[kde-community] Why were there no talks about Ubuntu Mobile at Akademy?

[Michael Zanetti]

On Tuesday 20 August 2013 22:11:04 Jos Poortvliet wrote:
> On Friday 16 August 2013 10:49:26 Jos Poortvliet wrote:
> > I think Aaron already made clear that he would be happy to work on sharing
> > as much as possible with the Plasma efforts he's involved in and kick folk
> > around him to do the same. I just make the wild bet that the Frameworks
> > folk are perfectly open to the same - standards benefit us all, so does
> > sharing libraries. They are turning KDE Libraries into components which
> > are
> > separately useful, that sounds like a terribly useful think for Ubuntu
> > Phone.
> 
> So I get plenty of replies in no time all over that I'm wrong, but when I
> offer help and ask how we can actually do something constructive, there's
> only silence? If the Canonical folks on this list don't feel like this mail
> was directed at them - you're hereby corrected. If you don't feel like
> there is anything you can do, please say so, we can then discuss trying to
> talk to somebody at Canonical directly.

I think for collaboration it takes more than just KDE and Canonical having 
some similar stuff to do:

- Not all areas can be shared. I for one work on Unity8, which just works and 
looks so different in every way than plasma does. We don't need Plasmoid 
containers, you don't need search scopes. Given that Ubuntu Touch is QML only, 
there's not much point in pulling the QWidget related stuff from KF5 over to 
Ubuntu. Other things, like the Solid base for example might indeed could be 
shared/reused.

- Once there is something which might make sense to be shared, it requires the 
exact people working on it having interest in collaborating. Which means, the 
responsive KDE person needs to accept that a certain API needs to change for 
requirements NOT needed by KDE and the responsive person in Canonical needs to 
have interest in pulling in something that most likely can do way more than 
Ubuntu needs at this stage, with the additional efforts of maintaining more 
code and doing code reviews for stuff not even needed. It is not possible for 
me or Albert to go to some API guys and tell them: You have to share code with 
KDE. This needs to happen from inside the team. The person doing the work must 
drive it.

Now, coming from the Gnome/Gtk area, Canonical's people mostly are aware what 
code could be shared with Gnome, but not many of them have a clue what KDE 
frameworks actually is. Same the other way round. I'm quite sure very few here 
know how the Ubuntu's architecture is built up.

Then again, we actually do share and reuse some code. Take all the lightdm 
stuff for example, the dbusmenu stuff and many more libs which in history have 
flown into both directions already.

Br,
Michael


> 
> /J
> 
> > Cheers,
> > Jos
> > 
> > 
> > * that would be to let everybody in the KDE ecosystem meet and collaborate
> > - and anybody who could use KDE tech or would want to somehow work with
> > KDE folk can and should be as vocal as possible about that at Akademy!
> > Community is about building mutually beneficial relationships. If it is
> > all about giving or taking, it doesn't work for one of the parties and
> > makes no sense. We're all adult enough to understand companies have their
> > needs and goals and we can deal with that. We do with Jolla and
> > Blackberry and Digia and KDAB and ICS, why not Canonical?
> > 
> > > Cheers,
> > > Jos