[kde-usa] [campkde-organizers] Fwd: [kde-promo] KDE Cascadia

[Jeff Mitchell]

On 10/20/2011 10:09 AM, Carl Symons wrote:
> Well said, Jeff. Food for thought that's gonna take me a while to digest.
> 
> I'm adding kde-promo to the distribution of this message thread. There
> are several people on that list who've expressed interest in the
> subject at hand. In addition, the comments on the thread point to a
> conversation that lives beyond North America.

No problem.

> I'm particularly interested in this from your message...
> "The message we need to be getting out to companies is that iOS is
> completely unsuited for their own products and Android is not a good fit
> for many uses, especially many enterprise uses. I won't go into all the
> details why, although I could do so at some length (in fact, I'm giving
> a presentation on this exact topic on Tuesday). A better fit for a great
> many needs is a mobile device running an optimized, full Linux stack."
> 
> Is there some easy way for you to share the information you've pulled together?

Ask me again after Tuesday (still doing some finalization of slides). I
would need to do some rearranging and some "sanitizing" of them, and may
not want them distributed publicly, but I could get them to you.

Probably what would be most useful would be for us to schedule a Google
Hangout or some similar thing where we can go through them and I can
give you the soundtrack. Because I'm going to have to be absolutely
flying through them on Tues (I have > 30 slides and 15 minutes to give
it), I've been simplifying them quite a bit, so I have more
(theoretical) insight to give than the slides provide by themselves.

--Jeff

> 
> Thank you, Jeff.
> 
> Carl
> 
> 
> On Wed, Oct 19, 2011 at 7:26 PM, Jeff Mitchell <mitchell at kde.org> wrote:
>> On 10/19/2011 07:59 PM, Carl Symons wrote:
>>>>>> I think there are two issues here. One has to be solved before the other.
>>>
>>> Definitely 2 issues. The dependency is not so clear to me. It seems
>>> doable to have an event with LFNW, and start that process. Part of the
>>> message would be that this event has regional appeal and that other
>>> CampKDE's may take place at other times and places.
>>
>> Well, one of the issues is whether it's a Camp KDE or some other event.
>> That certainly needs to get solved, although not before deciding to *do*
>> the cohosted event, which I'm all for. Just before we go to potential
>> sponsors, and publicly announce it.
>>
>>>> I think the losses in contributors are likely to mostly be from outside
>>>> North America, especially if money is spent towards holding more of
>>>> these and flying local contributors to more of them, rather than flying
>>>> non-North-American contributors in.
>>>
>>> There needs to be some hard thinking about the focus. It's surprising
>>> and disconcerting (to me) that there is not more development
>>> involvement in North America. Where are the Google SoC participants?
>>
>> Mostly from outside North America.
>>
>>> Why is it that Europe, South America and India contribute so heavily
>>> and the U.S. and Canada barely register a blip?
>>
>> Here are three reasons:
>>
>> 1) In the States, the youth of today (by which I mean our historically
>> most valuable demographic, college students) buy Macs. They don't tend
>> to give much of a shit about Linux, because, why would you, Macs are so
>> awesome and what everyone else has and run anything you'd care about on
>> Linux anyways.
>>
>> Macs are well over 25% of the total laptop market share, and among
>> incoming college freshmen the number is far higher. In 2009 it was 58%;
>> in 2010 it was 70%. No idea about 2011, but I'd wager it's above 80%.
>>
>> Macs run Python, Ruby, Java  and HTML5/JavaScript without any problems,
>> which covers the majority of languages that students who are our target
>> demographic think will earn them scads of money when they get out of
>> college (of course, there's a glut of these programmers, unlike the lack
>> of qualified Qt programmers, but try telling them that when Hot Web Site
>> X is built on Rails and Node).
>>
>> Macs are simply too expensive for many in South America and India.
>> They're overpriced here and they're horrendously overpriced in Europe
>> and elsewhere, and Windows sucks as a development platform, so people
>> turn to Linux.
>>
>> Outside the States, people also tend to be more cautious of buying into
>> walled gardens and signing away their freedoms to large corporations,
>> something we in the States have down to a science.
>>
>> 2) Students these days (here in the States, I mean) are taught that the
>> way to make money is to build the next Mafia Wars or the next Angry
>> Birds. They're being indoctrinated into the idea (that Apple and
>> Microsoft and Facebook desperate to sell them, since they take 30%) that
>> the App Is King. (Google, and now Intel, are trying to tell them this
>> too, though far less successfully.) This makes the idea of building
>> something with a community a far less profitable, and thus interesting,
>> proposition.
>>
>> 3) The major (read: company-backed...Red Hat/Canonical mostly) North
>> American distros use GNOME by default (with the exception that Ubuntu
>> has now flipped to Unity, but used GNOME for many years), so when people
>> did pop a Linux install disk in to try it out, their sense of the Linux
>> desktop became GNOME. KDE was that other stuff that some weirdos spent
>> the time to install, and that they heard is big in Europe.
>>
>> This isn't to say that we haven't actually had a decent following in the
>> U.S., but it's never been nearly as visible as the GNOME following.
>>
>> KDE's U.S. presence has historically been screwed by the momentum behind
>> the company-backed North American distros. Now the Linux desktop is
>> getting screwed as a whole by Apple.
>>
>>> With such a small developer/contributor community, there seems little
>>> value in getting IRC colleagues together in person. Except for Plasma
>>> Active, I don't think many users are on IRC.
>>
>> Yes...which is why explicitly targeting users, as opposed to trying to
>> make the U.S. events developer-focused, is a better bet IMHO.
>>
>> There's not much presence of users on IRC, but we might find that the
>> users are out there waiting to be found at these fests, if we provide
>> them with opportunities to meet and rally...to tell them that they
>> should get in touch, join us on IRC, that they too can make a difference.
>>
>> Maybe it won't help, or make a difference...maybe it will. We probably
>> won't know unless we try.
>>
>>> CampKDE--whether national or regional--don't seem to be events that
>>> would attract the large, national FOSS corporations. It's missing for
>>> me what this type of organization wants from KDE...so it's also
>>> missing what the message if for them and how it should be delivered.
>>
>> Not sure what you mean by FOSS corporations, specifically, but the
>> message I've been trying to hammer into Google -- after at Camp KDE at
>> LFCS they said how committed they were to expanding open source into
>> education -- is that with KDE being the largest FOSS project in the
>> world by most metrics, we are also the single largest entity providing
>> opportunities for students to engage in FOSS (and our GSoC numbers show
>> it)...and they should put their money where their mouth is.
>>
>>> Based on my experience with observing Plasma Active development (IRC
>>> is the best!) and demonstrating the ExoPC, it might be interesting to
>>> have a focus--at LFNW or elsewhere--on that. Surely there are
>>> companies that would like to escape the Android & iOS concentration of
>>> market power. And developers who would like to participate either in
>>> PA development or in creating QML apps that run on the
>>> platform...create a QML and HTML5 horde. Intel is a natural big-time
>>> sponsor.
>>
>> Not anymore, they're not. Not unless we're looking at Tizen, and Qt/QML
>> on there is AFAIK unlikely.
>>
>> The message we need to be getting out to companies is that iOS is
>> completely unsuited for their own products and Android is not a good fit
>> for many uses, especially many enterprise uses. I won't go into all the
>> details why, although I could do so at some length (in fact, I'm giving
>> a presentation on this exact topic on Tuesday). A better fit for a great
>> many needs is a mobile device running an optimized, full Linux stack.
>>
>> There are some really awesome things coming out. Look at Raspberry Pi
>> for an example -- which seems like it'll have Mer on board, including
>> Qt/QML capability, and the videos they show of it pumping out graphics
>> are quite impressive (check out the size of it on the Media page, and
>> the price tag). If it pans out, it'll be the Little Development Board
>> That Could.
>>
>> If they have good development boards, and they have a full stack to play
>> with, KDE suddenly can provide cool stuff...especially if we can get our
>> libraries upstreamed with Qt Open Governance. Plasma Active can be very
>> important here too -- it can be a flexible default development desktop,
>> replacing such legacy things as OpenEmbedded/Yocto's GTK-based Sato
>> desktop, or the Unity desktop on Linaro's Ubuntu offering.
>>
>> For some proof, take a look at this:
>> http://lockheedmartin.com.vn/news/press_releases/2010/MFC_060810_LockheedDevelopsTac.html
>>
>> This is a device that runs a piece of software that the U.S. military
>> uses heavily called FBCB2. There's not a chance in hell of making that
>> software an Android app, so instead of making FBCB2 run *on* Android,
>> they developed their TDA that runs both FBCB2 *and* Android. So, what
>> should their user interface look like when the Android bits don't have
>> front-and-center? How much nicer would it be to take something
>> flexible/customizable like Plasma and build what they want than to do an
>> entire UI on their own?
>>
>>>> One possibility then would be that Camp KDE is a traveling show with
>>>> whatever fests we can partner with..."Camp KDE will be at LFNW in
>>>> April!" "Camp KDE is coming to Ohio Linux Fest!" and so on.
>>>
>>> ++good
>>>
>>>>
>>>> The other is that LFNW has KDE Cascadia, Ohio Linux Fest has KDE
>>>> Buckeye, and so on. The danger here is just the risk of confusion from a
>>>> multiplicity of names.
>>>
>>> Colocation with other events for a Camp KDE event would require "Camp KDE".
>>> Camp KDE Cascadia
>>> Camp KDE Cape Cod
>>> Cactus Camp KDE (with ableconf.com in Phoenix)
>>> Camp KDE Cajun
>>> Camp KDE Carolina
>>> Camp KDE Calgary
>>>
>>> If you can't alliterate with CampKDE, you can't have an event B^)
>>>
>>> Toscalix has been talking about broadening the definition of
>>> organizations to include .edus. We could recruit students at colleges
>>> and universities across the country.
>>> Campus KDE
>>
>> All great ideas. "Camp KDE is coming to the Cascades for Camp KDE Cascadia!"
>>
>>>>> I think it is our best option for this year. We're running out of time
>>>>> to do a solo event
>>>>
>>>> This is only a problem if you think that our best move is to keep doing
>>>> solo events.
>>>>
>>>> The suggestion I've been making and trying to get feedback on is that we
>>>> ditch the idea of a solo event entirely in favor of a traveling event,
>>>> or a series of separate colocated events.
>>>>
>>>> --Jeff
>>>>
>>>
>>> I like this, Jeff.
>>>
>>> However it doesn't preclude a solo, stand-alone event for KDE in North
>>> America when we get enough interest and support for this. The stars
>>> don't seem to be aligned for this at present.
>>
>> Oh, totally agreed. I hope I didn't accidentally imply that we can't do
>> solo stand-alone events. I don't think we can successfully do this right
>> now (for the Board's definition of successful, which isn't really
>> off-base at all), but if we can at some point, then we should.
>>
>> --Jeff
>>
>>


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