[kde-community] KDE Mission - let's do this!

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Sonntag, 24. April 2016 21:34:39 CEST Alexander Neundorf wrote:

> I agree that we shouldn't put too much detail about Plasma into KDE's
> mission.
> 
> I think that stating clearly "we do (among others) a UNIX desktop" is good.
> That's a big part of what we do, and it is important to a big part of our
> users, so they are reassured that KDE still cares about the classic desktop.
> 
> About mobile/embedded: I would love to see widespread use of a KDE "desktop
> shell" there. Unfortunately I'm afraid this won't happen. There was almost
> no (public) response to Agustin's recent GENIVI-related email. As much as
> I'd like to see Plasma Mobile become successful, I'm afraid it won't be
> able to cut a significant piece off of Android's cake. We only partially
> managed to do that on the desktop, and with phones, tablets and other
> embedded platforms this is even harder, due to the non-standard ARM-based
> platforms, where you need an adapted OS for every board, basically.
> So, realistically, if we put a desktop shell for embedded/mobile platforms
> in some way in our mission, I unfortunately would expect us to fail with
> this part of the mission. I'd love to be proved wrong.
 
Why should our mission not be ambitious?
We'll unlikely produce the "Android- or iOS killer", but especially with our 
focus on both privacy and freedom, we can still be of significant value for 
those who want/need both.

> Where I'd like to see a change in priorities, is support for non-free OS.
> I.e. get our applications to work "properly" e.g. on Windows, OSX, Android
> ("properly" from the POV of the e.g. Windows user, not necessarily from the
> POV of a UNIX developer).
> Fortunately some efforts into that direction are currently happening.
> So, I'd like to see more importance put on portability.

Both Android and Windows are going the route of convergence, and Kirigami is 
all about both convergence and portability for applications [1] (but maybe you 
are also referring to it by "efforts into that direction", anyway).

Doing solely desktop-only applications would put us on the sure path to 
irrelevance, at least outside of the sector of applications which are so 
complex that they only make sense on desktop computers.
 
> > > Also let's mention "end-user webservices" to be included, as subpoint
> > > under "end-user applications" (owncloud or wiki2learn), then this
> > > mission imo would still very focused and clear with our goals laid out
> > > in our vision.
> > 
> > +1
> > We could even say that our /primary/ technology is Qt (because it is) if
> > we
> > want to position ourselves as the go-to community for everything Qt,
> > without excluding non-Qt applications.
> 
> Sounds good.
> 
> Nevertheless a comment about the "end-user webservices": AFAIK OwnCloud and
> WikiToLearn are quite different. OwnCloud is a developing a software, while
> WikiToLearn is mainly about creating content (for a MediaWiki).
> IMO creating content is not part of the core of what KDE is doing.
> (I know not everbody agrees with this.)

While a majority of WikiToLearn contributors may be contributing content, the 
project is also about software, and big time so. They are making server-side 
as well as client software (e.g. an offline reader for desktop and mobile, or a 
browser plugin for automatically inserting word definitions into articles while 
editing).

If you think WikiToLearn isn't really producing software, I'd recommend to 
actually talk to them and let them tell you about the software they're making. 
I have. It's quite inspiring, actually.

Cheers,
Thomas

[1] https://dot.kde.org/2016/03/30/kde-proudly-presents-kirigami-ui