I spent a couple weeks more or less out of the loop, on purpose, to take some personal time. I did make a few commits (including a large set of maintenance work on the QGraphicsProxyWidget based widgets in libplasma), met with some local KDE and Free software enthusiasts, answered emails and started a few blog entries (before stoppng myself before they consumed too much of the day I was supposed to not be doing such things in ;). In general, though, I stayed away and allowed myself to breath in the air of the city of what will be my new home.
One great thing that I enjoyed during that time had nothing to do with me: I watched the activity that kept on rolling even without my constant full time involvement with Plasma. Some 300 commits to Plasma, dozens of mails to the list, several review requests ... all concrete signs of good healthy activity. Amidst the bug fixes, new features, performance improvements was the sense that this community is alive and breathing and happily busy. This is why I became a cog in KDE in the first place, and it's stunning to see that same kind of environment thriving to this day, and not just in Plasma but all over the KDE community.
Another example of this is how the KDE Commit Digest is back again. Thank you to everyone involved, both those helping Danny crank the new issues out and Danny himself for putting together new infrastructure for it and getting a team put together.
One more example is how the Git services for the KDE community keep improving, from Git integration in KDevelop to the rapidly maturing infrastructure the sysamdin team have been tooling up for us for some time now. projects.kde.org continues to get better and better and Tom is doing an awesome job of keeping everyone informed about that process.
I had told myself this morning that I wouldn't blog today, but I couldn't help it. I caught up on news and a bunch of email communication and after all I read and saw, I just had to race over to share the great feeling I was left with.
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3 comments:
OFFtopic: Hi Aaron, I would like to know what do you (and kde sc developers) think about unity choosen by ubuntu to be default desktop in ubuntu instead of GNOME shell? one more desktop shell in FLOSS desktop stack. And what do you think about ubuntu using qt in their GNOME based desktop(has been suggested by a ubuntu developer), could be a good thing for qt or for KDE in some way?
@wu: all imho and not speaking on behalf of anyone besides myself:
"think about unity choosen by ubuntu to be default desktop in ubuntu instead of GNOME shell?"
socially: i don't think it's the best option for either Ubuntu or GNOME, but Canonical under Mark Shuttleworth has made a decision. perhaps it will work out. the odds are against it.
technically: neither project has the flexibility or quality in design that Plasma has. Unity does share some design concepts, such as the status notifiers, with Plasma and their team is probably closer in mindset to Plasma's when it comes to things like thinking in terms of device spectrum.
so Unity could mean new opportunities for Plasma and KDE in general to find collaboration on technologies.
"one more desktop shell in FLOSS desktop stack."
strategically speaking, it's not addressing a new audience. regardless of technical merits / attributes XFCE, LXDE, Jolie, etc. all reach out to different groups. Unity is aiming for a split of an existing user base: the GNOME userbase.
so it is a bit more than just "one more desktop shell". it will likely be disruptive to the GNOME user ecosystem.
the gamble on Canonical's part is that this split will allow them to attract more of the incoming crowd to their solution and reach people in that segment they may have missed previously.
whether that works out or not and who will ultimately benefit remains to be seen.
it also says something about GNOME's ability to work with their distributors and partners as well as Canonical's valuation of their brand vis a vis community divisiveness as well as their self-confidence.
it's going to be highly interesting to watch this one play itself out.
"And what do you think about ubuntu using qt in their GNOME based desktop"
i think it's great. Qt is an awesome toolkit and they will probably be more efficient in development if they use Qt compared to any other Free software toolkit out there. so i believe Canonical would win, Ubuntu would win and Qt would win as a result.
"could be a good thing for qt or for KDE in some way?"
the more Qt is used, the better it is for both Qt and KDE. Qt is at the heart of our ecosystem, and in open source developer adoption is a significant asset.
Thanks for the answers, and thanks for your great work.
A happy kde sc user.
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