COMMUNITY REPORT 4TH QUARTER, 2011 | ISSUE 20 WELCOME MESSAGE Dear Members, Contributors, Users of The other big step was to hold the looking beyond its own borders, with KDE software and Friends, first sprint focused on KDE e.V. the first KDE applications becoming matters. Where previously only the available in the OVI store for, among KDE turned fifteen on October 14th, Board would come together to others, Nokia's N9 phone. KDE e.V. 2011. This marks an amazing discuss, plan and take decisions, we has supported this effort by helping to milestone of one-and-a-half decades wanted to try a more hands-on organize a sprint for the mobile of development of Free Software on approach, invite other community developers to get together and solve the desktop and beyond. Cornelius members, and not just talk but do. problems shared across the tells us more in the featured article. This turned out very well, with community when it comes to participation from other KDE e.V. deployment of KDE apps on mobile The KDE community in its fifteenth members for such efforts as individual platforms. year is working hard on getting the and corporate supporting next major version of the KDE membership. Other topics included We are grateful for all the supporters, software compilation out of the doors. drafting a budget for 2012, working contributers, donators, users, and KDE 4.8 is targeted for release by end on a new policy for approving sprint friends who have made KDE happen of January 2012. funding and more. over the last fifteen years. We couldn't have done this without broad support. While the community is focusing on On the development side, the KDE If you would like to join in making the the software, KDE e.V. is building a community has also seen some very next fifteen years of KDE successful, foundation to enable the community exciting things. There was the first consider joining the game on to do this amazing development. One release of Plasma Active, KDE's http://jointhegame.kde.org and of the big steps in this quarter was to offering for touch-based devices becoming a supporting member. find a location for the next annual targeting a whole spectrum of meeting of the KDE community, hardware in October. It was followed On to an exciting 2012! Akademy 2012. We proudly up in December by Plasma Active announced that Akademy 2012 will Two, bringing wider support for Sebastian Kügler, for the Board of take place from 30 June to 6 July hardware and an improved user Directors 2012 in Tallinn, Estonia. experience. The community is also CONTENTS Welcome Message 1 15 Years of KDE 2 What is the KDE Free Qt Foundation and why does it matter to the future of KDE? KDE Activities 3 – 10 Recaps from KDE sprints, trade shows, and other activities New Members 11 Financial Report and KDE e.V. Board 12 15 YEARS OF KDE Cornelius Schumacher, KDE e.V. President released ownCloud 2, our helicopter going into the cloud on its mission to retain your freedom and control of your data. The KDE desktop is part of our lives. We and millions of others use it every day. It's great for getting work done. We are on par with other desktops, and we are still pushing the limits and innovating for all the users out there. This won't change anytime soon. Plasma Active is one of the results of our innovation activities. It brings KDE to tablets, and it comes with a strong vision to create an elegant, desirable user experience for a spectrum of devices. It builds on the foundation of the KDE software, but it opens new doors, explores new areas. I'm really looking forward to what we can achieve there. ownCloud goes beyond what we have done before. It runs in the cloud. But it's built on the values and the community of KDE. We deeply care about software freedom. Enabling users to retain control of their data Cornelius ‒ by Matthias Welwarsky and their privacy is a big part of that. ownCloud does that where other cloud solutions fall short. It brings fresh blood and energy, and opens up a space, which Fifteen years ago Matthias Ettrich started the KDE we weren't able to address before. Here as well I'm community. On 14th October 1996 he wrote his looking forward to what we can do. famous email to the de.comp.os.linux.misc group on Usenet. He called for other programmers to join him Fifteen years of KDE is a long time. I joined the to create a free desktop environment for Linux community in 1999, and I can say that KDE changed targeted at end users. Many, many people joined. my life. I probably wouldn't have the job I have today Thousands of developers wrote millions lines of code. without KDE, I wouldn't live where I live today, and I We did 90 stable releases of our core set of would miss a lot of great experiences and friends I applications alone, not counting all additional stuff wouldn't have met. In the interview I gave for the and the thousands of 3rd party applications. "people behind KDE" series, there was a question, what my favorite feature of KDE was. My answer was: So now, fifteen years later, we are done. We have a "the community". Many other KDE people answered wonderful free desktop environment for Linux which is the same. used by millions of users every day. Well, are we done? Not quite. While we have reached the original That's the core. KDE is an awesome community. I'm goal of creating an appealing desktop that makes proud to be part of it, and I'm looking forward to be Linux accessible to everyone for everyday tasks, our part of it for the next fifteen years of KDE. scope has broadened. There are whole new classes of devices in need of free and friendly user interfaces, it's not only the desktop anymore. The cloud presents new opportunities for connecting computers more than ever, and presents new challenges for freedom of software and data. We are on it. October 2011 saw frenetic activity in the KDE community. In early October, we released version 4.7.2 of our flagship product, the classical desktop. Just a week later we released Plasma Active One, our speedboat going into the waters of tablets and the device spectrum. A few days later, we KDE ACTIVITIES Developer Sprints and envisoned different situations about the Solid Team and our in order to identify different motivations to do what we do. SOLID problems and needs. With that data, we started to design a Miscellanea: MADRID solution for each of these issues. Apart from the big hot topics, we October 2011 But it wasn't just about usability in worked on a few other topics such: the Network Management world, Alex Fiestas we also managed to release the • The new screen configuration next big version 0.9(rc1), draw a architecture was presented plan for the next year, and start to work on it by making libnm and • Draft how we would merge The Solid Community gathered for libmm compile again. Lamarque kio_remote and kio_network their annual sprint with developers, became the new maintainer of designers and other collaborators Network Management and plans • Draft a roadmap for PlacesView working together on different to work together with Ilia Kats areas. This year's Solid Sprint can towards the 1.0 version. • Inhibit suspension if an external be summarized as follows: screen is connected and the lid is PowerDevil, Usability, Community PowerDevil: closed. and LibSolid future. Also during the sprint, Dario Freddi GLUON Usability: worked on perfecting power saving features in the Plasma MUNICH This year, a usability expert joined workspaces by fixing almost all November 2011 the sprint, which was very known bugs and refining the fortunate as usability was one of default settings based on the Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen the hot topics this year. Over the feedback we've got from the first few days, Björn Balazs lead a community and from within the Over the last couple of years, it usability classroom based on the Solid team. Another area of has become almost a tradition to work we were going to do on improvement was usability, have a Gluon sprint prior to Qt Network Management. After a focusing the efforts on integrating Developer Days in Munich. This quick introduction to usability custom profiles into the Activity year was no different. Through techniques, we started defining concept as well as redesigning much effort, a sprint was pulled two characters (AKA personas), and simplifying the configuration together for the Gluon team, in each with different skills and settings where possible. part commemorating the first of know-how. One persona was a these sprints two years ago, where person with no interest in LibSolid: the Gluon Vision was first laid computers or coding, but was down, and in part to assist in the instead interested in surfing the Kevin Ottens and Alex Fiestas work towards the next release. web, watching videos, etc. (we worked on libsolid, identifying called this persona Penny) The points where the architecture can The Tasks be improved, drafting a plan for other one was going to be an Prior to the sprint, we engineer (called Amy). We decided libsolid2 and finishing the maintainership transition. brainstormed discussion topics for to focus on Penny, so the goal was the event, and decided that there to make our software fit her Community: was plenty to hack on and talk needs.