

The KDE Manifesto - Tsiolkovsky
http://manifesto.kde.org/index.html

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fjorder
I'd like to see some kind of vision, focus, or specific goals for the future
on that page. Being nice to each other and concentrating on the end-user are
certainly good things, but where is KDE going next? Broad strokes here. Is it
going to focus on being the best desktop environment out there or is it going
to try to include tablets? What kind of user is it going to focus on? Is it in
a race to the newbie filled bottom with Unity and OSX or is it trying to
appeal to power-users? What weaknesses most urgently need to be addressed?

Nobody has to lay down the law and say what can and cannot be done with KDE
projects, but expressing specific aspirations to motivate developers would be
very helpful to the platform.

~~~
fmoralesc
> What kind of user is it going to focus on?

From the website:

> End-User Focus: to ensure our work is useful to _all_ people. [the emphasis
> is mine]

Does somebody else have a problem with the idea of _focusing_ in being helpful
to _all_ people? Is this supposedly opposed to "Developer-Focused" or
something like that?

~~~
fjorder
The problem with focusing on _all_ people is that KDE will never be used by
such a broad group until how Linux is distributed is fundamentally changed.
Maybe it's good to be ready for the unlikely scenario in which KDE one day
comes installed on tablets being marketed to your mom, but perhaps KDE can
become more useful to those who use it if those developing it recognize that
it's appeal is inherently limited.

~~~
fmoralesc
I agree.

To put it bluntly, focusing on _all_ people is not having a focus at all.

------
debacle
<http://manifesto.kde.org/benefits.html>

<http://manifesto.kde.org/principles.html>

The above are a lot less touchy-feely than the main page.

I don't know that this is saying much besides "Join the club, we have cool
hats."

~~~
mpyne
Well, part of the reason the Manifesto was made up was to help answer the
question of what it even means to be part of "the club" in the first place.

KDE was started to provide a complete desktop environment. Though the work
there is certainly not _finished_ by any means, it's predominantly done (and
has been so since KDE 3.5, if you ask some).

Yet, KDE developers are branching off into different software types and
different hardware form factors. Plasma Active is a mobile platform built on
KDE libraries. The ownCloud software stack was started by developers
affiliated with KDE and even shared some infrastructure initially. None of
these things are part of "the desktop" though.

So, we (at KDE) have had to come to grips with lots of questions. "Are we
done? Is this it? If not, what's the reason for continuing, what do we
accomplish further?". We've built the community and the software, where do we
go from here? And at the end, what is "KDE.org" and what isn't? What does KDE
give to those who contribute, and what do we expect of those who carry the
imprimatur of a KDE-affiliated project?

It's probably touchy-feely and pretty generic, but then KDE has always been
kind of amorphous in my experience, for better or worse.

