KDE.news 

We realise that there are not many KDE/Qt related events that are accessible to Indians. FOSS conferences or meetings are an excellent way to show people the technology first hand and ways to contribute to it. We not only dazzle them with the world of KDE, but show them first hand how simple it is to get involved and make a difference. This is our motivation for conducting this event.

Right before Christmas, KDE has published the first candidate for the upcoming release of KDE Platform, Plasma and Applications 4.6. The focus at this stage is on fixing bugs and completing translations and artwork. As such, the rework of the Oxygen icon set is nearing completion, many bugs reported by testers in recent weeks have been fixed and stabilization is still in full swing.

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest:

          <ul><li>Start of a <a href="http://plasma.kde.org/">Plasma</a>-based "Welcome Screen" for applications</li>

            <a href="http://commit-digest.org/issues/2010-11-21/">Read the rest of the Digest here</a>.

KDE e.V. is pleased to announce that we have joined the Open Invention Network community as a licensee.

Open Invention Network was founded as a way to help defend the Linux ecosystem, and by extension much of the Free and Open Source software world, from the risks associated with software patents. Patents owned by Open Invention Network are available royalty-free to any company, institution or individual that agrees not to assert its patents against the Linux System, creating an umbrella of protection for its members.

Where will KDE be in five years? To answer this question, we plan to bring together visionaries, strategists, planners, out-of-the-box-thinkers, realists, dreamers, doers, creators, leaders, coders from the KDE community and everybody else who is interested in discussing the future of KDE and picturing what it will be.

For the sixth time, KDE has mentored students as part of the Google Summer of Code program. The students get to take their first steps writing code for a Free Software project with a mentor by their side for a summer. Once again our students have worked on exciting projects that you will be able to see in the next releases - many will even be part of the 4.6 releases. Nearly all of the 50 projects were finished successfully this year. This is the second of two articles about what the GSoC students accomplished.

For the sixth time, KDE has mentored students as part of the Google Summer of Code program. The students get to take their first steps writing code for a Free Software project with a mentor by their side for a summer. Once again our students have worked on exciting projects that you will be able to see in the next releases - many will even be part of the 4.6 releases. Forty-six and a half of our fifty projects were finished successfully this year (the half refers to one student who was offered an internship after the midterm evaluation). This is the first of two articles looking at what the students achieved:

In the latest KDE Commit-Digest:

• Solid switches to the new KDE Power Management System Policy Agent
• "Atmosphere" and other layers, and more work on routing instrunctions in Marble
• Demo Mode in Kajongg
• Full KIPI support (print, email, etc of images) added to KSnapshot
• An "Export" button added to Gwenview, providing quick access to the KIPI export plugins
• Various improvements in Kooka
• Support for hiding menu icons in KDE applications
• Plugin loading support added to KNotify
• Support for Powerdevil notifications when a battery's storage ability falls below 50%, or the battery has been recalled from the vendor
• Support for Windows 7-like launchers in the Tasks Plasmoid
• ACL viewing/editing implemented in KMail Mobile
• Smb4K now mounts and unmounts shares via a KAuth implementation
• Telepathy tubes support in KRFB
• NEPOMUKBackupSync, with configuration UI enables automatic and manual backup and syncing of the Nepomuk respository
• Improved version of the Locale KControl module
• SecurityOrigin class of WebCore (useful for guarding against cross-site scripting attacks) imported into KHTML
• KBugBuster moved to unmaintained/tags/4
• KPlayer and Kile move to git.kde.org.

Read the rest of the Digest here.

KDE e.V Third Quarter Report

Besides all its useful information, this report also features a brand new and beautiful design courtesy of KDE contributors Eugene Trounev and Rob Oakes. User-contributed artwork and images are also featured throughout, making this Quarterly Report a real celebration of community efforts. Check it out!

Antonis Tsiapaliokas

Seasoned KDE developer Tomaz Canabrava, who helped Antonis develop his programming skills, asked him why he chose to contribute to KDE. Read on to find out more on how Antonis became a KDE developer.