But perhaps the greatest thing has been the return of the Commit Digest, so I’ll name the Commit Digest team my personal heroes of KDE for 2011. Every week, they let us know what’s going on in this great community of ours. It’s a hell of a lot of work and they deserve a lot of credit.

To be more specific, I glanced back through the Commit Digests and mailing list to see who has been active. I’ve probably missed someone and can only apologise for that, but here are some definite contributors over the past year:

• Alexander van Loon
• Anselmo Melo
• Beat Wolf
• Danny Allen
• Dominik Tritscher
• Frederik Schwarzer
• Gaël Beaudoin
• Mutlu Inek
• Jaka Kranjc
• Marcin Dominiak
• Marco Krohn
• Marta Rybczynska
• Paulo Dias
• Roger Pixley
• Shafqat Bhuiyan
• Test Zy
• Thibaut Gridel
• Tom Vollerthun
• Vladislav Blanton

Thanks to all of you.

Among those, I know Alexander, Danny, Marco, Marta, Roger and Vladislav have been particularly active, also taking care of organising things, writing the Dot summaries and generally making sure it all happens.

I also know that a lot of work goes into every digest and there is always space for more people. So if you want to help, haven’t contributed for a while or can help in other ways please do.

Who are your heroes of KDE?

Well, at the moment for me, it is no longer having my PhD thesis to work on, having finally handed that in last week. That means I’m now moving into job hunting (like some other people on the Planet – I may post more about that in a bit). It also means I have again a little time for KDE.

MeeGo is dead, long live MeeGo

No, you read that right. Intel are switching to Tizen and this time it is going to work (just like when they switched from Moblin to MeeGo). But for those people and companies who care about a real collaborative effort at a mobile-optimised Linux platform and those who think that there is more to app development than HTML5, MeeGo lives on. With the likes of Plasma Active as a user interface, we could build a compelling case for mobile software freedom.

KDE eases out of puberty

KDE will shortly be 15 years old, just about the age where its hormones will start to settle down. However, it may begin to get interested in girls – or boys, depending on KDE’s gender and preferences – or start experimenting with things it shouldn’t, so there may still be some turbulent times ahead.

Either way, we’ll be asking you to show your love for KDE on its 15th birthday – keep watching the Dot for more details. It’s almost time to celebrate 15 years of desktop freedom.

To finish, a little rant about 1&1

It’s not often that I rant here, so please forgive me but I feel the need to end with this…

• If you want a web host whose control panel does not work in Konqueror
• If you want a web host that buries renewal information in a mystifying maze of submenus
• If you want a web host that sends you renewal invoices without specifying the domain that is up for renewal
• If you want a web host where you cannot cancel a contract without logging into a whole different website, clicking through a confirmation email and harassing their customer service reps*.
• And, most of all, if you want service with a snarl…

…then please sign up with 1&1.

If not, you might prefer another webhost. For example, I’m very satisfied with my main host, ICDSoft.

*Actually, I’m still not sure it’s done. I wish they’d give me the freedom to cancel

If you’d like to come, you should also register.

If you have not yet decided, here are a few key points of the Desktop Summit:

• It is set to be the biggest Free Software desktop meeting ever
• You get to learn about the latest (and future) innovations first hand – such as what the rise of mobile computing means for Free Software and the Free Software desktop
• Get involved as some of the largest communities in Free Software strengthen their efforts to collaborate on common goals
• Get the distros’ views on copyright assignment and upstream contributions
• And a whole lot more…

What are you waiting for?

Many of you may not keep such an eye on the Dot comments as us editors do, so I thought I’d share with you a comment from the latest Commit Digest article that made me smile:

Simply, KDE is great.

3 months I’ve been using openSUSE and KDE … And I must say I’m excited, proud and completely satisfied with KDE.

I can not believe that being an environment as configurable, customizable, useful, without distraction, powerful and stable, not as major distros default…

Hopefully KDE never change. You are at least 10 years ahead to be so, that I can tinker all you want and that will not change.

I know things still had not seen before and each time I find myself more…

Thanks for providing all this, the KDE team. A greeting.

Keep on doing awesome. People care and they appreciate it, even if they do not always take the time to say it as 1antares1 did.

However, Tony’s email was prompted by a discussion on LXer about why KDE does not listen to its users (that was the point of view of many of the people making comments, you can make your own judgement about whether or not that is a fair criticism). On the suggestion of an LXer reader, Tony brought his concerns to us. We in turn discussed them with some members of KDE’s marketing team and Tony and I had an exchange of emails, now published by LXer.

What is KDE?

Now, Tony is an experienced user of free software as well as a scientist and – from his emails – clearly an intelligent and inquisitive man. So it was a real surprise to me that he and other LXer readers were so ignorant about how KDE works. I do not mean ‘ignorant’ in any kind of offensive sense here, merely that both Tony and the other LXer readers really did not seem to understand how KDE operates or who we are. Here are a few questions (paraphrased) that really took my by surprise:

• Who controls KDE?
• Who funds KDE?
• Can we contact KDE?

These show a few things to me. First, some (many?) people think of us as having a hierarchy like a company, as if we have a leader or set of leaders who tell everyone else what to do. Maybe these are the people who pay us and if it is possible to get in contact with those leaders then they might be persuaded to redirect the efforts of all the code monkeys.

Of course, KDE is not like that. We don’t have leaders. We have prominent community members, but they tend to operate within their own areas of expertise. I would not tell Aaron how to develop Plasma, or Frank how to design ownCloud and neither would they tell me how to set the editorial direction of the Dot. Even within teams, those who do the work tend to decide or a consensus is reached. If you wanted to change our software significantly then you would have to contact key people in every team and convince them of your vision. Then, when some of them got busy and new contributors came in, you would have to contact them and convince them too.

Challenges in talking to ‘KDE’

This of course raises some interesting questions. How do we keep things consistent? Well, to some extent we do not. Our applications can look different and handle things in different ways, but thanks to building everything on the KDE Platform, which provides easy ways of coding common tasks such as open and save dialogues, there is a strong degree of consistency in KDE software.

There’s also the question of who you need to talk to if, as an outsider, you need a particular feature or want to discuss something. Tony came to Justin and I more or less by chance, probably because we are mentioned on the MWG page. He could just have easily have contacted the KDE Promo team, but sometimes people prefer a named contact and keeping discussions small can lead to quicker results and a more personal feel to the communication.

It is probably similar for a company wanting to work with KDE. Say you want to use some of our software in your device, who do you contact? Strictly, you do not need to talk to anyone as long as you respect the free license terms of the software, but talking – particularly if you can identify or offer improvements – is good. Probably our press contacts and the e.V. board are often points of contact in this case. Perhaps we should think about having more – so that for example there is an ‘external contact’ for each large team in KDE.

For people unhappy with Plasma and Platform 4 software in general, the way to influence things is to engage. Turn up in mailing lists and offer assistance. Or even just get stuck in and code things your way – that is how things like Rekonq came about. Write the code and see if people agree with your way of doing things.

Weird is Good

KDE and free software communities in general are quite odd things. Lots of volunteers working mostly on things because they interest them, but still managing to communicate enough to create something that is consistent and better than most of the big budget proprietary competition.

KDE is a frustrating, infuriating, remarkable inspiring mass of individuals that find enough of a common goal and philosophy to unite them to create wonderful things. It shouldn’t work, but time and again, it does.

And, if the current set of KDE software doesn’t work for you, in the worst case you are free to do your own thing.

conf.kde.in

conf.kde.in 2011 is the inaugral KDE conference in India, held in Bangalore from 9-11 March. There will be a chance to meet some of our great India team (they actually do what the rest of us mostly just talk about doing…) and enjoy keynote presentations from Runa Bhattacharjee, Adriaan de Groot, Lydia Pintscher – as well as a host of other well known KDE people.

Online registration closes on 25 February (and is cheaper than paying on the day) so if you want to go it’s best to get yourself organised now.

Camp KDE

For KDE fans further west, Camp KDE may be easier to get to. KDE’s North American conference is this year co-located with the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit in San Francisco and will be held from 4-5 April. Attendance is free.

Proposals for presentations at Camp KDE are still being accepted – until 25 February.

Other events

Of course, KDE contributors in Europe still have KDE’s largest annual conference, Akademy, to look forward to. This year it will be co-located with GUADEC as part of the Desktop Summit in Berlin from 6-12 August.

Last year also saw the first official KDE meeting in Brazil, Akademy-BR and the latest in the successful meetings organised by KDE Spain – Akademy-es.

There are a few places left that could be ripe for public KDE meetings, but with many sprints and invitational controbutor meetings each year, plus KDE attendance at other conferences, world domination surely beckons Come and join us.

UPDATE: no sooner do I post this than I see the Akademy-es 2011 call for host locations (in Spanish) has been published.

Be formal... or not (image from OpenClipArt, public domain)

Anyway, KDE will shortly be celebrating a new set of major releases of our software – that’s new versions of Plasma Desktop and Plasma Netbook and new versions of many of our applications (all built, of course, on a shiny new version of the KDE Platform). In case that isn’t enough reason to celebrate, my brother will also be marking his birthday, so you can party for him too (he’s far too old to party for himself).

So, how do you go about organising a release party? Well, if you’ve ever hosted a party you’re overqualified already If you’ve ever been to one then you probably know the kind of thing you should be doing. If you have somewhere to host a party and know enough KDE people locally then it’s easy. If not, you might prefer to just meet up in a bar or go for dinner and you can use the KDE Promotion Team wiki pages to help you let people know what you are planning or find out if someone local beat you to it.

There’s already an excellent Dot article with more details and, as mentioned, the dedicated wiki page to help you get organised. So there’s no excuse not to party like it’s 1999, er… 4.6

And we’ll no doubt be looking for stories and pictures to feature on the Dot so this could also be your road to instant KDE stardom

You might be wondering what happens to Thomas’s money. He might be too. So here is my personal perspective.

Some things Thomas and I did at Akademy

KDE e.V. has financially supported me by assisting with travel expenses on a couple of occasions – most recently by meeting just over half of my costs of getting to this year’s Akademy. Without that support, it is unlikely that I could have attended for the whole week.

Going to Akademy meant that I could write several Dot articles while there, help with other articles and edit and publish the articles to the Dot. It also enabled me to get KDE featured on Distrowatch Weekly and in LinuxFormat magazine and TechRadar, take quite a few photos that were used in the above stories, chair a talks session and give a couple of presentations.

That would all have been either impossible or very much harder without being at Akademy. Financial contributions like those from Thomas make it possible.

Sprints Thomas has helped to make possible

Editing on the Dot, it seems now that a month never goes past without news of some KDE contributor sprint or attendance at a conference. These are sometimes supported by local sponsors, but often KDE e.V. assists with travel and/or accommodation expenses. Here are just a few of the sprints from the past six months, found by quickly searching Dot articles:

• KDE software on mobile devices
• Telepathy
• Solid
• KDE financial applications
• KOffice
• Multimedia and education

If you have a read through of those articles, I think you’ll find that they were pretty worthwhile for the future of KDE software.

Join the Game

KDE depends on the time and efforts of hundreds of active contributors. You can get involved, but if you have not got time to contribute, you can still help others to contribute for you, without them having to worry about extra costs.

In return for 100 Euros per year, you get a membership card and a little numbered playing piece. But much more than that, you get to know that every time you see KDE praised in the press or you use our software, you helped to make it happen. You get to be a part of KDE and that is pretty special.

To Thomas, and our other individual supporting members: thank you for being part of KDE and making awesome stuff possible.

If you can, please Join the Game.

So, find your favourite free software community at the KDE Facebook page. There are 7120 fans at present, but I’m sure that many more of you use Facebook and like KDE. If you do, please become a fan and invite your friends to help spread the word.

What content should we put on the Facebook page?

The Facebook page currently syndicates the KDE.News feed and we occasionally add other items manually.

There is a possibility to add more content, such as a post every time a new video is posted on KDE’s YouTube channel, so I’d like to know what you think about that and any other suggestions for useful additions.

We need to find the balance overall between making the page useful for keeping you up to date, but not providing so many updates that we get in the way and cause you to unsubscribe or hide us from your news feed.

So, here or on Facebook, please let us know your thoughts.

1. To be free to try
2. To be free to fail
3. To be given the support to succeed
4. To be welcomed
5. To be treated as an equal
6. To learn from the best
7. To be thanked
8. To help people beyond KDE, working for the same goals
9. To use old skills and gain new ones
10. To meet your neighbours from the other side of the world
11. To become a pragmatist
12. To remain an idealist
13. To get it done
14. To Join the Game, not only watch it

Or, in short, to be Free. Whether that is a means, an end or an effect, for me it describes everything we do.