Community and Events

The results of the Desktop Summit 2011 survey have been published at the Summit website. The overall feedback was positive, and there were suggestions for improving future Desktop Summits.

Desktop Summit 2011 Berlin promoted collaboration between open desktop projects with attendance dominated by the GNOME and KDE communities. There were several requests to make a stronger appeal for people from other desktop projects to attend.

On October 14, 1996, Matthias Ettrich posted a message to Usenet (comp.os.linux.misc), announcing "Programmers wanted!" for a "New Project: Kool Desktop Environment (KDE)". Now, 15 years later, Matthias’s dream of a "GUI for an ENDUSER" has been fully realized. And more. Sometime in the next 2 weeks, Plasma Active One will be released, extending Matthias's plan for a "modern interface" with a "common look & feel" to a range of enduser devices from desktop to mobile. KDE has grown beyond a Linux Desktop GUI to a global community of people. But it still has the same innovative spirit and a commitment to serving users of Free and Open Source Software.

At Akademy 2010, it was agreed that KDE España would be the official representative of KDE in Spain. One of the terms of the agreement is that KDE España reports on their performance annually. Recently, they sent their report to the Board of KDE e.V. They've been busy.

Over the past few months, members of the KDE community mentored students as a part of the Google Summer of Code (GSoC). In this annual program, students receive a stipend to write code for a Free Software project, mentored by someone from the project. With KDE participating for the seventh time, students worked on many KDE projects, some of which are already being included in KDE releases. 47 of 51 projects were finished successfully this year. This is the third and final article featuring The GSoC students’ achievements in the Google Summer of Code program.

Over the past few months, members of the KDE community mentored students as a part of the Google Summer of Code (GSoC). In this annual program, students receive a stipend to write code for a Free Software project, mentored by someone from the project. With KDE participating for the seventh time, students worked on many KDE projects, some of which are already being included in KDE releases. 47 of 51 projects were finished successfully this year. This is the second article featuring students’ achievements in the Google Summer of Code program.

Over the past few months, members of the KDE community mentored students as a part of the Google Summer of Code (GSoC). In this annual program, students receive a stipend to write code for a Free Software project, mentored by someone from the project. With KDE participating for the seventh time, students worked on many KDE projects, some of which are already being included in KDE releases. 47 of 51 projects were finished successfully this year. This is the first article featuring students’ achievements in the Google Summer of Code program.

How awesome are the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) and Season of KDE (SoK) programs? According to Daniel Moctezuma, "All the work done by students in GSoC/SoK will have an impact in Free Software and the world." Daniel is one of the 2011 GSoC students. Lydia Pintscher is the main administrator of these programs for KDE. She made the following report.

A big "Thank You!" to all the sponsors, Technologiestiftung Berlin (TSB; in English, Technology Foundation of Berlin), Humboldt University of Berlin, and nearly 800 attendees who gathered from around the world to make a successful Desktop Summit 2011!

Geoffray Levasseur attended RMLL (Rencontres Mondiales du Logiciel Libre/Libre Software Meetings) in Strasbourg, France on behalf of KDE, and gathered some useful feedback on our efforts and the views of Linux users in general.

KDE Italia, the Italian community backing the KDE Italia website and the KDE Italia forum, is pleased to invite you to CoNAsSL 2011, an end-of-summer event aimed at gathering all the Italian associations involved in Free Software.