Submitted by A look inside what makes KDE tick and a glimpse of what the future holds and more in the LXer interview of Sebastian Kügler.
The LXer Interview: Sebastian Kügler of KDE
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSAlert.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Interesting, although short, interview. I did not know KDE was embracing the whole free culture movement, and am very happy to hear that. I’m also glad they’ve got usability in mind this time around.
They always had usability in mind
The only difference is that they now have trained usability experts scientifically evaluating alternatives and giving suggestions throughout the development phase.
Well, I don’t think usability was on the radar enough before KDE 3.2 or so. Since then, it has been improving, but a good, professional HIG is sure gonna make a difference.
> The only difference is that they now have
> trained usability experts scientifically
> evaluating alternatives and giving suggestions
> throughout the development phase.
But please bear in mind that there are a limited number of experts to go around, and those people only have a limited amount of time they can give to KDE.
What you are likely to find in the KDE 4.0 release therefore are some areas where the user interface has improved hugely, some where there have been small but helpful tweaks and others where there has been little change from KDE 3.5 Nobody is promising that it will be universally brilliant.
The hope is that over the life of the KDE 4 series the bar can be raised and at the end of its lifespan, KDE 4 will be a much more user friendly, productive and “just works” desktop than KDE 3.5
I think sebas indeed captures what is going on in the KDE community. I’ve seen these things at aKademy and earlier meetings – there’s more to KDE than just C++. More and more non-coders are becoming interested and involved, and KDE happily accepts them. It’s a very stimulating and fun community, imho. All ppl I spoke with at aKademy told either one of these: they knew the KDE community was great because they where at previous aKademy meetings, OR they where new and surprised how nice it was.
It should be said more often – the KDE community is really amazing, and has been for over 10 years now. Not many projects have so many contributors, and still such a vibrant, enthousiastic and fun community.
Most projects of this size suffer from some in-crows behaviour (see the recent fuzz around dr Con Kolivas leaving the Kernel community) or are mostly run by some big companies like Novell, Sun and Red Hat. Glad KDE makes its own decisions (and even though the KDE e.V. meetings are kind’a boring, we still welcome new members every week!).
Even the Marketing team is booming now
> KDE makes its own decisions
what’s interesting is that with the system of participation that’s evolved, when companies (or any organization) contribute to/with KDE they actually do have a say in how things work and happen. that say is largely in direct correlation to their level of contribution and involvement.
this system avoids the power struggles that sometimes occur with other systems while lowering the risks that are incurred when there is a too-dominant single organization. it’s also more fair to all those who participate, including the companies.
it turns out it’s not an either/or situation, which is a really cool thing imho =)
given these social structures and how they are evolving, no wonder there are anthropologists that attend these free software events … i think last year was the first year that we didn’t have one there studying us that i was aware of..