[dot] The First Day of the KDE 4.0 Release Event

[Dot Stories]

URL: http://dot.kde.org/1200638688/

From: Jos Poortvliet <>
Dept: to-meet-is-good
Date: Thursday 17/Jan/2008, @22:44

The First Day of the KDE 4.0 Release Event
==========================================

   The first day of the KDE 4.0 Release Event in Mountain View,
California, got off to a great start on Thursday, with attendees fuelled
by a hearty breakfast provided by Google. Then, the "un-conference"
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconference] was ready to get underway,
and within minutes the first topics were added to the whiteboards.
Meanwhile, the room filled with people from across North America and
worldwide, all with an interest in KDE. Read on for more details.
   [http://dannya.org/images/release-event/breakfast.jpg]
     One of the first topics on the whiteboard covered the state of KDE
4 on BSD. According to Adriaan de Groot and David Johnson, they
discussed community building, automated builds and other testing, and
the KDE-on-FreeBSD website.

     Other topics on the whiteboard included a discussion about the Git
version control system and KDE, a Marketing meeting, a Distributions
gathering, and a Plasma conversation. Git is relatively new for many KDE
developers, and so their meeting started with a few technical questions
and a short "what's cool" overview. The talk quickly moved on to the
"big picture". According to Thiago Macieira, the future plan is to
attempt to migrate one application entirely to Git, and then evaluate
further options. There are some issues regarding usability for
less-technical contributors, but luckily the Git developer community is
interested in our endeavours and is working with us.

     The marketing meeting had many attendants, and it proved hard to
focus the discussion on the "big picture". Some of the issues KDE has in
the area of marketing are widely-known, but a lack of time and hands can
make it difficult to significantly improve the situation. Still,
improvements to the KDE web presence were discussed, as well as the
topic of marketing in the KDE 4 era, as well as the more general
concerns of marketing within the unique environment of an open
community.

     Another productive meeting was the Distributions discussion.
Participants discussed sharing the workload on packaging, configuring
and improving KDE, and what they needed for KDE 4.0. They came to a few
agreements (for example, about improving the theming system in KDE),
integrating PolicyKit in System Settings, reviving the KIOSK tool, and
improving the KConfig backend system.
  [http://dannya.org/images/release-event/silent-hacking.jpg]
     The Plasma gathering was probably the busiest, drawing a large
crowd. Aaron Seigo, lead Plasma  developer, initiated the session with
an introduction of Plasma concepts, explanations of fundamental design
decisions, and how Plasma enables new interaction possibilities over the
KDE 4 cycle. The special needs of small form factor devices, as well as
the widely-touted "10 foot interface" of Media Center computers, was
touched upon. Aaron also explained that for KDE 4.0, the focus was on
recreating the 'traditional' desktop interface with the new framework
that Plasma provides. He noted that a proof that the Plasma concept
works is that we were able to build a "traditional" desktop interface (a
panel, menu, taskbar, clock, and a desktop background with icons on it)
in relatively small amount of time, and now also open the door to
innovations in the desktop interface.

     Questions from the people attending the Plasma discussion revolved
around planned features, scripting using high-level languages,
integration of online resources, and feature parity with KDE 3.5.
Unfortunately, the attendees were only able to scratch the surface of
those topics, the one hour that was scheduled for this session turned
out to be too short to cover such an important topic. One thing became
very clear though: While feature parity has not yet been reached with
KDE 4.0, the tools are now in place to quickly get there and to go far
beyond what is and was possible. Exciting times lie ahead for both the
Plasma team and users of KDE 4.

     The KDE hackers that remained rooted to their chair (or were
fighting for access at the power sockets!) not only got to know each
other (by talking face-to-face, not online!), but were also productive.
Some interesting work was Frank Karlitschek's project which allows users
to create groups and use those to share files and communicate (think
"social networking") - all from within Kontact. Meanwhile, Justin
Karneges wrote a Datagram TLS plugin for QCA which can encrypt UDP
trafic, so that users can do voice and video chats in a secure way.
Other developments from the open event room were finalisations to the
Oxygen mouse cursor theme, and making Amarok compile on Mac OSX again.
  [http://dannya.org/images/release-event/social-behaviour.jpg]
     After lunch, the hacking and talking continued, while some
attendees were lured away from their laptops for the guided tour of the
Google campus. After the tour, more talks and meeting sessions until the
shuttle bus returned attendees to our hotel for an evening of social
interaction and (presumably!), a small amount of sleep.

     Overall, the first day of the KDE 4.0 Release Event was productive
and a great opportunity to meet - especially for those who are unable to
reach the European-centric annual event Akademy. Stay tuned to the Dot
and Planet KDE [http://planetkde.org/] for more coverage of this event,
including the "official" scheduled happenings of tomorrow!