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

[Alexander Neundorf]

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."
> If there is anything that you disagree with about that vision, please
> speak up. Otherwise, expressing your agreement is helpful as well!
> 
> There seems to be significant agreement on the principles encoded in
> this vision. Therefore I'd like us to give this a final polish now and
> if needed go for a third draft (which then should be the last one to
> not stall this forever). This is a draft for a vision for what kind of
> world the community aims for, it's not a product vision. As there
> still seems to be disagreement on the product vision, Thomas will
> address that in a separate email.

there's no strong disagreement with your proposal among the supporters of the 
"focused" draft, given that it'll be accompanied by a product vision/mission.

So, can we try to get that done in one go ?


Having said that, here's a slightly different version:
"KDE creates free software to enable everyone to manage his digital life
with freedom, privacy and full control using state-of-the-art user
interfaces".


It differs in three things:

1. "creates ... for a world" -> "creates ... to enable everyone"
This is a bit more active, it makes more clear that we actually want to build 
(a part of) this world.

2. "technology" -> "software"
This still includes all kinds of stuff which is currently happening in KDE. If 
it happens that in the future "hard- and software will be so much intertwined" 
we can still update it, but I doubt this will happen, to me it seems as CPUs 
are getting more and more powerful development is becoming actually more 
generic, less hardware-specific. And for the time being, it is a little bit 
more specific, tangible.

3. + "...with state-of-the-art user interfaces"
That's kind of what we do, and includes also all the possible future 
developments Martin pointed out. Not sure whether it's necessary to mention 
that if we'll additionally have a product vision/mission, but maybe that's 
actually what we want to be proud of, so it may be a good thing to state it ?



The proposal by Riccardo
"KDE envisions a world in which everyone has freedom, privacy and control over 
their digital life."
actually completely avoids stating what we are doing, so there's no need to 
decide whether we do hardware, software, whatever.
I don't know whether that's good or bad.
An even shorter form of this would be "KDE - digital freedom" ;-)


Alex