The Plasma team has been working on an early Christmas present: a live image running Plasma on Wayland.
Being able to run a full session of Plasma with applications is a major milestone in our aim of moving from the 30 year old X Window System to its replacement.
The Randa Meetings 2015 came to a successful end a while ago, so it is time to look back, see what we achieved and give you a little summary of the events that took place in the Swiss Alps this year. As usual we had quite a collection of meetings in one big house, which is why the event is called Randa Meetings, in plural. We might have already explained that last year, but it seems to be something that doesn't stick yet!
The meetings altogether were a big success, thus we would like to thank all the supporters, sponsors and other people and groups who made the event possible. As we pointed out during the fundraiser: It's because of these people, hopefully including you, that people from all across the globe were able to get a lot of work done and make the software you love even better. The participants did not only fly to Switzerland from all across the globe, they also were quite a mixed bunch regarding age, background and projects they are working on. So if you like the work we are doing and describe below don't hesitate to support us and donate.
USENIX, in cooperation with LOPSA (League of Professional System Administrators), presented the 2015 LISA (Large Installation System Administration) Conference in Washington, D.C. USA from 8 November to 13 November. Two members of the KDE Community represented KDE at the Conference Expo, connecting with many of the 1,060 attendees to discuss successful large scale deployment and other KDE goodness.
Yash Shah and Michael Pyne demonstrated the features of the Plasma 5 desktop and underlying KDE Frameworks, with a focus on how those features can help meet enterprise IT needs.
The KDE e.V. report for the fourth quarter of 2014 is available (PDF). It features a compendium of all the activities and events carried out, supported and funded by KDE e.V. in that period, as well as the reporting of major events, conferences and mentoring programs that KDE has been involved in.
The KDE PIM spring sprint was held in Toulouse, France in March this year in Makina Corpus offices.
The sprint was very important, because the team needed to decide how to continue from the current situation. At the previous sprint in Munich in November when Christian Mollekopf and Aaron Seigo introduced their new concept for the next version of Akonadi it was decided to refocus all the efforts on working on that, which meant switching to maintenance mode of the Kontact Suite for a very long time and then coming back with a "big boom". In Toulouse this plan was re-evaluated and decided that it is not working for the team and that it will be much better for the project as well as the users if they continue active development of Kontact Suite instead of focusing exclusively on the “next big thing” and take the one-step-at-the-time approach.
KDE, through its legal body KDE e.V., is one of the launch partners and initial signatories of the User Data Manifesto 2.0. The User Data Manifesto defines basic rights for people to control their own data in the internet age:
KDE e.V. President Lydia Pintscher explains "I believe that in today’s world where more and more of our daily life depends on technology it is crucial that people have control over that technology. You should be empowered to know what your technology does and you should be empowered to influence it. This is at the core of Free Software. Unfortunately it is not at the core of most of the technology people interact with every day – quite the opposite – walled gardens and locks wherever you look with few exceptions.
"KDE is working hard to provide you with technology that you control every single day so you are empowered and the one ultimately in charge of your technology, data and life – the basis for freedom for many today. This is written down in the first sentence of our manifesto: “We are a community of technologists, designers, writers and advocates who work to ensure freedom for all people through our software.”
"Do you want to join us in providing more people with more access to Free technology? Today is a good day!
