Transcript of SFP#2 about KDE with Lydia Pintscher
This is a transcript created with the Free Software tool Whisper. For more information and feedback reach out to podcast@fsfe.org
WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:17.720 Welcome to the second episode of the Software Freedom Podcast. 00:17.720 --> 00:21.240 This podcast is presented to you by the Free Software Foundation Europe. 00:21.240 --> 00:24.160 We are a charity that empowers users to control technology. 00:24.160 --> 00:28.360 I am Matthias Kirschner, I am the President of the Free Software Foundation Europe and 00:28.360 --> 00:32.240 also from our side today with me is Bonnie Merring, our current intern. 00:32.240 --> 00:35.240 Hello, our guest for today is Lydia Fincher. 00:35.240 --> 00:41.200 She is the Vice President of KDE and she has been with KDE since 2006 and on the board 00:41.200 --> 00:43.520 of KDE we since 2011. 00:43.520 --> 00:50.160 Well, while we were preparing the podcast I looked up what KDE is actually doing and it's 00:50.160 --> 00:52.280 developing a lot of free software. 00:52.280 --> 00:57.560 It's an international community and it maintains a lot of free software projects. 00:57.560 --> 01:01.240 The FSV has very close relationships with KDE for a long time. 01:01.240 --> 01:06.040 We work together on several topics and exchange knowledge about for example running a German 01:06.040 --> 01:11.560 EV although you have European or international activities and also for example how to manage 01:11.560 --> 01:13.880 copyright in such a huge project. 01:13.880 --> 01:15.200 So welcome. 01:15.200 --> 01:17.280 Thank you for being with us Lydia. 01:17.280 --> 01:19.120 Thank you so much for inviting me. 01:19.120 --> 01:24.160 Could you briefly introduce KDE to us and what are you doing there? 01:24.160 --> 01:25.560 How is it working? 01:26.080 --> 01:27.400 Sure. 01:27.400 --> 01:33.920 So KDE is a free software community that started out working on a desktop. 01:33.920 --> 01:42.520 In 1996 Matthias Etrich started out this project with the aim to build a user-friendly desktop 01:42.520 --> 01:49.600 that his partner could use for day-to-day work like writing some texts, listening to some 01:49.600 --> 01:52.000 music and similar things. 01:52.040 --> 02:00.360 Since then a lot has happened among them that we have a very good desktop that anyone 02:00.360 --> 02:06.720 can use for day-to-day work but also a ton of applications around it that anyone can 02:06.720 --> 02:11.280 use to do their day-to-day work on a computer. 02:11.280 --> 02:16.960 We have music players, we have a natural painting program, we have educational software, 02:16.960 --> 02:20.320 we have a web browser and so much more. 02:20.320 --> 02:23.520 How did you yourself get involved in KDE? 02:23.520 --> 02:29.920 So I got involved when I studied computer science and while I studied computer science I was 02:29.920 --> 02:36.880 using Windows and at some point I noticed like this isn't right, there has to be something 02:36.880 --> 02:43.520 better, there has to be something more where I have much more power over the software 02:43.520 --> 02:46.520 I am using than I had before. 02:46.520 --> 02:51.800 So I was looking around and talking to other people, I was studying with and clearly 02:51.800 --> 02:59.440 at that time Ubuntu was the hot new thing so I tried out Ubuntu but I didn't quite warm 02:59.440 --> 03:05.880 up to it, it wasn't quite right for me and I dug around a bit more and stumbled up on 03:05.880 --> 03:12.880 Kubuntu which had KDE software on it and I was blown away because it had exactly everything 03:12.880 --> 03:18.000 I needed and specifically all of its programs beautifully worked together. 03:18.000 --> 03:23.120 So it had a my own program that had an address book and that address book was connected 03:23.120 --> 03:28.400 to my IRC client, to my instant messaging client and everything really beautifully worked 03:28.400 --> 03:31.880 together and I have not looked back since. 03:31.880 --> 03:36.840 But as far as I understand KDE is not your daily job, you work there as a volunteer, 03:36.840 --> 03:41.880 how do you manage to do both, like a daily job and working as a volunteer? 03:42.880 --> 03:48.240 So my day job is working as the product manager for Wikidata which is a system project 03:48.240 --> 03:54.160 of Wikipedia to build a knowledge base with general purpose data about the world and that 03:54.160 --> 04:01.640 is really cool because it allows me quite some flexibility to manage my own schedule 04:01.640 --> 04:09.200 in a way that allows for a lot of the things that KDE requires from me and then there's 04:09.200 --> 04:16.880 a lot of good time management and I kind of learned to do this that are meticulously used. 04:16.880 --> 04:25.240 So on the question of like volunteering in such a large project, I once said a conversation 04:25.240 --> 04:31.840 with someone from a company and that was very interesting because it's always this 04:31.840 --> 04:36.240 strange decision for me if I should hire more people out of the KDE community because 04:36.240 --> 04:41.920 I mean they know the technology I need in my company but if I hire them, then usually 04:41.920 --> 04:47.800 because they work during all the day with this technology already, they are not so motivated 04:47.800 --> 04:51.520 to continue with working with those technologies in their free time. 04:51.520 --> 04:58.520 So when I hire more people from the KDE community, I will see less activity in the KDE community. 04:58.520 --> 05:05.640 So is it a problem for KDE if those technology which you also use like CUED, if they are 05:05.640 --> 05:07.720 commercially very successful? 05:07.720 --> 05:13.160 I don't see it as a zero sum game where quite the opposite. 05:13.160 --> 05:18.160 In the past it has been a problem for us but in recent years we've really turned things 05:18.160 --> 05:25.520 around there in that there are more companies who employ people not just because they know 05:25.520 --> 05:28.600 KDE but also to work on KDE itself. 05:28.600 --> 05:34.160 So more of that time is freed up to actually work on KDE as if they were just doing it 05:34.160 --> 05:40.240 in their free time but I think the even more important part of that is that people are 05:40.240 --> 05:46.240 empowered to make a living on free software and the more this becomes an option, the 05:46.240 --> 05:48.720 better it is for all of free software. 05:48.720 --> 05:54.640 Okay, if there are so many volunteers now professionally earning their money with free software, 05:54.640 --> 06:00.280 how many of these volunteers do you have and how many of them are working like earning 06:00.280 --> 06:02.840 their money with free software? 06:02.840 --> 06:08.760 So I mean there's thousands of people contributing to KDE every month, it's very hard to have 06:08.760 --> 06:14.120 numbers on that of course because it's a huge project where people contribute in very 06:14.120 --> 06:15.160 different ways. 06:15.160 --> 06:22.720 So some rate code, some do more project management type of tasks, others help on a report 06:22.720 --> 06:27.160 to test something, the next person writes some documentation and so on so it's very hard 06:27.160 --> 06:32.800 to really have a number on that but in the thousands. 06:32.800 --> 06:38.600 Of those, how many make a living on with free software, again hard to tell because we 06:38.600 --> 06:43.960 don't ask people usually these types of questions but especially in the KDE core community 06:43.960 --> 06:45.720 I would say it's quite a few. 06:45.720 --> 06:48.120 And do you have to feeling that it increased over time? 06:48.120 --> 06:54.480 Yes, it definitely increased over time and in part because we spend a lot of time building 06:54.480 --> 06:59.600 out relationships to the companies around us and empowering people to start companies around 06:59.600 --> 07:05.360 KDE to provide customizations on top of KDE to provide additional software development 07:05.360 --> 07:07.840 and similar things. 07:07.840 --> 07:10.200 Is it still increasing? 07:10.200 --> 07:17.640 I would say it's still increasing in general, we've had a bump in contributions a few 07:17.640 --> 07:24.920 years ago and that came from people kind of losing their way, KDE started out as trying 07:24.920 --> 07:28.120 to build an end user desktop. 07:28.120 --> 07:33.880 And at some point we had achieved that but also not and the world around us was moving 07:33.880 --> 07:41.960 on right and individual people in KDE didn't concentrate so much on KDE as a whole anymore 07:41.960 --> 07:48.200 but on their individual application for example and we were lacking cohesion across all of 07:48.200 --> 07:57.360 KDE to really figure out what are we as KDE doing, why are we even here together and when 07:57.360 --> 08:01.880 we realized that we said okay we need to change this because this is not good for community 08:01.880 --> 08:07.960 and we started a process to define what we want to work on together. 08:07.960 --> 08:14.960 And out of that came three goals that we worked on over the past few years and now we elected 08:14.960 --> 08:21.920 new goals at the last academy or annual conference and that has really helped get new people 08:22.000 --> 08:28.640 who are interested in these goals that we set but also re-energized the people that we had 08:28.640 --> 08:35.040 and who are kind of disillusioned to kind of give them a new focus and yes they're still really 08:35.040 --> 08:38.720 exciting stuff that you can do here and it's really important that we do it. 08:38.720 --> 08:43.920 Okay, let me come back to the girls in a second, first person I want to ask you about the shift 08:43.920 --> 08:51.280 of generation you already mentioned so how do you deal with a shift like that because you have 08:51.280 --> 08:57.440 all the old school programmers back there and now you have these young GitHub generation. 08:57.440 --> 09:00.880 Hmm, how do you deal with that in such a huge project? 09:00.880 --> 09:07.920 I think KDE is one of the big projects that manage to become multi-generational and in part 09:08.480 --> 09:15.520 this has been because we've always put a huge focus on mentoring and raising 09:15.600 --> 09:21.280 so to say the next generation we take part in programs like Google Summer of Code but also have 09:21.280 --> 09:26.960 our own mentoring program and there's a lot of informal mentoring going on that really brings 09:26.960 --> 09:33.440 along the next generation and teaches them how we work and why we do certain things but also 09:33.440 --> 09:40.160 empowers them to question a few things and do things differently and what are your goals for the 09:40.160 --> 09:48.880 next two years? So the ones we have elected are consistency all about the apps and Wayland. 09:49.520 --> 09:58.160 Now I need to explain a bit more about what that means. So let's start with Wayland. KDE's software 09:58.160 --> 10:03.520 for quite some time has been trying to get to the point where it works very well on Wayland, 10:03.520 --> 10:09.680 the new window-managing protocol. So for our listeners before it was the XWindow 10:09.680 --> 10:16.000 system and now there is this huge shift with lots of distributions to switch to Wayland. 10:16.000 --> 10:23.680 Yes, which brings a lot of benefits with it among the more security and so on but it is a huge 10:23.680 --> 10:29.040 amount of work that needs to be done to adapt both Plasma, our desktop but also all our applications 10:29.040 --> 10:36.560 to iron out little bucks and make them work with support for example for things like tablets 10:36.560 --> 10:42.640 so our natural painting application Cretac can work nicely and you can paint beautiful pictures. 10:43.520 --> 10:50.400 This transition takes a lot of work and just needs more focus so that we can make this transition happen. 10:50.400 --> 10:57.840 That is what Wayland as a goal is about. Then we have all about the apps which is focusing on 10:57.840 --> 11:06.000 the idea that KDE over the last years has been focusing very much on promoting our desktop and has 11:06.000 --> 11:13.840 been collecting the promotion of our applications a bit and we want to change that by bringing them 11:13.840 --> 11:21.280 into app stores and so on so that people can easily get to them and enjoy our applications no 11:21.280 --> 11:27.200 matter which operating system they use or how they get their applications and the third one 11:27.200 --> 11:34.320 consistency as in any big project that has been growing for a very long time there's a lot of 11:34.960 --> 11:40.000 inconsistencies that creep in different applications implementing the same thing in slightly 11:40.000 --> 11:46.240 different ways or just things that don't make sense if you take a step back and the consistency 11:46.240 --> 11:53.360 goal is trying to identify those and make things more consistent so that you can enjoy using our 11:53.360 --> 11:59.840 applications. So when you talk about that before you concentrated a lot on a desktop I would switch 11:59.840 --> 12:06.480 the focus a little bit to the mobile area and I mean there were recent developments with 12:06.480 --> 12:14.240 Huawei and a lot of people saw that they were not able or had problems with continuing to ship 12:14.240 --> 12:21.120 their phones with Android because of restriction by the US government so more and more people think 12:21.120 --> 12:27.360 about the centralization of operating systems on the mobile devices and the services which are 12:27.360 --> 12:37.280 provided there so I wonder how do you see the role of KDE and KDE plasma in relationship to the 12:37.280 --> 12:46.480 Android and mobile phone area. So on the one hand the mobile phone applications that we have 12:46.480 --> 12:52.320 and every provide for example some educational programs we do want them to work on Android right 12:52.320 --> 12:57.120 because a huge amount of people out there are using Android phones and they should be able to 12:57.120 --> 13:05.200 use our software because the first step getting away from a closed platform is using some open 13:05.760 --> 13:13.600 programs and applications on it so the switch later to a completely free system isn't as big 13:13.600 --> 13:19.280 and as frightening. So we do want people to use our applications on Android and we make them 13:19.280 --> 13:25.840 available. Where do you make them available on an f-troid then or on the play store and on f-troid 13:25.840 --> 13:33.600 yeah so that's the integrating and the existing system piece and the other side is plasma mobile 13:33.600 --> 13:40.160 as a system that nicely integrates with our desktop. People will continue to use desktops and 13:40.160 --> 13:47.520 laptops for a lot of work they do right writing your master's thesis on a mobile phone or tablet 13:47.520 --> 13:55.920 is going to be very very painful for example doing all that research and so on. So what we are 13:55.920 --> 14:02.720 trying to enable is you do your work on your laptop or your desktop and seamlessly it integrates 14:02.720 --> 14:09.040 with your phone so that you can continue working there whatever you were doing watching a movie or 14:09.600 --> 14:17.920 and so on and plasma mobile is part of that story but it is of course also part of 14:17.920 --> 14:26.880 the story of a completely open mobile stack and that is not something KDE can do on its own it needs 14:26.880 --> 14:33.680 a lot of support from different players around us because we have a certain area of expertise 14:33.760 --> 14:42.720 that is desktop and apps for end users and we need to work together with other people for example 14:42.720 --> 14:50.320 on opening up hardware and benefiting from that because no one can do that alone. So if we stay 14:50.320 --> 14:55.200 with that topic which KDE plasma if if Huawei says well we would like to use that on our mobile 14:55.200 --> 15:00.160 phones would it be ready for that or what would be needed there? I think there would be still 15:00.160 --> 15:06.880 be quite a lot of work to be done simply because the number of people working on plasma mobile is 15:06.880 --> 15:13.520 so much smaller than the number of people working on for example Android but that doesn't mean 15:13.520 --> 15:19.760 it wouldn't be possible and I think with Qt and the existing KDE applications we actually have a 15:19.760 --> 15:26.480 very good ground to work from and a head start so to say seems to be a good alternative 15:26.480 --> 15:32.480 then for Android in a few years? Hopefully and I would love it if more people join us in making 15:32.480 --> 15:40.160 that happen. You hear this guys? Okay I have a different topic yes and I want to ask here about 15:40.160 --> 15:47.760 sustainability because I am really into this topic. I was wondering it's such a huge topic in 15:47.760 --> 15:54.240 the conversation okay after society. How is KDE dealing with this is this any topic in the 15:54.240 --> 16:02.240 community? Like especially digital sustainability? Right so it is definitely a topic and as you 16:02.240 --> 16:08.880 can imagine in a community as large and diverse as KDE that is not an easy discussion because 16:08.880 --> 16:15.600 there are so many different opinions and so many different details that people care about 16:15.600 --> 16:22.720 because people care so we've been having discussions like should we take part in the global 16:22.720 --> 16:31.280 climate strike and similar things? And it started kind of from the question around okay what 16:31.280 --> 16:38.080 can KDEV the support organization do and what should it do when for example it is sending people 16:38.080 --> 16:45.360 to sprints from far places or when it's organizing the annual conference academy? How can we make 16:45.360 --> 16:52.160 that more sustainable? There's still a lot to be discussed but it's making progress and I think we 16:52.880 --> 16:58.560 end up with a policy and that gives us some guidance on that on what the KDE community 16:58.560 --> 17:04.960 thinks and I hope we have that in the next year. So then I would go into one other topic I mentioned 17:04.960 --> 17:10.160 in the introduction already that KDE is the biggest organization, volunteer organization out there 17:10.160 --> 17:19.120 which is using the FSFE's fiduciary license agreement so that agreement was created to concentrate 17:19.120 --> 17:27.680 decision power within one entity in this case KDEV to prevent the fragmentation of rights on one 17:27.680 --> 17:33.920 hand while on the other side preventing single entity like KDEV then from abusing its power to 17:33.920 --> 17:40.880 just realize all the code into like a proprietary software license. So what is your experience with that? 17:41.360 --> 17:51.760 The FRA is very important for us I don't believe we put enough thought into it how important it is 17:51.760 --> 17:57.760 unfortunately as a community because there are very few cases you become aware of when it really 17:57.760 --> 18:03.600 matters until it's too late. One example very recently someone was trying to realize 18:03.760 --> 18:10.800 a part of one of our applications code so they could reuse it in other places and they were just 18:10.800 --> 18:17.040 liking the okay from one individual contributor. Now that was the main contributor to that code. 18:18.080 --> 18:24.400 It turns out after a lot of research and trying to contact that person that they have been 18:25.200 --> 18:31.840 in an accident a long time ago and have stopped contributing to KDE because of what happened in 18:31.840 --> 18:37.680 that accident and now in this particular case we got lucky and we got the okay to realize 18:37.680 --> 18:44.320 on that code but what would have happened right you never know and unfortunately you 18:45.760 --> 18:52.160 realize how much you need that when it's too late and I think we should be paying a lot more 18:52.160 --> 18:58.400 attention to that and getting a lot more people to sign the FRA but that takes work. 18:58.480 --> 19:04.880 That was a hard topic you weren't thinking about accidents and what else could happen but 19:04.880 --> 19:10.080 yeah as you said it's important to think about the other things because we don't want to be in a 19:10.080 --> 19:14.480 situation that a lot of code has to be rewritten because we haven't thought about it beforehand. 19:15.840 --> 19:23.280 Especially in communities where there's usually central figures who contribute a lot of the 19:23.280 --> 19:32.560 code. So also one of the more long-term topics I mean we talked before about KDE's focus on the 19:32.560 --> 19:41.360 desktop now shifting the focus on apps and also on the mobile sphere. Now looking further some years 19:42.080 --> 19:47.120 we might not even have a mobile phone anymore but there are lots of lots of devices around us 19:47.840 --> 19:53.920 which are all connected and you might interact with your computer in different ways than we are used 19:54.480 --> 20:01.120 so how do you see KDE's role if that would happen or if that happens. That is part of what we prepared 20:01.120 --> 20:08.000 for all right we started out so focused on the desktop and we realized that that is becoming 20:08.000 --> 20:15.040 less and less relevant while still being important but it can't be the only thing that keeps us 20:15.040 --> 20:22.080 alive as a community. We are there because we want to give people freedom and empowerment over 20:22.080 --> 20:27.520 their digital lives wherever their digital life is whatever that means that is where we have to be 20:28.160 --> 20:35.360 and if it means all kinds of internet of things devices in the next years then we will have to 20:35.360 --> 20:42.320 look at that as well. Are you looking at it already or do you until now ignore the internet of 20:42.320 --> 20:50.240 things. It's definitely not our focus at the moment. Now when we are looking for next year on 20:50.240 --> 20:57.440 the 14th of February the FSFE always celebrates the I love free software day or we remind people about 20:57.440 --> 21:02.880 the I love free software day because we want thought that in the free software community we are 21:02.880 --> 21:09.360 sometimes a bit harsh with each other. I mean you might have experience with that in the KDE 21:09.360 --> 21:15.680 community as well that there are people who criticize each other they make bug reports and tell 21:15.680 --> 21:22.560 others of their software doesn't work and tell them what to do better and in all of that the 21:22.560 --> 21:28.720 discussion can sometimes get a bit heated and we thought it's good to run people once a year at 21:28.720 --> 21:35.680 least to say thank you so we will have that again on the 14th of February. Now my question would be 21:35.760 --> 21:41.440 when you now already have to decide about who would you thank there and I make it a bit easier 21:41.440 --> 21:45.600 for you because I don't want to bring in the position that afterwards people in your community will 21:45.600 --> 21:53.520 say well she thanked this project of KDE and not the other one so which project outside of KDE would 21:53.520 --> 21:59.680 you thank there. Very good question. I think the I love free software day is a great opportunity 21:59.760 --> 22:08.080 because we thank each other way too little. KDE is a very great community and we are very friendly 22:08.080 --> 22:13.520 and and they thank you to each other but there can always be more and there can definitely always 22:13.520 --> 22:18.960 be more in free software as a whole. So yes we should do that more often. Now in particular which 22:18.960 --> 22:27.200 free software project would I sense of love that would be signal for allowing me to privately 22:27.280 --> 22:32.240 and securely communicate with all the people I care about. Lydia thank you very much for being 22:32.240 --> 22:37.760 with us. It was a great pleasure to have you here again and yes all the best. Thank you so much 22:37.760 --> 22:44.720 and thank you to you and the FSVE for keeping free software available and amazing for all of us 22:44.720 --> 22:49.840 here. I also say thank you and now I know a lot more about KDE. Thank you bye bye. 22:50.720 --> 22:55.440 This was the second episode of the Self Refreedom Podcast. If you liked this episode please 22:55.440 --> 23:00.400 recommend it to your friends and subscribe to make sure you also get the next episode. Please 23:00.400 --> 23:06.320 also don't forget if you have the chance to rate this podcast. This podcast is presented to you by 23:06.320 --> 23:11.120 the free software foundation Europe. We are a charity that works on promoting software freedom. 23:11.120 --> 23:16.160 If you like our work please consider supporting us with a donation. You find more information 23:16.160 --> 23:32.080 under my.fsfe.org slash donate. Thank you very much and looking forward to next time. See you.