The new end-user wiki for KDE, KDE UserBase, has gone live. The site is intended to "contain tips and tricks, links to where to get more help, as well as an application catalogue giving an overview of the different kinds of programs that KDE offers", and to complement the developers' wiki, TechBase. Any questions should be directed to the Community Working Group: community-wg@kde.org.
KDE's New Licence Policy - kdedevelopers.org
KDE e.V. today adopted a new licensing policy for source code in KDE's Subversion repository, removing old licences (such as Artistic and QPL) and includes "versions of the header texts for those who don't trust the FSF to keep future GPL versions free but still allow us to use them when they are". In short, library source based on KDE Platform APIs ((kdelibs, kdepimlibs and kdebase-runtime) must be LGPL 2.1 or 3, BSD (without ad clause), MIT or X11 licence, and other source must be one of the above or GPL 2, 3 or later. Full policy (at KDE TechBase) here.
KDE e.V., the legal body that represents the KDE project legally and financially, has published its second quarterly report for this year, covering April to June. Topics covered include the three scheduled developer meetings of the quarter (for Akonadi, ODF, and Oxygen) and reports from the Marketing Working Group, Human Computer Interaction Working Group, and System Administration Team.
A Polish-language KDE website has been started. The site, KDE.org.pl, contains material from the main KDE site, with a special focus on developments in Polish localisation and on KDE 4, and local articles.
From Adriaan De Groot's blog, via Planet KDE:
The submission deadline for aKademy 2007 has been extended, due to a systems failure yesterday which left people unable to make submissions. The new deadline is Friday 23rd Feb.
From KDE Dot News (by Jonathan Riddell):
The organisers of Akademy 2007 have put out a Call for Sponsorship. Akademy is the KDE World Summit, this year taking place in Glasgow at the end of June. Sponsorship is an opportunity to promote your company or product to the developers, users, deployers and consultants who will attend the conference. It will also provide a marketing avenue for your company to the thousands who read our website and publications. Most importantly, it gives vital support which ensures that hundreds of KDE contributors can meet together to plan the future of the free desktop. If your company would like to sponsor Akademy contact us at akademy-sponsoring@kde.org. If you know any companies in your local area who could also be potential Akademy sponsors please let us know too.
The KDE project are to have a room at the upcoming FOSDEM (Free and Open source Software Developers' European Meeting, ULB campus Solbosh, Brussels, 24-5 Feb 2007) and are looking for KDE contributors to give talks about the projects they are working on. They are also looking for people to man their (always busy) stall. Sign up at the KDE-FOSDEM wiki page. X.Org are also to have a significant presence at the event this year.
The next aKademy conference for KDE contributors will be held next June and July at the Department of Computer and Information Sciences at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland. It will be organised by a local team headed by Kenny Duffus; the schedule is as follows:
Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical (which produces Ubuntu) has become the first patron of KDE under a new scheme to honour major financial contributors to the KDE project. This new scheme was announced by KDE e.V.'s new Supporting Members scheme at the recent KDE 10th anniversary celebrations.
LinuxWorld Conference & Expo - London Olympia 2
The KDE booth at the upcoming Linux World Conference & Expo, to be held at the Olympia on 25-26 October this year, needs people to man it, according to George Wright (via Planet KDE). Anyone who can volunteer should add their names to the KDE UK Wiki.
14th October this year will be the 10th anniversary of the announcement by Matthias Ettrich of the start of the KDE project. Various events are planned around the world but the biggest will be in Stuttgart on the 13th (the party is to last into the 14th!); others are planned in Nijmegen (Netherlands) and Portugal. More info on #kde-anniversary (irc.kde.org) and on kde-promo.
A new IRC channel has been set up to discuss CMake, the cross-platform make tool being used for KDE 4 as a replacement for the GNU Autotools. It is to be found on the Freenode IRC network.
The KDE project has been donated a new dual 3Ghz Xeon Poweredge server by Dell, with disks paid for by community donations, which is to be hosted at the Leibnitz Computing Centre. The server, immanual.kde.org is now the KDE FTP master site and work has begun on porting the KDE bug tracking system to the new server. Full details at KDN above.
The KDE Ruby Corner - Amarok Blog
As a result of a recent increase in interest in Ruby in the KDE community, a freenode IRC channel, #kde-ruby, has been started. Both newbies and experienced hackers are welcome. The channel is controlled by a powerful bot, "insanity", written in Ruby.
The KDE people are looking for volunteers to help out at their stall at the LinuxWorld Expo at the Olympia 2 conference hall, 25-26 Oct this year. They hope to have a bigger presence, demonstrating KDE 4 progress and the efforts made at aKademy 2006. Anyone interested should contact the kde-gb list.
KDN have published a report on KDE's presence at the recent LugRadio Live 2006 event organised by the Wolverhampton (England) Linux User Group. Jonathan Riddell (Kubuntu) gave a talk about Kubuntu and the state of KDE 4 development (slides here) and about Canonical's new distributed revision control software Bazaar.
KDE has joined the ODF Alliance, the organisation for promoting the XML-based Open Document Format, the data format used by KOffice and OpenOffice.org, "as a market leader in document exchange and storage". The alliance already includes Oracle, Sun, Mandriva, IBM and the Andalucian regional government.
The KDE project announces that its legal and financial representative body KDE e.V. has become an associate member of the Free Software Foundation Europe, the European sister organisation of RMS's Free Software Foundation.
From the KDE Developer Journals:
Cornelius Schumacher reports on KDE's participation in Google's upcoming Summer of Code 2006. There is a list here of projects and ideas for projects, which cover a variety of areas of KDE if not the whole system. The project is financially supported by Google and is for students.
The annual KDE world summit, Akademy, will be held at Trinity College in Dublin, Republic of Ireland, from 23rd to 30th September. The event will consist of a contributors' conference, the KDE e.V. AGM, and a five-day hacking session with workshops (26th-30th). The conference will be organised by Marcus Furlong who has organised a GUADEC in Dublin in the past and "contributes to KDE by taking a sh*tload of work on him".
KDE won the LinuxQuestions.org "Best Destktop Environment of the Year" award by a convincing majority: 64.86% (1,253 votes) against GNOME's 25.67% and XFCE's 8.8%. Konqueror won for Best File Manager with 51.25% (Nautilus 15.93%), Quanta for best web development editor (44.31%), and amaroK for best audio multimedia app (41.86%). KDevelop also came a very close second, after Eclipse, in the best IDE stakes. Summary here, full results here.
K.N has published a write-up of their appearance at the FOSDEM (Free & Open Source Developers' European Meeting) in Belgium over the weekend. Summaries of the talks (including one by RMS and several on Kubuntu and KOffice. Several links to photos of the event. (More: Raphael Langerhorst, Bram Schoenmakers, Sebastian Kuegler, Pascal Bleser.)
The first seven people to form a KDE technical working group have been elected by the members of the KDE e.V.. The names are David Faure (Konqueror author, currently at Klarälvdalens Datakonsult), Dirk Mueller (currently at SUSE/Novell), George Staikos, Gunnar Schmidt (of KDE Accessibility), Lubos Lunak (KWin maintainer), Stephan Kulow (works on KDE at SUSE) and Thiago Macieira (Troll). Full details and pictures at the link above.
A new site has been launched to act as the "new home for KDE's promotional activities". SpreadKDE.org will act as a central holding place and discussion forum for promotional and marketing activity in the KDE community, and also serve for co-ordinating KDE-related events. A mailing list is available for discussion of how it can be improved.
LugRadio, the online radio show of the Wolverhampton Linux User Group which features Jono Bacon (of Linux Format fame) has an interview in the new episode with KDE hacker Aaron Seigo. The appearance consists of "a five-minute update on where the KDE desktop is headed, cool stuff they're working on, and integration with freedesktop.org". LugRadio is available in four versions, these being a choice of low and high quality OGG and MP3.
People Behind KDE has added an interview with the seven people responsible for the Qt/KDE Debian packages. Questions include how they each contribute, how they each came to get involved in KDE, what's missing, plans for KDE 4, their favourite widget styles and text editors, and who they prefer between Linus T and RMS.
A group of KDE enthusiasts and developers met at the FOSS.IN conference in Bangalore last week and founded KDE India, with such goals as spreading KDE awareness in India, particularly in colleges and local businesses, of providing support for local KDE developers and users, of driving localisation efforts and of fostering development of KDE applications specific to the needs of people in India. A mailing list (kde-india@kde.org) has also been set up.
KDE developer Stephan Binner explains why people shouldn't rush in to full-time KDE4 development now that version 3.5 is here:
KDE 3.5.x will be the versions most users will use for likely more than a year (time until KDE 4 release + time until distributions pick it up + time until users upgrade). And KDE 3.5 will also be the version on the next year upcoming business desktop products which currently still ship KDE 3.2.
So please don't jump now full-time into KDE 4 development despite as much fun it is being able to break or rewrite everything. Please help to make KDE 3.5 series the most stable and bug-free KDE ever. After, let us say KDE 3.5.2 bugfix release, there will be still several months left to fully concentrate on KDE 4. And if you want to hack on new features based on stable kdelibs3, KOffice is always looking for helping hands and aiming for a great release early next year.
The KDE "e.V." are seeking locations for next year's aKademy, which isn't just a social geek get-together but is KDE's annual general meeting. There is a list of requirements, among them proximity to a major international airport and visa requirements which would not exclude a contributor; most contributors are from the USA and the EU. Previous events have been held in Nove Hrady, Ludwigsburg and Malaga. Concrete proposals are to be sent to the e.V..
As proposed at aKademy 2005, a KDE Marketing Working Group has been formed, with Martijn Klingens, Sebastian Kügler and Wade Olson "taking the lead in coordinating and implementing new practices, such as promoting releases more widely and running more exciting events booths". The Marketing group can be contacted through the kde-promo mailing list.
Nobody who's been reading Planet KDE recently could have failed to notice proposals for a new name for KDE. Roberto Cappuccio started the ball rolling by suggesting that the new version of KDE be called "Kaleidos":
Personally, I hate acronyms. They lack the magical evocative power of common language words, especially those coming from ancient languages.
... The greek word "kaleidos" expresses exactly those concepts, coming from the greek words for beauty "kalos", and form "eidos". This word immediately evocates the beauty and magic of the caleidoscope with its magic mixture of ever changing colors and forms.
I have also read this definition: "The kaleidoscope signifies the fragments that come together to form a whole, perhaps indicating a diversity of something, such as experience, or piecing together the parts of a symbolic puzzle." It strongly reminds me KDE!!!
So, why don't we call it Kaleidos?
A new Jabber server, KDETalk.net, has been set up for KDE developers. Jabber is a decentralised XML-based open-source chat protocol, and anyone with a Jabber client (including KDE's Kopete) can connect to it.