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

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Montag, 22. Februar 2016 23:05:49 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."
> > 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.

I'm happy that we've come to a point where it shows that we all have the same 
goal in mind in the end.

We also all agree that a vision without a mission provides motivation, but 
hardly any guidance, and therefore formulating a mission is absolutely 
necessary.
 
> So, can we try to get that done in one go ?

This is where I see a problem. The whole vision definition process has dragged 
on for quite a while now, which was necessary to get everyone on board, but 
also exhausting.

Defining a mission will take quite a while as well, and if we wait with 
publishing a vision until the mission step is completed, it could be 
frustrating for many who have participated in the vision process and just want 
to see something come out of it already. 

I would therefore suggest to publish the vision once we've agreed on it, but 
in its announcement point out clearly that we now need a mission to lay out 
how we want to work towards that vision, and that this process has already 
started. 
We could even link to a wiki page where the work in progress is documented, 
where you could paste most of what you've already written in your vision draft 
and which is very useful for a mission statement, plus the many points for a 
mission that have come up over the course of the discussions we've head here 
over the past weeks.
That way people could already see where the mission might be headed, and chime 
in if they agree, disagree or have something to add.

The "common product vision" I've mentioned would be another thing that could 
be pursued in parallel to that, but which I see as not directly related to a 
mission for KDE as a community.

Would such a course of action address your concerns?

Cheers,
Thomas