Has the KDE Social/Semantic Desktop been worth the hassle to anyone?

[Duncan]

Jerome Yuzyk posted on Sat, 17 Nov 2012 10:35:49 -0700 as excerpted:

> And, judging from the lack of articles and tutorials newer than circa
> 2009 about what to do with the New Improved KDE suggests that even its
> proponents don't have much to say about it either. We're at least 3
> years into KDE4 and I assume well past its birthing pains and I still
> cannot see why the hassle of breaking so many KDE3 things was worth it.
> Will it still take another 3 years?

Just touching on this; you /might/ already be aware of this but if so 
there's little hint in what you wrote...

I read something from one of the kde devs, I'm not sure where or which 
dev, but...

They mentioned that the reason the "semantic desktop" stuff got as BIG a 
push as it did, back with early kde4, was that one of the European 
governments had sponsored the work with a grant (they said which 
government but I'm USian so forgot that detail, IIRC it was primarily 
city or region, tho, not national, tho national might have been match-
funding).

IOW, some kde folks were already interested in it and already doing some 
work on it, but there was this big chance for funding, so they took it, 
and I think several people were able to put some months of full time work 
into it as a result.

When the grant money ended, so did all that intense full time work on the 
project.  Unlike several other non-kde projects that took related funding 
but pretty much just dried up and blew away along with the grant funding, 
the work on kde actually made a practical difference and the features 
remain in use as a part of kde today.  In fact, I believe work is still 
continuing, but at a MUCH slower "volunteer" pace, which at times means 
just struggling to keep the existing stuff working, not so much progress.

Anyway, despite my decidedly mixed feelings on the whole semantic-desktop 
thing, I'm kind of proud that unlike some of the other projects that got 
funding from that grant, kde actually put it to practical use and is 
still using it today.  But the fact that there was grant money funding 
the big push, and now it's gone, does help to explain why there was so 
much about it back then, but now it's virtually silent -- the money ran 
out and so did all the big PR.  But it's still in use, and I really do 
think they're still working on it; just MUCH slower and without all the 
over-inflated PR that went along with the funding, without further 
funding for full-time work on it now.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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