[kde-community] finding a clear vision for KDE - second draft for discussion

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Monday, February 15, 2016 22:27:14 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> On Montag, 15. Februar 2016 21:49:58 CET Alexander Neundorf wrote:
> > On Monday, February 15, 2016 18:36:18 Lydia Pintscher wrote:
> > > Hi everyone,
> > > 
> > > A bit less than two weeks ago we sent the first draft for the
> > > community vision for KDE. We have gotten a lot of useful feedback and
> > > have now put this into a second draft. It reads as follows:
> > > "KDE creates technology for a world in which everyone has freedom,
> > > privacy and control over their digital life."
> > 
> > just to make sure: this intentionally uses "technology" and not "software"
> > ?
> Yes, this is intentional. Since the vision is supposed to merely outline the
> future we want to live in, not how to get there, we did not want to
> restrict ourselves to software.


On Tuesday, February 16, 2016 19:53:47 Riccardo Iaconelli wrote:
...
> We explicitly re-labeled it "technology" to include icons, wallpapers and
> other kind of content which might not be software.


Is this maybe the reason why we are having those weird discussions, and we 
actually have the same in mind ?

See, here is what the word "technology", used in this context, tells me: a 
community, which is well known as a *software* community, now doesn't use the 
term "software" anymore. Instead it now uses "technology".
There must be a reason why they decided not to use "software" anymore.
To me this means, this community decided not to emphasize that it does 
software anymore. So it probably also does hardware now, probably having stuff 
like Arduino, maybe RPi-based hardware and the maker-community in mind, maybe 
more. I would also expect then a plan for hardware in the mission then.

What I want to say, in my opinion a guiding statement like a vision should 
emphasize the main strengths, the main direction, and doesn't need to be 
worded as broad so that it really covers every nuance.
I mean, icons and wallpapers, which Riccardo mentioned, to me of course belong 
to software, without mentioning them explicitly, and also without the need to 
say "software and all related items".
The same way as "graphical user interfaces and applications" used in the 
vision "just" shows the main direction, and doesn't need to mention that this 
of course includes all supporting and related stuff.

On Monday, February 15, 2016 22:27:14 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> If, say, 10 years down the road, hard- and software is so much intertwined
> that we cannot influence the future with software alone anymore, we don't
> want people to say "But our vision says we only do software!".

Since we are talking about technology, especially a fast evolving technology, 
I'm sure a vision for a technology project could also be updated. :-)

Alex