[kde-community] Give People Access to Great Technology - a possible vision

Fri Sep 19 17:56:39 BST 2014

Hi,

I wanted to share a few thoughts in case it might be helpful right now. I
apologize now for the length. Not that he necessary endorses any of this,
but Thomas Pfeiffer was gracious enough to provide many of the examples of
what we're already doing. A pdf that's a bit more readable is here:
http://goo.gl/kDxkzI

"Give People Access to Great Technology"
 - quote from Akademy 2014 Cornelius Schumacher's keynote

A possible vision
-----------------

As a full time KDE user since 2001 and a more recent contributor, Akademy
2014 was tremendously inspiring and also quite sobering.

How do we respond to the downward trend in the global PC industry that
Cornelius Schumacher highlighted? How do we regain some of the focus Paul
Adams suggests we may have lost? From the design side, it is certainly
helpful for us to have a common focus that informs our design activities,
and the recent discussions on this mailing list about a shared vision show
that other community members agree. So what is a possible wider, shared
vision that might make designs and their implementations more successful,
focused and relevant? What follows are a collection of personal thoughts on
how all these questions might perhaps be considered.

What makes up our personal technology ecosystem?
* Workstation
* Laptop
* Phone
* Tablet
* Camera
* Bluetooth headset/speakers
* Smart watches
* Smart home (TV, Nest, Chromecast)
* Cloud services (storage, contacts, email, calendar, music, photographs,
video, social networking, text/video chat, collaboration)
* Local services or applications (music, imagery, video, documents,
development)
* Vehicle

In this ecosystem, what does “give people access to great technology” mean?
Perhaps it could mean:

"Enable people to be even more awesome by taking much greater advantage of
every aspect of their technology ecosystem."

_______________

In this ecosystem, what does KDE currently provide or participate in?
* Plasma desktop (Workstation, Laptop)
* Plasma Active (tablet)
* Plasma Mediacenter (smart TV)
* KDE Connect (Phone)
* Dolphin (Local services)
* KIO (cloud services - storage)
* Digikam, Gwenview (Local services - photographs, Camera, cloud services -
photographs via KIPI)
* Amarok, Juk (Local services - music, cloud services - music in the case
of Amarok)
* Dragon Player, Jungle (Local services - video, Cloud services - video)
* Kate, Calligra (Local services - documents, cloud services -
collaboration via KTE Collaborative)
* KDevelop (Local services- development)
* Akonadi, Baloo (Local services)
* Akonadi, ownCloud, Kolab (Cloud services)
* Telepathy (Cloud services - social networking)
* Much more...
* Frameworks to enable it all.

The precise categorizations above might be debatable, but not immediately
important. More important perhaps is how we might identify some
opportunities.
* Desktop applications
   * Already quite good.
   * How can applications take advantage of improved design and better
integration of desktop capabilities to become better applications?
   * How can the desktop take greater advantage of application capabilities
to become a better desktop?
* Devices (phones, tablets, smart watches, etc.)
   * How can the desktop take advantage of device capabilities to become a
better desktop?
   * How can devices take advantage of desktop capabilities to become
better devices?
* Cloud services - our own or others.
   * How can the desktop take advantage of cloud capabilities to become a
better desktop?
   * How can cloud services become better because of the desktop?
   * “Cloud” here includes both centralized and decentralized services.

To be crystal clear, we're already doing a lot of this stuff (and many of
them we’re already talking about) so I think it’s fine to conclude “Hey,
we’re already doing most of that!”. These thoughts are not intended to
suggest an entirely new direction. Rather, the aim is for a common
understanding of shared goals that might be helpful in our communications
within the community and beyond.

So, what might this look like?

Image: http://wstaw.org/m/2014/09/19/A_possible_vision.png

* Desktop at the center.
* Frameworks as enabler.
* Continue creating highly capable applications and even better integration.
   * "Simple by default, powerful when needed" applications [
http://goo.gl/uNlpq3]. Make applications look and work great with
excellent, high-quality functionality and consistent, effective, beautiful
design. Be ambitious. Do not be shy about being best-in-class; see Krita!
   * Extend application capabilities by exposing desktop and other
applications’ functions.
   * Expose application capabilities to make the desktop more powerful .
   * Examples:
      * Sessions and Activities
      * Saving and sharing desktop and application configurations.
      * Searchable application datastores.
      * Secure sharing of data between applications.
      * Sensible laptop touch screen support in applications.
      * Unified theming
      * Common design language and more effective HIG
      * Enable applications to take advantage of device-enabled desktop
capabilities like location awareness, device streaming, device-as-input,
etc. (see below)
      * Enable applications to take advantage of cloud-enabled desktop
capabilities like beyond-the-desktop-search, collaboration, mapping, etc.
(see below)
      * Securely expose common application functions to the desktop or
other applications (kinda like Android Intents). Make it first class,
visible.
      * More?
* Highly capable integration with devices
   * Don’t just duplicate. Make each better.
   * Examples:
      * Shared clipboard
      * Shared notifications
      * Shared browsing
      * Media control (music, video, slideshows, pointer)
      * Send picture between device and desktop
      * Make or receive phone calls from the desktop
      * Desktop location awareness using device.
      * Desktop keyboard/mouse for device input/control
      * Remote camera
      * Browse and transfer files/library
      * Stream music/video between device and desktop
      * Send desktop audio to bluetooth speakers
      * Send desktop video to TV (e.g. chromecast)
      * Device as additional input or display (e.g. games,
touchscreen-as-touchpad, device sensors like microphone, accelerometer,
gyroscope, ambient light sensor, etc.)
      * Remote access to desktop capabilities and services
      * More?
   * Many of these examples are already in KDE Connect and may well be on
its (or others’) road map to build deep, powerful desktop-wide integration.
* Highly capable integration with cloud services
   * Don’t just duplicate. Make it better.
   * Examples:
      * Synced offline email, contacts, calendar
      * Beyond-the-desktop search/query (App repositories, OpenStreetMap,
TVDB, MovieDB, Last.fm, DBpedia, dictionary, translation)
      * Integrated map/directions to contact address
      * More discoverable cloud file storage, browsing and syncing
      * Web apps as first-class applications on the desktop
      * (Properly) Integrated social network contact, group and event info
      * Sharing to social networks from anywhere
      * Easier sharing of customizations.
      * Group text/video chat
      * In-app collaboration
      * App-driven usability metrics and surveys
      * Remote git-based workflows
      * Seamlessly access and play cloud-stored music in my desktop music
player
      * Synched media activity (ratings, play count, times, etc.)
      * More?
   * Many of these examples we already have in place, are working on, or
have the basics in place to build deeper, even more powerful desktop-wide
integration. These include Kontact, dictionary and translate runners and
plasmoids, Marble, KIO, web view plasmoid, KPeople +WebAccounts,
Share-Like-Connect, KTE Collaborative, Amarok, Tomahawk and more.
* Quality
   * Applicable to design, code, documentation and translations.
   * Pride of workmanship. Encourages adoption. Encourages contribution.

Collapsed down to 5 top-level items for conciseness: Desktop at the center.
Frameworks as enabler. Highly capable integrated applications. Highly
capable integration with devices and the cloud. Quality.
________________

So, how might we preserve what has already been accomplished and tackle
what comes next? Here is my personal interpretation of Cornelius
Schumacher's advice from his keynote.
* Be free
   * Bias support towards free-er platforms
   * Bias support towards open standards. Open standards lead to free-er
platforms.
   * But don’t be shy about supporting people (us) where their (our)
ecosystem is. Taking advantage of existing platforms may have a significant
impact to people who stand to benefit most. It may also help to form the
foundations upon which to create and support open standards and free-er
platforms of the future with greater capability. Knowing the greater goal
is crucial, but effective strategy (correctness*commitment) is what moves
us toward that goal.
   * Bias towards working in the open to encourage participation and
preserve sustainability.
* Maintain our purpose
   * Give people access to great technology.
   * By our own users’ measure, we make a fantastic desktop environment and
applications. We can do even better by giving people access to the greater
capabilities of a technological ecosystem that includes the desktop and
applications as full-fledged, relevant and highly capable participants that
can make other elements in that ecosystem better.
* Have fun
   * We get to participate in the exciting new and emerging elements of our
technological ecosystem.
   * We make the best desktop environment and applications even kooler!

There are probably a million holes to poke through this. Maybe it’s too
ambitious. Maybe it’s much too limited. Maybe it’s entirely the wrong
focus. Ultimately, it’s fine if we end up choosing a different approach
than the one considered here. The hope though is for a clear, unambiguous
focus that acknowledges our strengths as well as the reality of the trends
in our technological ecosystem. I just wanted to share this collection of
thoughts that have been festering in mah noggin since Akademy in the hopes
it might be helpful to a community I’ve come to treasure.

Hope this helpful and I'm genuinely happy to be a part of such an amazing
community,
Andrew Lake
KDE VDG member
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