We've had an insightful
> survery among our community and users and a lot of discussions around
> that. This was then all further discussed in a sessions at QtCon in
> Berlin. After that smaller groups have sat down to take all the input
> and refine it, but then the process got stuck for several reasons. At
> the last board meeting the board and sebas sat down again and looked
> at where we are wrt distilling all the input. It turns out we are less
> far away than we thought. We took the input from the session at
> Akademy and polished the wording slightly. We then analyzed it more
> and figured out the issue that had been bugging us with the existing
> draft: It was mixing mission and strategy. We split it up and this
> seems to work much better.
>
> I'd like to invite you all to take a look at the current draft and
> provide your constructive feedback so we can use this as the basis for
> our work for the next years.
>
> https://community.kde.org/KDE/Mission

Thank you everyone for your comments and a useful discussion! I have
worked in the remaining comments. With this I believe we have a useful
piece to rely upon for some of the larger decisions we need to make
and communicate to the outside world. I'm very happy we got this far
and are discussing our future together.

I'd like to give everyone one week for final comments and objections.
After that it will be accepted.

One last remaining unresolved point of the discussion is the wish for
a number of very concrete bigger goals to work towards. The mission
and strategy does not provide this. We discussed that in this thread
and also extensively at Akademy. I believe we have found a process
that can work well for us to identify them together. Kevin will send a
proposal for discussion later today or tomorrow.


Cheers
Lydia

-- 
Lydia Pintscher - http://about.me/lydia.pintscher
KDE e.V. Board of Directors / KDE Community Working Group
http://kde.org - http://open-advice.org

Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Lydia Pintscher]

On Sun, Jul 2, 2017 at 3:43 AM, Kevin Ottens  wrote:
> From that point of view, I would say I got only one small concern. The Mission
> seems to overlap with the Manifesto to some extent, which is likely fine. And,
> at the same time, neither the Vision or the Mission refers to the Manifesto
> which makes it seem somewhat isolated now. Also, the aim behind all those
> documents is to make explicit to outsiders our why, what and how... well,
> that's quite a few documents now. I wouldn't expect them to know how it all
> articulates and that probably needs addressing. I admit I'm not sure how.

I discussed this quickly with Kevin and we will resolve this part by
interlinking the documents.


Cheers
Lydia

-- 
Lydia Pintscher - http://about.me/lydia.pintscher
KDE e.V. Board of Directors / KDE Community Working Group
http://kde.org - http://open-advice.org

Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Lydia Pintscher]

On Sat, Jun 17, 2017 at 2:44 PM, Lydia Pintscher  wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 15, 2017 at 7:28 PM, Marco Martin  wrote:
>> Good job, i like this text!
>>
>> one thing i would add tough, is at
>> "interoperates well with proprietary software, formats and services"
>>
>> I would really like adding something about being committed to interoperation
>> with free software services, so while we try to interoperate with proprietary
>> ones, if  a free one is available (like owncloud vs dropbox) making sure the
>> priority is making the interoperation with the open service a truly first 
>> class
>> citizen
>
> *nod*
> Do you have a wording suggestion?

I've read it again and I believe it is covered in the "To create a
convincing user experience, KDE creates software that aims to" part.


Cheers
Lydia

-- 
Lydia Pintscher - http://about.me/lydia.pintscher
KDE e.V. Board of Directors / KDE Community Working Group
http://kde.org - http://open-advice.org

Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Lydia Pintscher]

On Tue, Jun 13, 2017 at 2:16 PM, Kenny Coyle  wrote:
> Hey,
>
> Thanks for putting this together, I can only see it being positive going
> forward.
>
> The text itself is very clear and concise.
>
> On the last section about promoting development, I'm wondering if it's
> worthwhile having a statement about the infrastructure that KDE maintains
> and develops? How about the following:
>
> To promote the development of Free and Open-Source Software, KDE
>
> …
> maintains reliable technical infrastructure to support the community,
> evolving with the community

Good point. I have added it now.


Cheers
Lydia

-- 
Lydia Pintscher - http://about.me/lydia.pintscher
KDE e.V. Board of Directors / KDE Community Working Group
http://kde.org - http://open-advice.org

Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Sebastian Kügler]

On maandag 10 juli 2017 13:44:54 CEST Adriaan de Groot wrote:
> > It just occurred to me, that it would be good at this point to gauge with
> > the  active community what a mission would be, some simple questions such
> > as:
> > 
> > - Have you been contributing in any significant way to KDE in the past
> > year?(And how?)
> > - Which of the proposed strategical directions would you support most?
> > 
> > Could give us a way to break out from this circle and tell us what the
> > people  who actually matter think, and what strategy could gain momentum.
> > I
> > think it would provide us with a much stronger decision base and increase
> > the quality of any strategical direction a lot.
> 
> My first reaction is, unfortunately, that your questions will be as self-
> selecting as the current discussion is: loud voices (yours included) will
> have an opinion, and those that don't care will continue to be silent.

> Oh, and I'm right with you wrt. "this discussion is reaching the limits of
> what can be done in email".

I forgot to make that clear: I was thinking of a poll / vote / survey thing, 
lightweight, but not email and get active community members to participate.

Yes, it's gone beyond the limits of what email can do, we have ideas and 
possible directions, now we need to find out what those who are going to do 
the work actually want.
-- 
sebas

http://www.kde.org | http://vizZzion.org

Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Sebastian Kügler]

On zondag 9 juli 2017 17:41:03 CEST Kevin Ottens wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> On Friday, 7 July 2017 23:16:32 CEST Alexander Neundorf wrote:
> > On 2017 M07 7, Fri 07:21:32 CEST Kevin Ottens wrote:
> > > > How about collecting ideas for that ?
> > > > We have already 5.
> > > 
> > > 5? I missed a couple I guess. I spotted only "privacy" and "freedom" so
> > > far.
> > 
> > For completeness:
> > - privacy
> > - (practical) freedom
> > - reliability
> > - KDE apps for Android - konquering mobile ;-)
> > - cross-platform KDE applications - konquering Windows and OSX ;-)
> 
> OK, I somehow didn't spot the last three in this thread. Thanks for digging
> them up then.
> 
> > > Note I'd be personally inclined to do an early filtering of them to
> > > avoid
> > > things which are way too generic and impossible to action. The reasoning
> > > being that if you line them up against more precise things they'd be
> > > picked up every time since they'd be more easily fitting larger
> > > groups...
> > > but they'd be counter-productive at building a direction.
> > 
> > +1
> > 
> > > One simple criterion for that could be "no single term proposal" because
> > > then you're just showing up a concept and that single word can be
> > > ambiguous enough to be misunderstood too. See for instance how I didn't
> > > quite complain about "privacy" but I did for "freedom", it's just than
> > > in
> > > one case I see a clear direction and actions we can take and not in the
> > > other one. Can be very different for someone else!
> > > 
> > > After all we're talking about selecting something like a 5 years
> > > strategy,
> > > I think it deserve more than just a word.
> > 
> > Maybe it could be even shorter like e.g. 2 years ?
> > 5 years feels like a very long time, 2 years feels plannable.
> 
> Somehow 2 years feel a bit short to me, this kind of "aim for the moon"
> goals require quite some time, especially in a community of mostly
> volunteers working on their spare time.
> 
> But at least to me we identified two things which need to be found before we
> can put in place a proper approach to try to really tackle our original
> problem:
>  1) how to build the strategy consensus when the time comes?
>  2) at which frequency do we want to look for the next strategy or decide to
> continue the current one?
> 
> Once we got those two answered then we can probably kick start this for the
> first strategy, likely with the five you mentioned above being evaluated.
> 
> Of course, I'm writing this assuming I'm not mistaken the document as we
> have right now won't be able to cut it. If everyone is fine with it and I'm
> alone thinking there's a problem I don't want to bully the community into
> more soul searching (although it looks like we did the most painful work
> and what I'm proposing sounds simpler... famous last words).

I personally don't feel bullied at all, I think we've laid out some basics, 
but we could definitely enhance that with more direction.

I do think that this mailinglist is the wrong medium at this point, though. 
Especially the discussions around vision, mission and strategy have become a 
bit of a repetitive echo chamber (the tail end of this thread is better, 
though), where the same people repeat the same opinions without much progress 
on a clear direction. A few loud voices (mine included) won't budge much and 
are trying to push their agenda's, the rest has long stopped caring. That 
isn't good at all.

It just occurred to me, that it would be good at this point to gauge with the 
active community what a mission would be, some simple questions such as:

- Have you been contributing in any significant way to KDE in the past year?   
  (And how?)
- Which of the proposed strategical directions would you support most?

Could give us a way to break out from this circle and tell us what the people 
who actually matter think, and what strategy could gain momentum. I think it 
would provide us with a much stronger decision base and increase the quality 
of any strategical direction a lot.

Thoughts?
-- 
sebas

http://www.kde.org | http://vizZzion.org

Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Kevin Ottens]

Hello,

On Friday, 7 July 2017 23:16:32 CEST Alexander Neundorf wrote:
> On 2017 M07 7, Fri 07:21:32 CEST Kevin Ottens wrote:
> > > How about collecting ideas for that ?
> > > We have already 5.
> > 
> > 5? I missed a couple I guess. I spotted only "privacy" and "freedom" so
> > far.
>
> For completeness:
> - privacy
> - (practical) freedom
> - reliability
> - KDE apps for Android - konquering mobile ;-)
> - cross-platform KDE applications - konquering Windows and OSX ;-)

OK, I somehow didn't spot the last three in this thread. Thanks for digging 
them up then.

> > Note I'd be personally inclined to do an early filtering of them to avoid
> > things which are way too generic and impossible to action. The reasoning
> > being that if you line them up against more precise things they'd be
> > picked up every time since they'd be more easily fitting larger groups...
> > but they'd be counter-productive at building a direction.
> 
> +1
> 
> > One simple criterion for that could be "no single term proposal" because
> > then you're just showing up a concept and that single word can be
> > ambiguous enough to be misunderstood too. See for instance how I didn't
> > quite complain about "privacy" but I did for "freedom", it's just than in
> > one case I see a clear direction and actions we can take and not in the
> > other one. Can be very different for someone else!
> > 
> > After all we're talking about selecting something like a 5 years strategy,
> > I think it deserve more than just a word.
> 
> Maybe it could be even shorter like e.g. 2 years ?
> 5 years feels like a very long time, 2 years feels plannable.

Somehow 2 years feel a bit short to me, this kind of "aim for the moon" goals 
require quite some time, especially in a community of mostly volunteers 
working on their spare time.

But at least to me we identified two things which need to be found before we 
can put in place a proper approach to try to really tackle our original 
problem:
 1) how to build the strategy consensus when the time comes?
 2) at which frequency do we want to look for the next strategy or decide to 
continue the current one?

Once we got those two answered then we can probably kick start this for the 
first strategy, likely with the five you mentioned above being evaluated.

Of course, I'm writing this assuming I'm not mistaken the document as we have 
right now won't be able to cut it. If everyone is fine with it and I'm alone 
thinking there's a problem I don't want to bully the community into more soul 
searching (although it looks like we did the most painful work and what I'm 
proposing sounds simpler... famous last words).

Regards.
-- 
Kévin Ottens, http://ervin.ipsquad.net

KDAB - proud supporter of KDE, http://www.kdab.com



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Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Alexander Neundorf]

Hi,

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alex

Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Kevin Ottens]

Hello,

On Thursday, 6 July 2017 21:27:45 CEST Alexander Neundorf wrote:
> On 2017 M07 6, Thu 07:29:39 CEST Kevin Ottens wrote:
> > On Wednesday, 5 July 2017 23:12:38 CEST Alexander Neundorf wrote:
> ...
> 
> > > Except that I don't think "Open Data" should really be THE focus of KDE
> > > (but I guess you just used that as a random example ?), I fully agree.
> > 
> > It wasn't totally random, I picked one I knew you wouldn't like. :-)
> 
> It's not that I don't like the idea of "Open Data", it's just that IMO KDE
> is not the right community for it, that should be Wikimedia or some
> scientific computing groups. :-)

Sure, I was a bit blunt with "don't like", I meant you wouldn't be thrilled if 
KDE chose that path. :-)

> > And part of my point is that if something like "Open Data" ended up being
> > picked, please don't argue it to death to prevent it. We will quickly know
> > where everyone stands, but if that's a divisive discussion each we'll keep
> > driving people away and we'll win nothing.
> > 
> > In fact, the selection process still needs to be found. As I mentioned
> > earlier on we can't do it somewhat unilaterally like organizations like
> > Mozilla can, we need to come up with a way to build up that consensus.
> 
> +1
> 
> How about collecting ideas for that ?
> We have already 5.

5? I missed a couple I guess. I spotted only "privacy" and "freedom" so far.

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

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

After all we're talking about selecting something like a 5 years strategy, I 
think it deserve more than just a word.

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

Regards.
-- 
Kévin Ottens, http://ervin.ipsquad.net

KDAB - proud supporter of KDE, http://www.kdab.com



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Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Kevin Ottens]

Hello,

On Thursday, 6 July 2017 21:27:52 CEST Clemens Toennies wrote:
> Am 06.07.2017 um 07:30 schrieb Kevin Ottens:
> > Hello, > > On Thursday, 6 July 2017 01:19:00 CEST Clemens Toennies wrote:
> > >>
> More like "Practical Freedom"? >> The KDE community imo shouldnt be
> about "technicalities", thats up to >> how each project tries to
> contribute or work towards that ultimate goal >> that is freedom. >>
> Wiki2Learn for example really doesnt fit privacy, but can help with >>
> Freedom on various levels. > > Sorry, that's still way too broad and
> tries to be all encompassing. My point > in this thread is we shouldn't
> do that to give a direction.
> 
> I like to disagree here.
> My thinking was to define an over-arching goal as  common vision/mission
> and then focus on particular sub-goal for a limited timeframe that works
> towards that goal for some, but maybe not all projects, like e.g. privacy.

Well, this is pretty much what I'm proposing IMO. The Vision and Mission 
statements as we have them now are over-arching, and setting a strategic 
direction ofr a few years is a sub-goal for a limited timeframe which doesn't 
necessarily apply to all projects.

> But out of curiousity, what direction you think the KDE Community as a
> whole should take?

Honestly I don't have a real opinion on that... as long as there *is* a 
direction I'm happy.

I admit I like the privacy one though.

Regards.
-- 
Kévin Ottens, http://ervin.ipsquad.net

KDAB - proud supporter of KDE, http://www.kdab.com



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Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Clemens Toennies]

Am 06.07.2017 um 10:09 schrieb Sebastian Kügler:
> On donderdag 6 juli 2017 01:45:59 CEST Clemens Toennies wrote:
>> Am 05.07.2017 um 22:58 schrieb Alexander Neundorf:
>>> On 2017 M07 5, Wed 15:05:26 CEST Clemens Toennies wrote:
 On Jul 5, 2017 13:14, "Sebastian Kügler"  wrote:
 How about Freedom?
>>> The "KDE - Digital Freedom" is one of my favourite T-shirts...
>>> Still, there exists already a software organizatio which has freedom as
>>> its
>>> main goal: GNU.
>> Gnome already builds a "free" desktop, so why should we?
>> Good thing they dont have a monopoly on it 
>>
>> Imo we deliver quite advanced free software that helps people experience
>> freedom like e.g. Krita, Kdenlive and many others that are more
>> practical than comparable organizations like GNU have to offer.
>> So we as KDE should not need to cut down ourself to strive for a smaller
>> subset of "Freedom" (aka Privacy or Android) in our mission (or vision)
>> only because some other organization claims to have the same goal.
> Krita is an excellent example though to demonstrate how well specialization 
> works -- instead of trying to do a photoshop clone, Krita found its niche in 
> natural painting and has quickly become the best in class in that field (as 
> far as I know).
>
> Having done promotion in KDE for a really long time, I tend to agree that 
> Freedom is too broad and too abstract for many people to understand and be 
> really compelling. We tried to make it less abstract and promote freedom at 
> our core much more (the t-shirt Alex mentioned is one of the assets I made 
> exactly with that purpose, so is the slogan "Be free" that you mentioned, but 
> it hasn't given us the focus we need. From a marketing point of view, KDE 
> needs to find a niche from where it can really shine and break into new new 
> markets, be the best-in-class. 
>
> I do believe that privacy is a very suitable niche for KDE, it's hugely 
> important nowadays, it's a lot easier to communicate the need for it than the 
> very abstract concept of Freedom, and, most importantly, it really is one of 
> the things that we, diverse as we are, all agree on.

Just that privacy doesnt fit W2L at all.

Greetings, Clemens.

Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Alexander Neundorf]

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

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

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

+1

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

+1
 
Alex

Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Clemens Toennies]

Am 06.07.2017 um 07:30 schrieb Kevin Ottens:
> Hello, > > On Thursday, 6 July 2017 01:19:00 CEST Clemens Toennies wrote: >>
More like "Practical Freedom"? >> The KDE community imo shouldnt be
about "technicalities", thats up to >> how each project tries to
contribute or work towards that ultimate goal >> that is freedom. >>
Wiki2Learn for example really doesnt fit privacy, but can help with >>
Freedom on various levels. > > Sorry, that's still way too broad and
tries to be all encompassing. My point > in this thread is we shouldn't
do that to give a direction.

I like to disagree here.
My thinking was to define an over-arching goal as  common vision/mission
and then focus on particular sub-goal for a limited timeframe that works
towards that goal for some, but maybe not all projects, like e.g. privacy.
But out of curiousity, what direction you think the KDE Community as a
whole should take?

Greetings, Clemens.

Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Kevin Ottens]

Hello,

On Thursday, 6 July 2017 01:19:00 CEST Clemens Toennies wrote:
> More like "Practical Freedom"?
> The KDE community imo shouldnt be about "technicalities", thats up to
> how each project tries to contribute or work towards that ultimate goal
> that is freedom.
> Wiki2Learn for example really doesnt fit privacy, but can help with
> Freedom on various levels.

Sorry, that's still way too broad and tries to be all encompassing. My point 
in this thread is we shouldn't do that to give a direction.

Regards.
-- 
Kévin Ottens, http://ervin.ipsquad.net

KDAB - proud supporter of KDE, http://www.kdab.com



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Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Kevin Ottens]

On Wednesday, 5 July 2017 23:12:38 CEST Alexander Neundorf wrote:
> On 2017 M07 5, Wed 12:17:10 CEST Kevin Ottens wrote:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > On Tuesday, 4 July 2017 22:28:24 CEST Alexander Neundorf wrote:
> > > On 2017 M07 2, Sun 03:43:57 CEST Kevin Ottens wrote:
> > > ...
> > > 
> > > > In my opinion our answer to "where we want to go" was supposed to be
> > > > something else than "nowhere in particular". Then I think we're
> > > > falling
> > > > very short on that. We face a problem, and instead of putting our
> > > > efforts
> > > > to find where to go to solve it, we're been pouring over the years
> > > > massive
> > > > efforts into describing where we currently are. That's understandable
> > > > but
> > > > it means we went off track in my opinion. If we stop at what we got so
> > > > far, we're in my opinion falling into a kind of conservatism trap. The
> > > > community will stay put and will keep shrinking as people loose
> > > > interest
> > > > and less new blood gets in.
> > > 
> > > Are you saying somewhere in those documents we should say what we
> > > actually
> > > want to accomplish ?
> > > Maybe not only on a community level, but on a software level  ?
> > > If so, I agree.
> > 
> > Somewhat yes (see my other probably more detailed answer to sebas). As
> > long
> > as it's not used as a mean for exclusion.
> > 
> > For instance, I'd totally be fine with us saying "OK, open data is our
> > strong focus for the next five years, as such we'll try to push further
> > projects in that category like WikiToLearn". Probably wouldn't be my
> > personal agenda (I'm proud we got WikiToLearn in our midst and I got no
> > personal motivation to work on it). Assuming I'd be a Plasma contributor,
> > I
> > would still be able to work on Plasma anyway which would be more to my
> > liking. But, knowing our focus for the next five years, having it on the
> > back of my mind, I would likely be more proactive in talking about
> > WikiToLearn when staffing a booth taking the time to look at it, I would
> > likely keep an eye open for cross-pollination between Plasma and
> > WikiToLearn.
> 
> Except that I don't think "Open Data" should really be THE focus of KDE (but
> I guess you just used that as a random example ?), I fully agree.

It wasn't totally random, I picked one I knew you wouldn't like. :-)

And part of my point is that if something like "Open Data" ended up being 
picked, please don't argue it to death to prevent it. We will quickly know 
where everyone stands, but if that's a divisive discussion each we'll keep 
driving people away and we'll win nothing.

In fact, the selection process still needs to be found. As I mentioned earlier 
on we can't do it somewhat unilaterally like organizations like Mozilla can, 
we need to come up with a way to build up that consensus.

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

Yes, the fact that we want to write everything as globally encompassing 
prevent us from getting a direction because of our diversity. That's why I 
think having something not necessarily covering every project would help as 
long as we all accept 1) to be supportive of it even if it's not to our liking 
and 2) it's not used as a mean to exclude efforts which don't fall into it.

Both are important, otherwise I don't see it working.

> > IOW, knowing the organization as a whole decided on some sort of direction
> > at least for a while would prompt me into looking beyond my usual comfort
> > zone. By doing that with the two examples above we might see a stronger
> > influx of contributors in the current focus zone ('cause promo) who are
> > more likely to then also look at the other stuff we do ('cause
> > cross-pollination).
> 
> +1

Regards.
-- 
Kévin Ottens, http://ervin.ipsquad.net

KDAB - proud supporter of KDE, http://www.kdab.com



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Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Clemens Toennies]

Am 05.07.2017 um 22:58 schrieb Alexander Neundorf:
> On 2017 M07 5, Wed 15:05:26 CEST Clemens Toennies wrote:
>> On Jul 5, 2017 13:14, "Sebastian Kügler"  wrote:
>>> Should we make privacy our main focus for the next 5 years?
>> How about Freedom?
> The "KDE - Digital Freedom" is one of my favourite T-shirts...
> Still, there exists already a software organizatio which has freedom as its 
> main goal: GNU.

Gnome already builds a "free" desktop, so why should we?
Good thing they dont have a monopoly on it :)

Imo we deliver quite advanced free software that helps people experience
freedom like e.g. Krita, Kdenlive and many others that are more
practical than comparable organizations like GNU have to offer.
So we as KDE should not need to cut down ourself to strive for a smaller
subset of "Freedom" (aka Privacy or Android) in our mission (or vision)
only because some other organization claims to have the same goal.

Greetings, Clemens.

Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Clemens Toennies]

Am 05.07.2017 um 16:23 schrieb Kevin Ottens:
> Hello, > > On Wednesday, 5 July 2017 15:05:26 CEST Clemens Toennies wrote: >>
On Jul 5, 2017 13:14, "Sebastian Kügler"  wrote: >>>
Should we make privacy our main focus for the next 5 years? >> >> How
about Freedom? >> Fits "KDE - be free". >> There is also no freedom
without privacy. > > Way too abstract to be actionable IMO. We're
looking at some focus which will > provide a technical direction, just
claiming "Freedom" won't get us there...

More like "Practical Freedom"?
The KDE community imo shouldnt be about "technicalities", thats up to
how each project tries to contribute or work towards that ultimate goal
that is freedom.
Wiki2Learn for example really doesnt fit privacy, but can help with
Freedom on various levels.

> especially since everything we do is Free Software already.

Free Software != Freedom.
Cornelius did a really great talk about that topic last Akademy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lelaQnW-u0w=PLsHpGlwPdtMogitRYzwPz4dWTVsZRGwts=9

Greetings, Clemens.

Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Alexander Neundorf]

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

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

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

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

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

Alex

Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Alexander Neundorf]

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

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

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

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

+1

Alex

Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Luigi Toscano]

Alexander Neundorf ha scritto:
> On 2017 M07 5, Wed 15:05:26 CEST Clemens Toennies wrote:
>> On Jul 5, 2017 13:14, "Sebastian Kügler"  wrote:
>>> Should we make privacy our main focus for the next 5 years?
>>
>> How about Freedom?
> 
> The "KDE - Digital Freedom" is one of my favourite T-shirts...
> Still, there exists already a software organizatio which has freedom as its 
> main goal: GNU.
> So, I think that's too broad for KDE.
> 

On the other side, KDE e.V. is Associate Member of FSFE.

-- 
Luigi

Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Alexander Neundorf]

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

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

Alex

Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Olaf Schmidt-Wischhöfer]

Am 5. Juli 2017 13:14:19 MESZ schrieb "Sebastian Kügler" :
>Should we make privacy our main focus for the next 5 years?

Yes!

Many other software sources (Apple, Microsoft, ...) are currently moving away 
from privacy, and the Free and Open Source communities are more needed then 
ever to respond to this with alternatives. We are an important player here, and 
we should use our influence to publically state a direction. We will not only 
ensure focus on this internally, but will make outsiders more aware of one of 
our advantages — that we would probably silently have anyways. We will attract 
privacy-minded people to us, and we will increase the chance for cooperation 
with other communities on this.

Best regards, Olaf

Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Kevin Ottens]

Hello,

On Wednesday, 5 July 2017 15:05:26 CEST Clemens Toennies wrote:
> On Jul 5, 2017 13:14, "Sebastian Kügler"  wrote:
> > Should we make privacy our main focus for the next 5 years?
> 
> How about Freedom?
> Fits "KDE - be free".
> There is also no freedom without privacy.

Way too abstract to be actionable IMO. We're looking at some focus which will 
provide a technical direction, just claiming "Freedom" won't get us there... 
especially since everything we do is Free Software already.

Regards.
-- 
Kévin Ottens, http://ervin.ipsquad.net

KDAB - proud supporter of KDE, http://www.kdab.com



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Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Clemens Toennies]

On Jul 5, 2017 13:14, "Sebastian Kügler"  wrote:
>
>
> Should we make privacy our main focus for the next 5 years?

How about Freedom?
Fits "KDE - be free".
There is also no freedom without privacy.

Greetings, Clemens.

Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Kevin Ottens]

Hello,

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

Yep, I think that something along those lines could work. Might require being 
a bit more refined to get close to actionable than a single word.

Worth pursuing this line of thinking.

Regards.
-- 
Kévin Ottens, http://ervin.ipsquad.net

KDAB - proud supporter of KDE, http://www.kdab.com



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Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Sebastian Kügler]

On woensdag 5 juli 2017 12:17:10 CEST Kevin Ottens wrote:
> IOW, knowing the organization as a whole decided on some sort of direction
> at least for a while would prompt me into looking beyond my usual comfort
> zone. By doing that with the two examples above we might see a stronger
> influx of contributors in the current focus zone ('cause promo) who are
> more likely to then also look at the other stuff we do ('cause
> cross-pollination).

Reading through your thoughts, I think we should put privacy into that primary 
focus position. It's a core value for us, something we all agree on, and 
extremely relevant in today's context.

Should we make privacy our main focus for the next 5 years?
-- 
sebas

http://www.kde.org | http://vizZzion.org

Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Kevin Ottens]

Hello,

On Tuesday, 4 July 2017 23:20:18 CEST Christian Mollekopf wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 2, 2017, at 03:43 AM, Kevin Ottens wrote:
> > I hope for another fate. Because of that, I don't think this is a proper
> > conclusion to the Evolving KDE effort or a proper answer to Paul's talk.
> 
> While I think I understand what you're looking for and don't find (yet)
> in the vision/mission, I'm thinking similar to Sebastian (I think ;-)).
> 
> For me a grand vision for KDE as a whole is just not all that
> interesting, I'm much more interested in what Plasma,
> Zanshin, KWin, KDevelop,  are trying to achieve and how they're
> going about that. Perhaps I then also don't care so much in the end
> whether a project is coming from KDE or not, which I personally find
> good, but others may have different opinions.

It's not a question of where it's coming from, it's a question of "does a 
project in KDE does better than something dumped on SourceForge/GitHub/?" (by "does better" here I mean in terms of 
mean number of committed contributors).

Because if if does not, and everyone thinks along the same lines than you, 
then it's a whole lot of wasted effort on the infrastructure and the overall 
community maintenance.

> I think it's also much more useful for people to engage with a specific
> project than just having this large unspecific thing that they then have
> to dissect to find something tangible to work on. Speaking of that,
> since the rebranding effort KDE is anyways standing for the community as
> far as I understand (correct me if I'm wrong), and I don't see how we
> can have a vision or mission for a community.

Interestingly it's exactly what got produced. :-)

Visions and missions are generally done for organizations, projects just 
happen to be much smaller less complex organizations (often with a time 
frame).

> Sooo, perhaps you are just looking for something different than a very
> generic and broad guideline to establish some common values =)

Yes, in part because we already did that with the Manifesto.

Doesn't mean I'm against completing the picture with more words than what was 
in the Manifesto. I'm just concerned it was clearly not what we wanted to 
achieve when things got in motion more than 3 years ago.

Regards.
-- 
Kévin Ottens, http://ervin.ipsquad.net

KDAB - proud supporter of KDE, http://www.kdab.com

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Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Kevin Ottens]

Hello,

On Tuesday, 4 July 2017 22:28:24 CEST Alexander Neundorf wrote:
> On 2017 M07 2, Sun 03:43:57 CEST Kevin Ottens wrote:
> ...
> 
> > In my opinion our answer to "where we want to go" was supposed to be
> > something else than "nowhere in particular". Then I think we're falling
> > very short on that. We face a problem, and instead of putting our efforts
> > to find where to go to solve it, we're been pouring over the years massive
> > efforts into describing where we currently are. That's understandable but
> > it means we went off track in my opinion. If we stop at what we got so
> > far, we're in my opinion falling into a kind of conservatism trap. The
> > community will stay put and will keep shrinking as people loose interest
> > and less new blood gets in.
> 
> Are you saying somewhere in those documents we should say what we actually
> want to accomplish ?
> Maybe not only on a community level, but on a software level  ?
> If so, I agree.

Somewhat yes (see my other probably more detailed answer to sebas). As long as 
it's not used as a mean for exclusion.

For instance, I'd totally be fine with us saying "OK, open data is our strong 
focus for the next five years, as such we'll try to push further projects in 
that category like WikiToLearn". Probably wouldn't be my personal agenda (I'm 
proud we got WikiToLearn in our midst and I got no personal motivation to work 
on it). Assuming I'd be a Plasma contributor, I would still be able to work on 
Plasma anyway which would be more to my liking. But, knowing our focus for the 
next five years, having it on the back of my mind, I would likely be more 
proactive in talking about WikiToLearn when staffing a booth taking the time 
to look at it, I would likely keep an eye open for cross-pollination between 
Plasma and WikiToLearn.

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

Without seeking these kind of dynamics, we keep repeating the same old recipes 
as we're doing now stuck in an ever shrinking prisoner dilemma.

Regards.
-- 
Kévin Ottens, http://ervin.ipsquad.net

KDAB - proud supporter of KDE, http://www.kdab.com


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Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Kevin Ottens]

Hello,

On Sunday, 2 July 2017 20:06:41 CEST Sebastian Kügler wrote:
> On zondag 2 juli 2017 03:43:57 CEST Kevin Ottens wrote:
> > In my opinion our answer to "where we want to go" was supposed to be
> > something else than "nowhere in particular". Then I think we're falling
> > very short on that. We face a problem, and instead of putting our efforts
> > to find where to go to solve it, we're been pouring over the years massive
> > efforts into describing where we currently are. That's understandable but
> > it means we went off track in my opinion. If we stop at what we got so
> > far, we're in my opinion falling into a kind of conservatism trap. The
> > community will stay put and will keep shrinking as people loose interest
> > and less new blood gets in.
> > 
> > I hope for another fate. Because of that, I don't think this is a proper
> > conclusion to the Evolving KDE effort or a proper answer to Paul's talk.
> 
> Thanks for the very thoughtful and critical reply. A first thought, right
> after I read it: We may well have outgrown the phase where we could come to
> a shared and clear direction for all of our software and the organisation.
> In that light, probably the best we could do is to capture what we have in
> common and codify that, this is the Mission as proposed.
> 
> I agree with you, however, that it lacks ambition

Exactly, that'd be a very small step after the manifesto.

> and doesn't tell us where we want to go in clear words. Finding that
> direction is a rather contentious topic, and it lead to great frustration
> among the people involved. There are a lot of different agenda's on the
> table, and very little room for compromise in the sense of "Okay, *that* is
> a really good idea and I think it's worthwhile pursuing, even if it's not
> why and what I'm working on under the KDE umbrella right now". I think we
> already are a more loose organisation than we would have thought (which can
> be fine).

And I think that's why I would at least in part disagree on your "We may well 
have outgrown the phase where we could come to a shared and clear direction 
for all of our software and the organisation".

Indeed it's likely impossible for all of our software (and that's a good thing 
for our ability to innovate). I think it's very much necessary and possible 
for the organization. What prevents it is the lack of culture of compromise 
which we have right now. It might stem from the rampant sense of lack of 
contributors we have across the board... but unfortunately it's a vicious 
circle IMO, as long as we lack this culture we'll have limited contributions.

If it wasn't so contentious at the moment with everyone wanting to push his 
personal agenda then we could say "OK, X is a really good idea, that's what 
we're going to pursue for the next five years". It's not like we'd proactively 
stop or prevent work on Y and Z, it's just that for the next five years we 
keep a closer eye on X and if we're in a place where we can give a hand for X 
we do a small gesture. A matter of good citizenship really.

If I would take a more concrete example coming from another organization. It's 
a bit how the Mozilla community acts (although it's more directive and less 
consensus based than I'd like). The main focus is clearly Firefox and so it 
shows in their communication and what naturally gets the lion share of the 
contributions. Still it doesn't prevent other initiatives like Voice, 
Thunderbird, etc. They're just currently not the main focus and that's OK. 
Tomorrow it could be something else becoming the main focus, yesterday it 
wasn't even Firefox (although it's been for a while now).

In fact, I think it's mostly with the strategy part that I got a problem. It 
doesn't feel like strategy at all to me. At least it's not giving the 
direction for the coming years I'd expect.

> On the other hand, the vision effort has lead to a couple of subprojects
> thinking more actively about this topic, and coming to more focused
> conclusions. Plasma is among those (I'm not naming that because it's the
> most shining example, just because it's what I know best), and I think
> *that* is a very good thing.

Definitely, I don't deny that, and it was very much needed anyway. It's just 
solving another problem than the original one we wanted to solve.

It's the meaning of my first email in this thread: what we got is an 
improvement, it's just doesn't seem to get us closer to solving what we wanted 
to solve in the first place.

Cheers.
-- 
Kévin Ottens, http://ervin.ipsquad.net

KDAB - proud supporter of KDE, http://www.kdab.com

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Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Alexander Neundorf]

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

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

Alex

Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Sebastian Kügler]

Hi Kevin,

On zondag 2 juli 2017 03:43:57 CEST Kevin Ottens wrote:
> In my opinion our answer to "where we want to go" was supposed to be
> something else than "nowhere in particular". Then I think we're falling
> very short on that. We face a problem, and instead of putting our efforts
> to find where to go to solve it, we're been pouring over the years massive
> efforts into describing where we currently are. That's understandable but
> it means we went off track in my opinion. If we stop at what we got so far,
> we're in my opinion falling into a kind of conservatism trap. The community
> will stay put and will keep shrinking as people loose interest and less new
> blood gets in.
> 
> I hope for another fate. Because of that, I don't think this is a proper
> conclusion to the Evolving KDE effort or a proper answer to Paul's talk.

Thanks for the very thoughtful and critical reply. A first thought, right 
after I read it: We may well have outgrown the phase where we could come to a 
shared and clear direction for all of our software and the organisation. In 
that light, probably the best we could do is to capture what we have in common 
and codify that, this is the Mission as proposed.

I agree with you, however, that it lacks ambition and doesn't tell us where we 
want to go in clear words. Finding that direction is a rather contentious 
topic, and it lead to great frustration among the people involved. There are a 
lot of different agenda's on the table, and very little room for compromise in 
the sense of "Okay, *that* is a really good idea and I think it's worthwhile 
pursuing, even if it's not why and what I'm working on under the KDE umbrella 
right now". I think we already are a more loose organisation than we would 
have thought (which can be fine).

On the other hand, the vision effort has lead to a couple of subprojects 
thinking more actively about this topic, and coming to more focused 
conclusions. Plasma is among those (I'm not naming that because it's the most 
shining example, just because it's what I know best), and I think *that* is a 
very good thing.

Cheers,
-- 
sebas

http://www.kde.org | http://vizZzion.org

Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Kevin Ottens]

Hello,

On Monday, 29 May 2017 21:17:29 CEST Lydia Pintscher wrote:
> [...]
> I'd like to invite you all to take a look at the current draft and
> provide your constructive feedback so we can use this as the basis for
> our work for the next years.
> 
> https://community.kde.org/KDE/Mission

Took me quite some time to decide to look at the mission in more details and 
write a reply here. That's in part because I think I might bring doom and 
gloom in this thread.

Indeed, I'm rather torn with it. There are two ways to look at it.


1) It can be seen *retrospectively* as a way to make the implicit more 
explicit. In that regard I think it's a success. As others in this thread 
mentioned it better than I could, I agree it summarizes quite excellently what 
we do. If what we were trying to achieve was make clear what we do, job is now 
done. Congrats everyone involved, it really wasn't easy at all to put into 
words what we've been doing for years.

From that point of view, I would say I got only one small concern. The Mission 
seems to overlap with the Manifesto to some extent, which is likely fine. And, 
at the same time, neither the Vision or the Mission refers to the Manifesto 
which makes it seem somewhat isolated now. Also, the aim behind all those 
documents is to make explicit to outsiders our why, what and how... well, 
that's quite a few documents now. I wouldn't expect them to know how it all 
articulates and that probably needs addressing. I admit I'm not sure how.


2) It can also be seen from the angle of "what prompted the creation of the 
Vision and the Mission?", and did we actually achieve what we wanted when we 
started that process. That's where I think I'll be a pain for everyone 
involved.

I'll recap the events which in my opinion started this soul searching. To me, 
it all goes back to Paul Adams' talk at Akademy 2014. If you don't remember it 
or didn't see it, I'll let you watch the video now:
https://conf.kde.org/en/Akademy2014/public/events/167

I'll wait... You're done? OK, let's carry on.

In short the conclusion was that the community was massively shrinking. To him 
it was likely because we lost focus, a shared technical vision and a shared 
tone (as he put it, I'd have put it differently I think, but let's not get 
into that).

It then led to discussions of course. Who wouldn't want to fix that situation, 
right? Those discussions culminated to Lydia announcing the "Evolving KDE" 
effort in order to "reflect on where we as a community stand and where we want 
to go".

And I think that's on Paul's conclusion and Lydia's initial goal, that the 
Vision and Mission should be judged.

Do they both answer "where we as a community stand"? Obviously yes, see my 
first part in this email, by making the implicit explicit they definitely 
served that purpose.

Do they both answer "where we want to go"? I hope not.

Indeed, once more (i.e. like with the Manifesto), we're describing business as 
usual, just on a different level this time. So if our answer to "where we want 
to go" is: "nowhere in particular, we just like where we're standing now", 
then the job is done from Lydia's initial goal point of view. Still I honestly 
hate the answer since it won't solve one bit of what Paul pointed out three 
years ago.

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

I hope for another fate. Because of that, I don't think this is a proper 
conclusion to the Evolving KDE effort or a proper answer to Paul's talk.

Regards.
-- 
Kévin Ottens, http://ervin.ipsquad.net

KDAB - proud supporter of KDE, http://www.kdab.com



signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part.

Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Sebastian Kügler]

On dinsdag 27 juni 2017 07:24:21 CEST Luca Beltrame wrote:
> Il giorno Mon, 29 May 2017 21:17:29 +0200
> Lydia Pintscher  ha scritto:
> 
> 
> 
> > I'd like to invite you all to take a look at the current draft and
> > provide your constructive feedback so we can use this as the basis for
> > our work for the next years.
> 
> As far as I can see, is
> 
> mentors people to contribute to Free and Open-Source software
> 
> sufficient to tell that also non-coders can participate in KDE?

I think the whole Mission is, nowhere does it limit the contributions to 
programming.
-- 
sebas

http://www.kde.org | http://vizZzion.org

Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Luca Beltrame]

Il giorno Mon, 29 May 2017 21:17:29 +0200
Lydia Pintscher  ha scritto:

> I'd like to invite you all to take a look at the current draft and
> provide your constructive feedback so we can use this as the basis for
> our work for the next years.

As far as I can see, is

mentors people to contribute to Free and Open-Source software

sufficient to tell that also non-coders can participate in KDE?

-- 
Luca Beltrame - KDE Forums team
GPG key ID: A29D259B


pgpWTtmFMTGlG.pgp
Description: Firma digitale OpenPGP

Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Christian Mollekopf]

On Thursday, June 22, 2017 10:23:55 AM CEST you wrote:> Hi Christian,
> 
> On donderdag 22 juni 2017 00:02:00 CEST Christian Mollekopf wrote:
...
> 
> You are exactly right, these documents are fairly loose and they're not meant 
> to be The Law, but give us all a bit more direction. That said, with a 
> community as large and diverse as KDE, it can't be overly specific. For that 
> reason, we encourage sub-projects in KDE to create a more concrete vision, 
> mission and strategy as well. The Krita team has done that some time ago and 
> it has brought them a lot more focus and as a result of that focus (and hard 
> work!), Krita has become the best in class in their newly found niche (which 
> is not meant belittling at all!).

Yeah, I really like the focus and drive the Krita project seems to have,
and in that regard
I think they are an excellent example of how a KDE project could work.

> In Plasma, we've started on the same 
> process, we're working on the Plasma vision right now (see the plasma-devel 
> mailing list) and we're planning to drill down to more specifics in that 
> process. Perhaps, this can be used as a template for other software as well, 
> I 
> can imagine that especially in the early stages of development (Hi Kube! :)) 
> it can deliver great value.

Indeed.

We have tried a while ago to distill something:
* https://kube.kde.org/features.html
* http://kube.readthedocs.io/en/latest/project/#vision-statement

While I think there is a lot of room for improvement, it's an ok start
for us for the time being.

Cheers,
Christian

Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Ben Cooksley]

Hi all,

Commenting in general here on the whole proposal rather than anyone's
specific remarks.

On the whole I think the mission and strategy are quite well aligned
and represent the community quite well. From time to time we may have
occasional exceptions to this (for instance, it is quite unlikely a
user of a proprietary operating system will be replacing their shell /
desktop environment) but these aside it represents our objectives
quite well.

We should therefore keep in mind that these aren't a hard set of
rules, but more an overarching set of principles which all of our
projects aim to follow as much as is reasonable. The objectives of a
given project will likely make clear what exceptions will exist and
when.

The only improvement I would suggest would be to add a mention of
working to create complete software solutions to assist end users in
their adoption of open source software (wording may need some work).

Cheers,
Ben

Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Christian Mollekopf]

Hi,

I'm new on the list so sorry for not replying to the thread.

I was asked to contribute my feedback on the Vision/Mission, so here it
goes.

I like Vision and Mission-Statement and they generally reflect my values
as well. They are very inclusive and fairly loose, which I think is the
only reasonable thing for such a high-level statement, yet they still
establish some values, which is good.

Personally, the strategy points are not too relevant for me, so I'm not
going comment on the individual points (which I too find generally
agreeable, nothing in there goes against what I want to achieve), but
I'm going to comment on why they are not too important to me instead.

To me, KDE is not one project. We're a diverse bunch of people working
on a variety of projects with different goals and ideas. As such, as
much as I can agree with individual strategy points, those are
ultimately up to the individual projects and their people. Those
strategic decisions are always tradeoffs, and as such must be made on a
case by case basis. I think it's entirely fine for an application to
decide to not be translatable, or to only run on a certain platform,
these are decisions for the individual projects and people to make, and
sometime heavily depend on individual goals projects set for themselves.

The strategy points are fine examples how the vision *could* be pursued,
but that's all they are to me, so I think there is little point in
trying to fine tune them too much and I think they must not be treated
as rules of any sort.

Personally I'd like to see more great software produced by the KDE
community and not necessarily "KDE-software" (though that's also ok if
that's what you're interested in doing of course), so I like that
openness in the vision and the mission.

I realize though that I have a developer perspective and there is
perhaps a need for being more specific for the sake of creating more of
an identity, and to that end the strategy points perhaps explain the
mission better.

Cheers,
Christian

Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

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

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

Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Albert Astals Cid]

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

Great work :)

I could nitpick, but that's just the engineer in me wanting it to be 
0.01% better, don't think it's worth our time so I should not 
have said i could nitpick :D

Cheers,
  Albert

> 
> 
> Cheers
> Lydia

Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Martin Flöser]

Am 2017-06-15 19:28, schrieb Marco Martin:

On Monday 29 May 2017 21:17:29 Lydia Pintscher wrote:

I'd like to invite you all to take a look at the current draft and
provide your constructive feedback so we can use this as the basis for
our work for the next years.

https://community.kde.org/KDE/Mission


Good job, i like this text!

one thing i would add tough, is at
"interoperates well with proprietary software, formats and services"

I would really like adding something about being committed to 
interoperation
with free software services, so while we try to interoperate with 
proprietary
ones, if  a free one is available (like owncloud vs dropbox) making 
sure the
priority is making the interoperation with the open service a truly 
first class

citizen


+1 on that. I understand the reasoning for why it's put into the mission 
like that but it also reads a little bit like we care more about dropbox 
than own/nextcloud. Which certainly is not that case and nothing we want 
to strive for.


Cheers
Martin

Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Martin Flöser]

Am 2017-06-13 15:29, schrieb Sebastian Kügler:

On dinsdag 13 juni 2017 14:16:25 CEST Kenny Coyle wrote:
Thanks for putting this together, I can only see it being positive 
going

forward.

The text itself is very clear and concise.

On the last section about promoting development, I'm wondering if it's
worthwhile having a statement about the infrastructure that KDE 
maintains

and develops? How about the following:

To promote the development of Free and Open-Source Software, KDE
…
maintains reliable technical infrastructure to support the community,
evolving with the community


I think that fits well into the strategy part. I wonder if we should
explicitely mention that we want this infrastructure to be based on 
Free
software and open standards as much as possible, since that's come up 
over and
over again in the past when we discussed important infrastructural 
changes.

(Own git vs. github, phabricator vs. other tools, etc.)

What do others think about this?


+1 on that. I just wanted to write a mail that I would like to have a 
point for that like:


KDE is a living example for usage of free software and uses wherever 
possible free products over proprietary in its own infrastructure


Cheers
Martin

Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Sebastian Kügler]

On dinsdag 13 juni 2017 22:00:02 CEST Lydia Pintscher wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 12, 2017 at 11:36 AM, Sebastian Kügler  wrote:
> 
> 
> > On zondag 11 juni 2017 18:02:56 CEST Albert Vaca wrote:
> 
> 
> >> Thanks for putting this together! Some (late and) minor thoughts on
> >> wording:
> >> 
> >> I like that we state we want to "integrate well with other Free products
> >> to
> >> complete the experience". I would explicitly mention "other Free
> >> *software*
> >> and products", to make clear that we don't want to be a closed ecosystem
> >> where KDE software only integrates with other KDE software.
> >> 
> >> I also think that the statement "maintains a diverse and inclusive
> >> community" is fundamental in a truly open online community nowadays. I
> >> would go further and say "a diverse, inclusive *and safe* community".
> 
> > I think those are excellent suggestions. The Free products was I think an
> > omission, since without software, this doesn't make sense in our context.
> > The "safe" is something I really like in there, because it stresses
> > mutual care and kindness that we want to exercise. That is something we
> > always values in KDE and supported by our actions (CoC being a
> > cornerstone).
> 
> re your edit: When reading the initial wording this includes
> integration with other Free "things" for me as well. I am specifically
> thinking about Marble integrating Wikipedia articles, Kipi plugins
> allowing upload to Wikimedia Commons, Amarok integrating with a number
> of free music services and so on. Albert wrote it as "other Free
> Software and products". I think that captures it a bit better.

I agree, good call!

> Everyone: Thanks a lot for the valuable and constructive input.
-- 
sebas

http://www.kde.org | http://vizZzion.org

Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Lydia Pintscher]

On Mon, Jun 12, 2017 at 11:36 AM, Sebastian Kügler  wrote:
> On zondag 11 juni 2017 18:02:56 CEST Albert Vaca wrote:
>> Thanks for putting this together! Some (late and) minor thoughts on wording:
>>
>> I like that we state we want to "integrate well with other Free products to
>> complete the experience". I would explicitly mention "other Free *software*
>> and products", to make clear that we don't want to be a closed ecosystem
>> where KDE software only integrates with other KDE software.
>>
>> I also think that the statement "maintains a diverse and inclusive
>> community" is fundamental in a truly open online community nowadays. I
>> would go further and say "a diverse, inclusive *and safe* community".
>
> I think those are excellent suggestions. The Free products was I think an
> omission, since without software, this doesn't make sense in our context. The
> "safe" is something I really like in there, because it stresses mutual care
> and kindness that we want to exercise. That is something we always values in
> KDE and supported by our actions (CoC being a cornerstone).

re your edit: When reading the initial wording this includes
integration with other Free "things" for me as well. I am specifically
thinking about Marble integrating Wikipedia articles, Kipi plugins
allowing upload to Wikimedia Commons, Amarok integrating with a number
of free music services and so on. Albert wrote it as "other Free
Software and products". I think that captures it a bit better.

Everyone: Thanks a lot for the valuable and constructive input.


Cheers
Lydia

-- 
Lydia Pintscher - http://about.me/lydia.pintscher
KDE e.V. Board of Directors / KDE Community Working Group
http://kde.org - http://open-advice.org

Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

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

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

Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Sebastian Kügler]

On dinsdag 13 juni 2017 14:16:25 CEST Kenny Coyle wrote:
> Thanks for putting this together, I can only see it being positive going
> forward.
> 
> The text itself is very clear and concise.
> 
> On the last section about promoting development, I'm wondering if it's
> worthwhile having a statement about the infrastructure that KDE maintains
> and develops? How about the following:
> 
> To promote the development of Free and Open-Source Software, KDE
> …
> maintains reliable technical infrastructure to support the community,
> evolving with the community

I think that fits well into the strategy part. I wonder if we should 
explicitely mention that we want this infrastructure to be based on Free 
software and open standards as much as possible, since that's come up over and 
over again in the past when we discussed important infrastructural changes. 
(Own git vs. github, phabricator vs. other tools, etc.)

What do others think about this?
-- 
sebas

http://www.kde.org | http://vizZzion.org

Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Kenny Coyle]

Hey,

Thanks for putting this together, I can only see it being positive going
forward.

The text itself is very clear and concise.

On the last section about promoting development, I'm wondering if it's
worthwhile having a statement about the infrastructure that KDE maintains
and develops? How about the following:

To promote the development of Free and Open-Source Software, KDE

   - …
   - maintains reliable technical infrastructure to support the community,
   evolving with the community


Thanks,
Kenny.

On Mon, Jun 12, 2017 at 10:36 AM Sebastian Kügler  wrote:

> On zondag 11 juni 2017 18:02:56 CEST Albert Vaca wrote:
> > Thanks for putting this together! Some (late and) minor thoughts on
> wording:
> >
> > I like that we state we want to "integrate well with other Free products
> to
> > complete the experience". I would explicitly mention "other Free
> *software*
> > and products", to make clear that we don't want to be a closed ecosystem
> > where KDE software only integrates with other KDE software.
> >
> > I also think that the statement "maintains a diverse and inclusive
> > community" is fundamental in a truly open online community nowadays. I
> > would go further and say "a diverse, inclusive *and safe* community".
>
> I think those are excellent suggestions. The Free products was I think an
> omission, since without software, this doesn't make sense in our context.
> The
> "safe" is something I really like in there, because it stresses mutual care
> and kindness that we want to exercise. That is something we always values
> in
> KDE and supported by our actions (CoC being a cornerstone).
>
> > Apart from that, I agree with every point in the strategy and I'm happy
> we
> > have decided to write it down and make it public.
>
> Cool!
> --
> sebas
>
> http://www.kde.org | http://vizZzion.org
>

Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Sebastian Kügler]

On zondag 11 juni 2017 18:02:56 CEST Albert Vaca wrote:
> Thanks for putting this together! Some (late and) minor thoughts on wording:
> 
> I like that we state we want to "integrate well with other Free products to
> complete the experience". I would explicitly mention "other Free *software*
> and products", to make clear that we don't want to be a closed ecosystem
> where KDE software only integrates with other KDE software.
> 
> I also think that the statement "maintains a diverse and inclusive
> community" is fundamental in a truly open online community nowadays. I
> would go further and say "a diverse, inclusive *and safe* community".

I think those are excellent suggestions. The Free products was I think an 
omission, since without software, this doesn't make sense in our context. The 
"safe" is something I really like in there, because it stresses mutual care  
and kindness that we want to exercise. That is something we always values in 
KDE and supported by our actions (CoC being a cornerstone).

> Apart from that, I agree with every point in the strategy and I'm happy we
> have decided to write it down and make it public.

Cool!
-- 
sebas

http://www.kde.org | http://vizZzion.org

Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Jens Reuterberg]

Like Albert I mostly want to weigh in that I support the mission draft - 
personally I consider the existance of a mission draft the central core 
success. 

It's one thing to be in opposition to parts of an existing mission - a 
completely different one when you may or may not be in opposition with the 
community. One of them means a debate can happend - the other just means 
deadlock so a mission in itself is a success.

As a sidenote to Agustin I consider the user story angle relevant, if not 
critical to a mission statement. Cut out the user from the equation and the 
whole idea of even providing a UI becomes redundant. 


On Sunday, 11 June 2017 18.02.56 CEST Albert Vaca wrote:
> Thanks for putting this together! Some (late and) minor thoughts on wording:
> 
> I like that we state we want to "integrate well with other Free products to
> complete the experience". I would explicitly mention "other Free *software*
> and products", to make clear that we don't want to be a closed ecosystem
> where KDE software only integrates with other KDE software.
> 
> I also think that the statement "maintains a diverse and inclusive
> community" is fundamental in a truly open online community nowadays. I
> would go further and say "a diverse, inclusive *and safe* community".
> 
> Apart from that, I agree with every point in the strategy and I'm happy we
> have decided to write it down and make it public.
> 
> Albert
> 
> On May 30, 2017 11:55 AM, "Sebastian Kügler"  wrote:
> > Hi Agustin,
> > 
> > On Tuesday, May 30, 2017 4:07:37 PM CEST Agustin Benito (toscalix) wrote:
> > > thanks for driving this discussion. It is a needed one. Here are my
> > > early comments:
> > > 
> > > * "builds on open standards to prevent "lock-in" - I think that
> > > prevent lock-in is not a reason but a consequence of building KDE
> > > software on open standards. open stardars are aabout transparency,
> > > agreement, provenance...
> > 
> > That makes it too vague in my opinion. Preventing lock-in is a tangible
> > benefit for our users, it is in fact why many instituional users choose
> > Free
> > software over proprietary offerings. We should call it by its name to make
> > clear why we do this, and why users want and need it.
> > 
> > > * "provides usable security and privacy features to protect against
> > > surveillance and data theft" there is legal surveillance that we do
> > > not want to prevent. In any case, privacy is a right challenged in our
> > > digital era like was not challenged before, in the analogic era. Is
> > > the right to privacy the central point, not the prevention against
> > > data theft. You can prevent your data from being stolen through
> > > proprietary software too, among other options.
> > 
> > Legal says exactly nothing, since it's bound to a jurisdiction, a concept
> > which doesn't exactly work in the internet era. Something can be legal in
> > a
> > given location, yet morally wrong. Also, we're not judging (a Free
> > software
> > principle), we're allowing privacy, full stop.
> > 
> > > * "have consistent, easy to use human interfaces" and "provide a
> > > seamless user experience" seems to me close enough to justify that we
> > > condense them in a single statement.
> > 
> > One is about the interface quality itself, the other is about a
> > cross-device
> > experience, I think they warrant separate mentioning to make the mission
> > less
> > fluffy and more concrete.
> > 
> > > * I would be carefull with the words "integration" and
> > > "interoperates". In order to work well, both concepts requires two
> > > parties. We cannot guarantee any of them by ourselves.
> > 
> > We can strive for it, however. Nothing wrong with that.
> > 
> > > * Linked with the above, this statement is a set up for failure:
> > > "interoperates well with proprietary software, formats and services" .
> > > In simple words, it is not in our hands to provide a satisfactory
> > > experience when dealing with proprietary software/formats/services. I
> > > would re-formulate this in a way that reflects that we will do our
> > > best.
> > 
> > Again, I think it's absolutely sound to state that we want our software to
> > work well with proprietary offerings. It provides real value to users and
> > again makes it clearer why we do what we do.
> > 
> > > * "empowers users independent of their abilities" I find this
> > > statement vague. How are we going to empower them? what for? why it is
> > > so important for us to empower software users? I would try to develop
> > > it a little.
> > 
> > How? :)
> > 
> > > * I have a fundamental issue with the whole "user story". We are
> > > upstream. We only reach 0.1% of our currrent users directly. We live
> > > in an industry that has "downstream", that is, integrators and
> > > distributors. I truly believe that one of our limiting factors is our
> > > belief that we can reach users "by ourselves", through direct
> > > interaction. This idea, which is popular in our 

Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Sebastian Kügler]

Hi Agustin,

On Tuesday, May 30, 2017 4:07:37 PM CEST Agustin Benito (toscalix) wrote:
> thanks for driving this discussion. It is a needed one. Here are my
> early comments:
> 
> * "builds on open standards to prevent "lock-in" - I think that
> prevent lock-in is not a reason but a consequence of building KDE
> software on open standards. open stardars are aabout transparency,
> agreement, provenance...

That makes it too vague in my opinion. Preventing lock-in is a tangible 
benefit for our users, it is in fact why many instituional users choose Free 
software over proprietary offerings. We should call it by its name to make 
clear why we do this, and why users want and need it.

> * "provides usable security and privacy features to protect against
> surveillance and data theft" there is legal surveillance that we do
> not want to prevent. In any case, privacy is a right challenged in our
> digital era like was not challenged before, in the analogic era. Is
> the right to privacy the central point, not the prevention against
> data theft. You can prevent your data from being stolen through
> proprietary software too, among other options.

Legal says exactly nothing, since it's bound to a jurisdiction, a concept 
which doesn't exactly work in the internet era. Something can be legal in a 
given location, yet morally wrong. Also, we're not judging (a Free software 
principle), we're allowing privacy, full stop.

> * "have consistent, easy to use human interfaces" and "provide a
> seamless user experience" seems to me close enough to justify that we
> condense them in a single statement.

One is about the interface quality itself, the other is about a cross-device 
experience, I think they warrant separate mentioning to make the mission less 
fluffy and more concrete.

> * I would be carefull with the words "integration" and
> "interoperates". In order to work well, both concepts requires two
> parties. We cannot guarantee any of them by ourselves.

We can strive for it, however. Nothing wrong with that.

> * Linked with the above, this statement is a set up for failure:
> "interoperates well with proprietary software, formats and services" .
> In simple words, it is not in our hands to provide a satisfactory
> experience when dealing with proprietary software/formats/services. I
> would re-formulate this in a way that reflects that we will do our
> best.

Again, I think it's absolutely sound to state that we want our software to 
work well with proprietary offerings. It provides real value to users and 
again makes it clearer why we do what we do.

> * "empowers users independent of their abilities" I find this
> statement vague. How are we going to empower them? what for? why it is
> so important for us to empower software users? I would try to develop
> it a little.

How? :)

> * I have a fundamental issue with the whole "user story". We are
> upstream. We only reach 0.1% of our currrent users directly. We live
> in an industry that has "downstream", that is, integrators and
> distributors. I truly believe that one of our limiting factors is our
> belief that we can reach users "by ourselves", through direct
> interaction. This idea, which is popular in our community, has its
> reflection in this Mission statement. No mention to any collaboration
> with dowsntream in this section, to reach users.

While we are upstream, we're responsible for the largest part of the user 
experience, we develop the software, we create the UI, we fix the bugs that 
annoy people.

> I have been fighting this widespread belief since I joined in 2005.
> Our situation is worse today than ever was, in my opinion. I would
> really like to see ourselves turning the situation upside down, which
> can start by discussing and ultimately reflecting in this Mission
> statement how important it is for us the ecosystem that allow us to
> bring our software to user's hands.

Please elaborate what you want to do, and how. Your statement is really vague 
and I fail to make sense of it, possibly others have the same problem.

Cheers,
-- 
sebas

http://www.kde.org | http://vizZzion.org

Re: latest draft for mission (and strategy)

[Agustin Benito (toscalix)]

Hi,

thanks for driving this discussion. It is a needed one. Here are my
early comments:

* "builds on open standards to prevent "lock-in" - I think that
prevent lock-in is not a reason but a consequence of building KDE
software on open standards. open stardars are aabout transparency,
agreement, provenance...

* "provides usable security and privacy features to protect against
surveillance and data theft" there is legal surveillance that we do
not want to prevent. In any case, privacy is a right challenged in our
digital era like was not challenged before, in the analogic era. Is
the right to privacy the central point, not the prevention against
data theft. You can prevent your data from being stolen through
proprietary software too, among other options.

* "have consistent, easy to use human interfaces" and "provide a
seamless user experience" seems to me close enough to justify that we
condense them in a single statement.

* I would be carefull with the words "integration" and
"interoperates". In order to work well, both concepts requires two
parties. We cannot guarantee any of them by ourselves.

* Linked with the above, this statement is a set up for failure:
"interoperates well with proprietary software, formats and services" .
In simple words, it is not in our hands to provide a satisfactory
experience when dealing with proprietary software/formats/services. I
would re-formulate this in a way that reflects that we will do our
best.

* "empowers users independent of their abilities" I find this
statement vague. How are we going to empower them? what for? why it is
so important for us to empower software users? I would try to develop
it a little.

* I have a fundamental issue with the whole "user story". We are
upstream. We only reach 0.1% of our currrent users directly. We live
in an industry that has "downstream", that is, integrators and
distributors. I truly believe that one of our limiting factors is our
belief that we can reach users "by ourselves", through direct
interaction. This idea, which is popular in our community, has its
reflection in this Mission statement. No mention to any collaboration
with dowsntream in this section, to reach users.

I have been fighting this widespread belief since I joined in 2005.
Our situation is worse today than ever was, in my opinion. I would
really like to see ourselves turning the situation upside down, which
can start by discussing and ultimately reflecting in this Mission
statement how important it is for us the ecosystem that allow us to
bring our software to user's hands.

Best Regards
Agustin Benito (toscalix)
KDE eV member
Profile: http://es.linkedin.com/in/toscalix


On Tue, May 30, 2017 at 4:17 AM, Lydia Pintscher  wrote:
> Hey folks,
>
> Last year we have talked a lot about KDE's vision, fleshed it out and
> wrote it down: https://community.kde.org/KDE/Vision I am proud that we
> have done that. However the work does not end there. We have the
> answer to the question "why are we here". We still need the answer to
> the question "how do we achieve our vision". We've had an insightful
> survery among our community and users and a lot of discussions around
> that. This was then all further discussed in a sessions at QtCon in
> Berlin. After that smaller groups have sat down to take all the input
> and refine it, but then the process got stuck for several reasons. At
> the last board meeting the board and sebas sat down again and looked
> at where we are wrt distilling all the input. It turns out we are less
> far away than we thought. We took the input from the session at
> Akademy and polished the wording slightly. We then analyzed it more
> and figured out the issue that had been bugging us with the existing
> draft: It was mixing mission and strategy. We split it up and this
> seems to work much better.
>
> I'd like to invite you all to take a look at the current draft and
> provide your constructive feedback so we can use this as the basis for
> our work for the next years.
>
> https://community.kde.org/KDE/Mission
>
>
> Cheers
> Lydia
>
> --
> Lydia Pintscher - http://about.me/lydia.pintscher
> KDE e.V. Board of Directors / KDE Community Working Group
> http://kde.org - http://open-advice.org