Opinion

Guest articles setting out the author's position on the current status and future directions of KDE and its software

Stay with Free Software, City of Munich!

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The city of Munich is currently considering a move away from Free Software back to Microsoft products. We consider this to be a mistake and urge the decision makers to reconsider.

For many years now the City of Munich has been using a mix of software by KDE, LibreOffice and Ubuntu, among others. Mayor Dieter Reiter (a self-proclaimed Microsoft-fan who helped Microsoft move offices to Munich) asked Accenture (a Microsoft partner) to produce a report about the situation of the City of Munich's IT infrastructure. That resulted in a 450-page document. This report is now being misused to push for a move away from Free Software. However the main issues listed in the report were identified to be organizational ones and not related to Free Software operating systems and applications.

The City of Munich is of course free to decide on their IT infrastructure. Nonetheless we believe the move away from Free Software would be a big mistake and feel compelled to speak up. Specifically the move away from Free Software will

  • not actually fix the issues identified in the report by Accenture
  • remove vendor-independence which was one of the core arguments for moving to Free Software in the first place
  • incur estimated costs of €90 Million to be paid by tax-payer money. Another €15 Million are expected to be spent on replacing or upgrading hardware that cannot cope with the requirements of Windows 10 but runs fine with Linux.

The City of Munich has always been a poster child of Free Software in public administrations. It is a showcase of what can be done with Free Software in this setting. The step back by the City of Munich from Free Software would therefore not just be a blow for this particular deployment but also have more far-reaching effects into other similar deployments.

That said, we take this opportunity to invite all other administrations to leverage the work done by the City of Munich over the last years and are willing to help resolve remaining issues in the City of Munich related to our software.

Lydia Pintscher
President, KDE e.V.

Please also read the statement by The Document Foundation.


We love the projects around us!

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I love Free Software!
Today the Free Software Foundation Europe reminds us to thank and celebrate all those in Free Software we love and whose work we enjoy and built upon. In KDE, we stand on the shoulders of giants. Everything we do in some way depends on Free Software written by many other people - the huge ecosystem around us. Here are just a few of the thousands of them:

  • We Love Qt for being the best toolkit we could hope for to build our software on.
  • We love the GNU Toolchain (gcc, GNU binutils, ..) - the most used toolchain to bring our amazing software to the masses.
  • We love Valgrind and the GNU Debugger for helping us improve our software craftmanship.
  • We love CMake for keeping our project structures sane and for helping us shine on every platform.
  • We love Xorg and Wayland for giving us the ability to paint on the screen of many devices large and small.
  • We love git for helping us manage our future and past.
  • We love the KDE Free Qt Foundation for ensuring that KDE and everyone else can continue to rely on a free and open Qt.

Most importantly: we love all the *people* that help run these projects and organizations. Thank you for letting us stand on the shoulders of giants and ensuring together with us that more people have access to free software and control over the technology that shapes their life.


Open Hardware for KDE

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From its beginning, KDE has been a leader in innovation in free (libre) and open source software (FLOSS), but there is a threat to that leadership in one of the fastest growing areas of technology. The advantages of free and open development and use are clear for software; now closed and proprietary strategies have become standard in other kinds of technology. The need for technology freedom has moved from software to other more corporate-controllable areas—notably hardware and the Internet.

As was the case when KDE started, community-developed, freedom-oriented technology is necessary to break the stranglehold of large companies that are more committed to managers and investors than to users. But this won’t be easy and it can’t be left to a few people. The entire KDE Community has a stake in the outcome. For that matter, this should be a concern to anyone who develops free and open software, anyone who uses it, anyone who benefits from it. And that includes just about everyone using technology today.

New hardware has been announced that addresses the need for openness beyond software. Community help is needed to support a generous, far-sighted open hardware project involving mostly KDE people and certainly following KDE principles. Please consider contributing financially to open hardware for KDE.