Saturday, June 25, 2005
What is KDE doing right?
The KDE community is as healthy and active as I've ever seen it. Vibrant sub communities, such as artists, usability people and others are providing substantial contributions to the project. The sub projects such as kde-edu, KOffice and others are lively, attracting developers. Everyone seems to be having fun. I know I am.
So what has KDE done right? This is what I see:
- The legal organisation does what they are best at: organize conferences.
- Long standing core developers are employed by companies that benefit from KDE.
- The repository is open. It is very easy to get write access to the repository. The systems are in place so that experienced developers can watch what goes in, but nonetheless, to become a contributor is easy.
- Sharing the repository creates a ready 'market' for well designed libraries and services. The libraries and services get use and testing. KDE as a rather large package provides a test environment for users. The feedback loop isn't 'corrupted' by outside packages and dependencies that swallow time and resources better used in fixing KDE issues.
- No single point of failure. How many experienced release dudes are there? The very loose structures seem to come together when needed, and allow motivated individuals to fill the needs as they see fit.
- Biannual releases grows the userbase, keeps KDE in the limelight and attracts new developers.
- Long standing core developers are employed by companies that benefit from KDE.
What do you think? Much of the work is unpaid. Something is keeping us all interested and motivated. What is it?
Comments:
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It's a matter of ideology. We all believe in something, we believe we can beat the biggest software companies in the world.
And how great is it to improve your own desktop environment? If you don't like some things, you have the possibility to change it and everybody can enjoy it after a little while.
And how great is it to improve your own desktop environment? If you don't like some things, you have the possibility to change it and everybody can enjoy it after a little while.
Maybe I am outing myself as a Star Trek fan now but I think KDE and Star Trek has quite a lot of similarities.
I think the KDE community is working for the greater good.
I wished there would be more communities like that in other areas of life.
Of course we all make our jokes about M$ but I think in the core it's not really about that. KDE doesn't need to compete with other companies simply because it's goals are completely different.
M$ and other companies do everything to just get more money and I can't blame them for doing so but this is simply not the goal of KDE.
And it's really a pleasure to see KDE's community growing rapidly over the last months.
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I think the KDE community is working for the greater good.
I wished there would be more communities like that in other areas of life.
Of course we all make our jokes about M$ but I think in the core it's not really about that. KDE doesn't need to compete with other companies simply because it's goals are completely different.
M$ and other companies do everything to just get more money and I can't blame them for doing so but this is simply not the goal of KDE.
And it's really a pleasure to see KDE's community growing rapidly over the last months.
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