[kde-community] Request to join the Kde incubator for GCompris

[Agustin]

Hi Bruno,

I am Agustin Benito, KDE eV Treasurer.

Thanks for providing us the information around the income that GConpris 
generates. We do not have a clear policy about this topic. I do not see a 
major problem in this area.

We have a wide variety of different "business models" used by KDE developers to 
generate income. Your experience will help us to provide better answers to KDE 
developers in the future in this area.


> 
> As a community project, it was part of the Gnome community, and the Gtk+
> version will still be there until the Qt version is on par. We got
> numerous contributors coming from Gnome, especially the translation team
> who does an excellent job. We also managed individual contributors all
> over the years. Many come, create an activity and leave when their
> children does not use GCompris anymore. I usually integrate the
> contributions and handle the maintenance of this code. At some point in
> time there as been other commiters and it was working fine.
> 
> I am also a GSoC mentor since 2011 under the Gnome umbrella. I really
> appreciated doing that. It helps the project, the community, the student
> and myself as I like to share my knowledge. For this year I registered
> GCompris as an independent organization since I expect to get students
> working on the new Qt Quick version. Of course, if we work together, I
> will propose next year GCompris under the Kde umbrella.
> 
> Enough history, lets talk about our future.
> 
> Nowadays, more and more users are requiring us a tablet version. By far,
> Gtk+ is not ready in this area . After reviewing different
> possibilities, I had HTML5 and Qt Quick on my short list. I made a test
> and ported a GCompris activity in HTML5 and a few one in Qt Quick to be
> sure to make a wise decision.
> 
> I am happy to tell you that I have been more than surprised by the ease
> of development and the quality of the code I wrote in Qt Quick. Yes it
> does not run on the web but for GCompris there are many reasons to stay
> off the web anyway.
> 
> So I have now published a beta version in Qt Quick and used it to
> announce the world that I bet the future of GCompris on it. It has been
> well received in the GCompris community. Of course it deceived the Gnome
> team and I am sad for them but I had to take this drastic decision to
> make sure GCompris stay relevant in the years to come.
> 
> On the development side, after looking at creating a compatibility layer
> to run old GCompris activities on a new Qt Quick framework. It proved to
> be difficult and the the result would be ugly in term of code and in
> term of user experience. I decided to go the hard way and to make a full
> rewrite. We will reuse the graphic, sound, voices, data and of course
> the concept of each activity of the Gtk+ version to create the new one.
> I expect the port to last one or two years.
> 
> So this is a brain new project with just a demonstrator of only 4
> activities on 140. I think it is a good time frame for GCompris to join
> the Kde community for different reasons:
> 
> - We need the best skills to create a solid framework
> - This is easier to jump on a new project and more interesting for a new
> contributor
> - Wehave no on line development tools to migrate
> 
> I hope my request did raise your interest and I'll be please to answer
> your questions.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Bruno.
> 
> 
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-- 
Agustin
toscalix at gmail.com