Part-time KDE sabbatical, feedback or guidance appreciated (but no pressure)

[Jakob Petsovits]

Thanks Christoph, some great nuggets in there.

On Mon, May 8, 2023, at 2:18 AM, Christoph Grüninger wrote:
> My advise is, to give different corners of the KDE world a try. Having 
> nice people that interact with you, are interested in your 
> contribution, and maybe even provide helpful feedback is worth more 
> then self-actualization by starting your own application, that will 
> have your name all over it. Consider your contribution after the 6 to 
> 12 months time; will it last or bit-rot away because nobody cares?

Yes, that goes straight to the core of what I'm pondering. I don't care particularly much about a prominent name plate on the app, and overall the goal is to make everything fit into the rest of KDE like a glove, which implies community ownership. There is, however, something comforting about the feeling of autonomy that is harder to come by when trying to promote your ideas in a merge request with contrasting though utterly reasonable opinions. I'd like to try striking a balance between maximizing impact (which undoubtedly includes tougher work through thankless tasks and disagreements) vs. keeping my spirits up for the long run.

I think what I'll do is prioritize core contributions as first priority, and see how far that takes me. If it goes more smoothly, maybe the personal pet project angle won't be too important after all. That said, KDE does have a number of essentially stalled but still fully functional programs and widgets. If scoped right, if it does one small thing well, I'm thinking it may not matter as much if the code remains in pure maintenance mode for a few years. The hard part is getting to a point of sufficient maturity and adoption within the available time frame.

> Start with smaller fixes (spelling, fix deprecation or compiler 
> warnings, translation, whatever you spot within a couple of hours) and 
> try to get your stuff included. Then you learn where you feel welcome.

I like that! And from your list of suggestions below, the switch from Qt 5 to Qt 6 quite appeals to me, but the pointer to KDE Incubator is also great and I hadn't considered that at all.

Thanks & best regards,
- Jakob