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

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Donnerstag, 28. April 2016 23:07:45 CEST Alexander Neundorf wrote:
> On Thursday, April 28, 2016 22:32:21 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> > On Donnerstag, 28. April 2016 18:23:51 CEST Aleix Pol wrote:
> ...
> 
> > > Is offering integration of proprietary services needed to be
> > > mentioned? It's a strategy we might adopt (to reach out) but it's not
> > > our mission. The mission is to have the "good services" adopted (by a
> > > definition of good services). Or not. Up for discussion.
> > 
> > For me that's an important part of reaching users where they are. From my
> > perspective, the strategy should be "Allow them to use the proprietary
> > service they're used to, but show them how much better they'd be off if
> > they used our product with the free alternative."
> > 
> > For example, Kontact and Kube _should_ work with e.g. Google services, but
> > show their full potential when used with Free groupwares such as Kolab.
> > Or I would want Dolphin to work with Google Drive, but I want it to work
> > best with e.g. ownCloud.
> 
> I disagree with this.
> For online services, which are usually about working together with other
> people, a user often doesn't have a choice. He simply must use the online
> service his colleagues or friends etc. are using.
> IMO KDEs mission is to provide applications which offer a great user
> experience with the online services the user uses. If they are free ones,
> even better.
> But IMO KDEs mission is not to make users switch to other online services,
> that's probably the mission e.g. of diaspora. If we want to give free
> software (freedom, control, privacy) to as many people as possible, top
> priority should be the online services most people use.

It's completely fine for you to disagree with this, of course. It is, indeed, a 
matter of priorities.

The reason why I wrote it this way is that even if the whole world used our 
software to access proprietary services, our vision would still not be 
fulfilled. You cannot have full control, freedom (and in most cases not 
privacy, either) with proprietary services, even if you use Free software to 
access them.

That's why for me, supporting proprietary services can only be the first step 
(meeting users where they are), but they won't really be free until they use a 
fully free stack.

The goal of the mission is not to get us a little more market share. The goal 
of the mission is our vision, and proprietary services are not in line with 
our vision.