KDE.news 

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:

One of these organizations suggested that KDE create a deployment forum so that others can benefit from their deployment experience. The forum would provide an opportunity for sysadmins and developers to ask questions and discuss problems/solutions related to deploying KDE software in large, complex environments.

Today KDE releases a bugfix update to Plasma 5, versioned 5.4.2. Plasma 5.4 was released in August with many feature refinements and new modules to complete the desktop experience.

Randa greetings from the VDG - Hahmulookin?

The Visual Design Group

The Visual Design Group is responsible for the User Experience, Usability, Design, Look and Feel of KDE software. The VDG has been working from a TODO list at the Randa Meetings. There has been good progress and still things the VDG wants to accomplish in Randa.

Tuesday, 08 September 2015. Today KDE releases a bugfix update to Plasma 5, versioned 5.4.1. Plasma 5.4 was released in August with many feature refinements and new modules to complete the desktop experience.

We are raising money to support KDE sprints. People have asked legitimate questions about those funds—who gets the money? Who benefits?

To start with, KDE sprints are intensive sessions centered around coding. They take place in person over several days, during which time skillful developers eat, drink and sleep code. There are breaks to refresh and gain perspective, but mostly sprints involve hard, focused work. All of this developer time and effort is unpaid. However travel expenses for some developers are covered by KDE. KDE is a frugal organization with comparatively low administrative costs, and only one paid person who works part time. So the money donated for sprints goes to cover actual expenses. Who gets the money? Almost all of it goes to transportation companies.

Tuesday, 25 August 2015. Today KDE releases a feature release of the new version of Plasma 5.

To wrap up the KDE Incubator success stories, here's a bit from the Kdenlive folks.

Kdenlive, one of the rare free-as-in-speech video editors, started its life more than 12 years ago using KDE3 libraries. At that time, it was mostly the effort of a single person—coding, fixing bugs, publishing releases, managing the website. There was no real connection with the KDE Community. Good contributions came in from other people, but no team was built, a risky situation. In 2013, the main developer, Jean-Baptiste Mardelle, was not able to work on the project, so it was on hold for several months and had some technical problems. We tracked him down like a "Giant Spy" to get the project running until his return! That taught us a lesson. When Mario Fux presented the KDE Manifesto, it was the exact answer to our problem.