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Transcript of SFP#2 about KDE with Lydia Pintscher

Back to the episode SFP#2

This is a transcript created with the Free Software tool Whisper. For more information and feedback reach out to podcast@fsfe.org

WEBVTT

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Welcome to the second episode of the Software Freedom Podcast.

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This podcast is presented to you by the Free Software Foundation Europe.

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We are a charity that empowers users to control technology.

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I am Matthias Kirschner, I am the President of the Free Software Foundation Europe and

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also from our side today with me is Bonnie Merring, our current intern.

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Hello, our guest for today is Lydia Fincher.

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She is the Vice President of KDE and she has been with KDE since 2006 and on the board

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of KDE we since 2011.

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Well, while we were preparing the podcast I looked up what KDE is actually doing and it's

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developing a lot of free software.

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It's an international community and it maintains a lot of free software projects.

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The FSV has very close relationships with KDE for a long time.

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We work together on several topics and exchange knowledge about for example running a German

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EV although you have European or international activities and also for example how to manage

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copyright in such a huge project.

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So welcome.

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Thank you for being with us Lydia.

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Thank you so much for inviting me.

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Could you briefly introduce KDE to us and what are you doing there?

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How is it working?

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Sure.

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So KDE is a free software community that started out working on a desktop.

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In 1996 Matthias Etrich started out this project with the aim to build a user-friendly desktop

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that his partner could use for day-to-day work like writing some texts, listening to some

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music and similar things.

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Since then a lot has happened among them that we have a very good desktop that anyone

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can use for day-to-day work but also a ton of applications around it that anyone can

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use to do their day-to-day work on a computer.

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We have music players, we have a natural painting program, we have educational software,

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we have a web browser and so much more.

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How did you yourself get involved in KDE?

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So I got involved when I studied computer science and while I studied computer science I was

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using Windows and at some point I noticed like this isn't right, there has to be something

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better, there has to be something more where I have much more power over the software

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I am using than I had before.

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So I was looking around and talking to other people, I was studying with and clearly

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at that time Ubuntu was the hot new thing so I tried out Ubuntu but I didn't quite warm

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up to it, it wasn't quite right for me and I dug around a bit more and stumbled up on

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Kubuntu which had KDE software on it and I was blown away because it had exactly everything

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I needed and specifically all of its programs beautifully worked together.

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So it had a my own program that had an address book and that address book was connected

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to my IRC client, to my instant messaging client and everything really beautifully worked

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together and I have not looked back since.

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But as far as I understand KDE is not your daily job, you work there as a volunteer,

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how do you manage to do both, like a daily job and working as a volunteer?

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So my day job is working as the product manager for Wikidata which is a system project

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of Wikipedia to build a knowledge base with general purpose data about the world and that

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is really cool because it allows me quite some flexibility to manage my own schedule

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in a way that allows for a lot of the things that KDE requires from me and then there's

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a lot of good time management and I kind of learned to do this that are meticulously used.

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So on the question of like volunteering in such a large project, I once said a conversation

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with someone from a company and that was very interesting because it's always this

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strange decision for me if I should hire more people out of the KDE community because

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I mean they know the technology I need in my company but if I hire them, then usually

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because they work during all the day with this technology already, they are not so motivated

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to continue with working with those technologies in their free time.

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So when I hire more people from the KDE community, I will see less activity in the KDE community.

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So is it a problem for KDE if those technology which you also use like CUED, if they are

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commercially very successful?

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I don't see it as a zero sum game where quite the opposite.

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In the past it has been a problem for us but in recent years we've really turned things

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around there in that there are more companies who employ people not just because they know

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KDE but also to work on KDE itself.

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So more of that time is freed up to actually work on KDE as if they were just doing it

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in their free time but I think the even more important part of that is that people are

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empowered to make a living on free software and the more this becomes an option, the

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better it is for all of free software.

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Okay, if there are so many volunteers now professionally earning their money with free software,

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how many of these volunteers do you have and how many of them are working like earning

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their money with free software?

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So I mean there's thousands of people contributing to KDE every month, it's very hard to have

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numbers on that of course because it's a huge project where people contribute in very

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different ways.

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So some rate code, some do more project management type of tasks, others help on a report

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to test something, the next person writes some documentation and so on so it's very hard

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to really have a number on that but in the thousands.

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Of those, how many make a living on with free software, again hard to tell because we

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don't ask people usually these types of questions but especially in the KDE core community

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I would say it's quite a few.

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And do you have to feeling that it increased over time?

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Yes, it definitely increased over time and in part because we spend a lot of time building

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out relationships to the companies around us and empowering people to start companies around

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KDE to provide customizations on top of KDE to provide additional software development

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and similar things.

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Is it still increasing?

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I would say it's still increasing in general, we've had a bump in contributions a few

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years ago and that came from people kind of losing their way, KDE started out as trying

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to build an end user desktop.

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And at some point we had achieved that but also not and the world around us was moving

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on right and individual people in KDE didn't concentrate so much on KDE as a whole anymore

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but on their individual application for example and we were lacking cohesion across all of

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KDE to really figure out what are we as KDE doing, why are we even here together and when

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we realized that we said okay we need to change this because this is not good for community

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and we started a process to define what we want to work on together.

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And out of that came three goals that we worked on over the past few years and now we elected

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new goals at the last academy or annual conference and that has really helped get new people

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who are interested in these goals that we set but also re-energized the people that we had

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and who are kind of disillusioned to kind of give them a new focus and yes they're still really

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exciting stuff that you can do here and it's really important that we do it.

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Okay, let me come back to the girls in a second, first person I want to ask you about the shift

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of generation you already mentioned so how do you deal with a shift like that because you have

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all the old school programmers back there and now you have these young GitHub generation.

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Hmm, how do you deal with that in such a huge project?

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I think KDE is one of the big projects that manage to become multi-generational and in part

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this has been because we've always put a huge focus on mentoring and raising

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so to say the next generation we take part in programs like Google Summer of Code but also have

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our own mentoring program and there's a lot of informal mentoring going on that really brings

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along the next generation and teaches them how we work and why we do certain things but also

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empowers them to question a few things and do things differently and what are your goals for the

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next two years? So the ones we have elected are consistency all about the apps and Wayland.

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Now I need to explain a bit more about what that means. So let's start with Wayland. KDE's software

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for quite some time has been trying to get to the point where it works very well on Wayland,

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the new window-managing protocol. So for our listeners before it was the XWindow

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system and now there is this huge shift with lots of distributions to switch to Wayland.

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Yes, which brings a lot of benefits with it among the more security and so on but it is a huge

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amount of work that needs to be done to adapt both Plasma, our desktop but also all our applications

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to iron out little bucks and make them work with support for example for things like tablets

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so our natural painting application Cretac can work nicely and you can paint beautiful pictures.

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This transition takes a lot of work and just needs more focus so that we can make this transition happen.

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That is what Wayland as a goal is about. Then we have all about the apps which is focusing on

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the idea that KDE over the last years has been focusing very much on promoting our desktop and has

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been collecting the promotion of our applications a bit and we want to change that by bringing them

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into app stores and so on so that people can easily get to them and enjoy our applications no

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matter which operating system they use or how they get their applications and the third one

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consistency as in any big project that has been growing for a very long time there's a lot of

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inconsistencies that creep in different applications implementing the same thing in slightly

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different ways or just things that don't make sense if you take a step back and the consistency

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goal is trying to identify those and make things more consistent so that you can enjoy using our

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applications. So when you talk about that before you concentrated a lot on a desktop I would switch

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the focus a little bit to the mobile area and I mean there were recent developments with

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Huawei and a lot of people saw that they were not able or had problems with continuing to ship

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their phones with Android because of restriction by the US government so more and more people think

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about the centralization of operating systems on the mobile devices and the services which are

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provided there so I wonder how do you see the role of KDE and KDE plasma in relationship to the

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Android and mobile phone area. So on the one hand the mobile phone applications that we have

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and every provide for example some educational programs we do want them to work on Android right

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because a huge amount of people out there are using Android phones and they should be able to

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use our software because the first step getting away from a closed platform is using some open

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programs and applications on it so the switch later to a completely free system isn't as big

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and as frightening. So we do want people to use our applications on Android and we make them

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available. Where do you make them available on an f-troid then or on the play store and on f-troid

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yeah so that's the integrating and the existing system piece and the other side is plasma mobile

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as a system that nicely integrates with our desktop. People will continue to use desktops and

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laptops for a lot of work they do right writing your master's thesis on a mobile phone or tablet

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is going to be very very painful for example doing all that research and so on. So what we are

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trying to enable is you do your work on your laptop or your desktop and seamlessly it integrates

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with your phone so that you can continue working there whatever you were doing watching a movie or

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and so on and plasma mobile is part of that story but it is of course also part of

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the story of a completely open mobile stack and that is not something KDE can do on its own it needs

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a lot of support from different players around us because we have a certain area of expertise

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that is desktop and apps for end users and we need to work together with other people for example

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on opening up hardware and benefiting from that because no one can do that alone. So if we stay

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with that topic which KDE plasma if if Huawei says well we would like to use that on our mobile

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phones would it be ready for that or what would be needed there? I think there would be still

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be quite a lot of work to be done simply because the number of people working on plasma mobile is

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so much smaller than the number of people working on for example Android but that doesn't mean

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it wouldn't be possible and I think with Qt and the existing KDE applications we actually have a

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very good ground to work from and a head start so to say seems to be a good alternative

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then for Android in a few years? Hopefully and I would love it if more people join us in making

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that happen. You hear this guys? Okay I have a different topic yes and I want to ask here about

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sustainability because I am really into this topic. I was wondering it's such a huge topic in

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the conversation okay after society. How is KDE dealing with this is this any topic in the

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community? Like especially digital sustainability? Right so it is definitely a topic and as you

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can imagine in a community as large and diverse as KDE that is not an easy discussion because

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there are so many different opinions and so many different details that people care about

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because people care so we've been having discussions like should we take part in the global

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climate strike and similar things? And it started kind of from the question around okay what

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can KDEV the support organization do and what should it do when for example it is sending people

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to sprints from far places or when it's organizing the annual conference academy? How can we make

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that more sustainable? There's still a lot to be discussed but it's making progress and I think we

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end up with a policy and that gives us some guidance on that on what the KDE community

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thinks and I hope we have that in the next year. So then I would go into one other topic I mentioned

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in the introduction already that KDE is the biggest organization, volunteer organization out there

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which is using the FSFE's fiduciary license agreement so that agreement was created to concentrate

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decision power within one entity in this case KDEV to prevent the fragmentation of rights on one

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hand while on the other side preventing single entity like KDEV then from abusing its power to

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just realize all the code into like a proprietary software license. So what is your experience with that?

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The FRA is very important for us I don't believe we put enough thought into it how important it is

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unfortunately as a community because there are very few cases you become aware of when it really

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matters until it's too late. One example very recently someone was trying to realize

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a part of one of our applications code so they could reuse it in other places and they were just

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liking the okay from one individual contributor. Now that was the main contributor to that code.

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It turns out after a lot of research and trying to contact that person that they have been

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in an accident a long time ago and have stopped contributing to KDE because of what happened in

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that accident and now in this particular case we got lucky and we got the okay to realize

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on that code but what would have happened right you never know and unfortunately you

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realize how much you need that when it's too late and I think we should be paying a lot more

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attention to that and getting a lot more people to sign the FRA but that takes work.

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That was a hard topic you weren't thinking about accidents and what else could happen but

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yeah as you said it's important to think about the other things because we don't want to be in a

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situation that a lot of code has to be rewritten because we haven't thought about it beforehand.

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Especially in communities where there's usually central figures who contribute a lot of the

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code. So also one of the more long-term topics I mean we talked before about KDE's focus on the

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desktop now shifting the focus on apps and also on the mobile sphere. Now looking further some years

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we might not even have a mobile phone anymore but there are lots of lots of devices around us

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which are all connected and you might interact with your computer in different ways than we are used

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so how do you see KDE's role if that would happen or if that happens. That is part of what we prepared

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for all right we started out so focused on the desktop and we realized that that is becoming

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less and less relevant while still being important but it can't be the only thing that keeps us

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alive as a community. We are there because we want to give people freedom and empowerment over

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their digital lives wherever their digital life is whatever that means that is where we have to be

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and if it means all kinds of internet of things devices in the next years then we will have to

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look at that as well. Are you looking at it already or do you until now ignore the internet of

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things. It's definitely not our focus at the moment. Now when we are looking for next year on

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the 14th of February the FSFE always celebrates the I love free software day or we remind people about

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the I love free software day because we want thought that in the free software community we are

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sometimes a bit harsh with each other. I mean you might have experience with that in the KDE

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community as well that there are people who criticize each other they make bug reports and tell

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others of their software doesn't work and tell them what to do better and in all of that the

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discussion can sometimes get a bit heated and we thought it's good to run people once a year at

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least to say thank you so we will have that again on the 14th of February. Now my question would be

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when you now already have to decide about who would you thank there and I make it a bit easier

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for you because I don't want to bring in the position that afterwards people in your community will

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say well she thanked this project of KDE and not the other one so which project outside of KDE would

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you thank there. Very good question. I think the I love free software day is a great opportunity

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because we thank each other way too little. KDE is a very great community and we are very friendly

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and and they thank you to each other but there can always be more and there can definitely always

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be more in free software as a whole. So yes we should do that more often. Now in particular which

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free software project would I sense of love that would be signal for allowing me to privately

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and securely communicate with all the people I care about. Lydia thank you very much for being

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with us. It was a great pleasure to have you here again and yes all the best. Thank you so much

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and thank you to you and the FSVE for keeping free software available and amazing for all of us

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here. I also say thank you and now I know a lot more about KDE. Thank you bye bye.

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This was the second episode of the Self Refreedom Podcast. If you liked this episode please

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