[kde-guidelines] [kde-artists] We need a Vision!

[Carl Symons]

On 03/11/2014 08:00 AM, Heiko Tietze wrote:
> On Tuesday 11 March 2014, 15:25:46 Jos Poortvliet wrote:
>> I am a little skeptical - we're a very diverse community and I don't think
>> you can draft ONE vision for all of KDE - especially considering we're
>> trying to expand what KDE is further and further (improv is hardware,
>> bodega & owncloud & ghns are server, there's mobile, tablet, ...). But that
>> note can and should be part of any discussion...
> Only 12 people follow your argumentation and voted for "I don't think we need
> a generic vision statement because...".
>
> Result of votes (multiple answers allowed):
> * Powerful, yet easy to use (46%, 132 Votes)
> * Elegant software (42%, 121 Votes)
> * All-purpose full-featured software (38%, 111 Votes)
> * KDE: a community for all people (28%, 81 Votes)
> * Cutting edge technology (27%, 78 Votes)
> * KDE: Qt5 at its best (15%, 44 Votes)
> * I don't think we need a generic vision statement because... (4%, 12 Votes)

Jos's comment is not at all like "I don't think we need a generic vision 
statement...".

571 responses is a small fraction of the millions of users and more 
millions of potential users. This study is not really even a focus 
group...people self selected their participation. Choices were limited 
with no opportunity to offer other possibilities.

In addition the questionnaire was positioned as a conversation starter, 
not as a way to get actionable information. Constructing a process to 
get at what people *really* think about a KDE vision is a substantial 
project in itself.

"Please let us know what you think about this topic, where you want KDE 
to be in 10 years, and how you would describe the vision." was followed 
by choices of the vision...and none of the other topics in that sentence.

>
> In my opinion the vision should be something similar to what Kver suggested:
> “Be the framework of people and software for the majority of computing in 10
> years time.” Despite of the 'tomorrow we rule the world' notion it involves
> all applications and flavors of KDE.

It would be interesting to see how that generic statement translates 
into UX and art. Unfortunately it leaves out edge cases that are not in 
the majority.


All other aspects (powerful, elegant,
> feature rich etc.) would be bottom line text. As a side node: the discussion
> seems to be of interest for many people and was picked up by Golem [1], a
> German IT news page.

Of course it's interesting. KDE is about to do another innovative, 
out-of-control thing. In public, not behind closed doors with so-called 
marketing experts and opinion pollsters. No one knows how it's gonna 
turn out. There's no Marketing VP who makes the final decision and who 
gets to keep or lose their job depending on how it turns out. KDE gives 
people the thrill of being in on the project without being actually in 
on the project.

Carl

>
> Actually, all projects should define own visions based on the common one. The
> HIG [2] includes purpose and how-to, as well as a reference to the common
> guideline.
>
> [1] http://www.golem.de/news/entwickler-community-kde-ueberarbeitet-projekt-ziele-1403-104995.html
> [2] http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/Usability/HIG/Vision
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