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

[Andrew Lake]

Hello again, I was going to reply to each response individually but I
thought it might be simpler to do one reply.

First off, thanks for being so so gracious in reviewing the thoughts I
shared. As I mentioned these were personal thoughts prompted by my
experience at Akademy this year. There's always a risk sharing such
thoughts with a community that barely knows me, so I'm grateful for your
kindness.

At the risk of appearing to be defensive about the ideas expressed, permit
me to provide some clarifications:
* The ideas were not intended to communicate a "stand our ground" or a
"don't adventure beyond the desktop" vision. Rather they was intended to
say that the desktop doesn't have to be viewed as a now relatively stagnant
participant in the ecosystem. I'm not sure anyone in the community thinks
that is the case, but to the extent that there is concurrence, it seemed an
element of value worth capturing and communicating about ourselves and what
we provide.
* Regarding integration, the ideas were really intended to regard
applications, the desktop, devices and the cloud for their unique
capabilities and how they can enhance each other. That can include the
make-a-tablet/phone/cloud-version-of-[x] approach, but the hope is that it
could include other approaches as well. As noted, there are already many
efforts in the community that reflect such approaches, so it seemed an
element of value worth communicating as well.
* I'm no personal fan of exclusivity-driven integration. I'm rather a fan
of open approaches to technological integration that enables people not
hinder them. I've never sensed that as an attribute of KDE and I certainly
won't advocate for it now. :-)

There are details of the thoughts originally shared that are questionable
and have been fairly questioned. For all the words and pictures in the
original post that were intended to provide clarity but simply raised more
questions, the bullets above hopefully contain the meat of the specific
idea originally offered.

Is it perhaps too limited?
Maybe there should be more of a focus on KDE community. Valorie's quote
from the manifesto seems quite good to me. (It was really great to meet you
too Valorie!)

Is it so broad that it loses focus or spreads us thin?
I'm not entirely sure what a vision appropriate to our market position
should look like, but I totally understand your concerns about lofty but
unachievable goals Jaroslaw. Perhaps it might make sense if there are
separate visions for our community and for each of the community's products
(Frameworks, Plasma, the different apps). Then the folks doing the work can
share their vision and better gauge the loftiness of any vision they
signing up for. (What I originally offered seems more Frameworks and Plasma
related.) How might that approach impact cohesiveness?

I'm completely and utterly satisfied if whatever is identified as a vision,
whether for the community as a whole or for specific products of the
community, differs a great deal or entirely from the thoughts I originally
shared. Maybe everything is fine and I just need to educate myself more
about the road maps already laid out. I confess as a long-term user, an
application developer and more recently as a designer contributor, I do
occasionally find it challenging to see what the road ahead is. That may be
a personal failing. I suspect though that it's not just me. The worst I
could be is wrong. :)

Much respect,
Andrew

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