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KDE at 30

kde.org

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Re: KDE at 30

#21

Post by mhurron »

chekibreki wrote: post #3
Kye wrote: post #2

The master of ceremonies is a proper creature: https://floss.social/@kde/116673618808097094 edit: I appreciate the quality of discussion below, so far.

I lament the times when open source projects were open source software projects instead of political platforms for people who arrogantly think that their private political opinion is important enough to overshadow the project they participate in. This will undoubtedly create tensions and will lead to fewer donations, thus having a negative impact on KDE.

> open source software projects instead of political platforms

OSS and FOSS movements themselves were political platforms, so this has never been true. Your problem is that you just have some issue with this one

Re: KDE at 30

#22

Post by enragedcacti »

chekibreki wrote: post #3
Kye wrote: post #2

The master of ceremonies is a proper creature: https://floss.social/@kde/116673618808097094 edit: I appreciate the quality of discussion below, so far.

I lament the times when open source projects were open source software projects instead of political platforms for people who arrogantly think that their private political opinion is important enough to overshadow the project they participate in. This will undoubtedly create tensions and will lead to fewer donations, thus having a negative impact on KDE.

It's Pride Month and the organization is doing Pride things, its not that complicated.

> This will undoubtedly create tensions and will lead to fewer donations, thus having a negative impact on KDE.

"undoubtedly" is absurd here. Does KDE really have a stable of consistent transphobes donating? Do they outweigh additional donations from supporting the LGBTQ community?

Regardless, if the only point of KDE were to make money it wouldn't be a non-profit. Extremely passionate people are often passionate about a lot of things beyond just what you want from them. KDE is a community project and that community loves and accepts non-binary people.

Re: KDE at 30

#23

Post by graypegg »

adjfasn47573 wrote: post #8
graypegg wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With all due respect: it is just a picture of a cute lizard. Thinking practically, having a male and female lizard is sort of inconvenient for a mascot, since leaving one out is a message in itself. Having a genderless mascot with art assets ready to go makes practical sense to me.

> since leaving one out is a message in itself Side question: why would having a male or female mascot be "a message in itself"? Why do people want to see a message, and especially a $currentDayPolitics one, in every single thing? A mascot can be a cute mascot without having to represent anything more than exactly that. Just as a random example: Let's say some OG founder of a project had a cute dog named Laila, and t…

I mean it's not a HUGE issue by any means, just sort of inconvenient.

Like, most mascots aren't in gendered pairs normally (like your dog example!), you just have 1 option to represent the thing. People see Laila the dog and think "oh yeah, LailaOS".

But given you have 2 mascots, with 1 being pretty ambiguous, but the other being dressed in a pink dress with bows, it does mean you probably want to use both when presenting KDE, just so you're not accidentally saying "this is the KDE event for men" or "this is the KDE event for women". If you made your mascot the AIGA bathroom symbols, you'd have the same issue.

My thinking about the "right" message is just that... I don't think that's what they want to tell people right now, in our current time. Everyone can use KDE. It's not a historical impact sort of thing.

Again, not a huge issue really. Just seems practical. Hopefully I'm getting that across. Sorry if I'm not.

Re: KDE at 30

#24

Post by thewebguyd »

stusmall wrote: post #15
chekibreki wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lament the times when open source projects were open source software projects instead of political platforms for people who arrogantly think that their private political opinion is important enough to overshadow the project they participate in. This will undoubtedly create tensions and will lead to fewer donations, thus having a negative impact on KDE.

Honestly, when was open source not political? Look at early GNU writing. The topics have change but it being political absolutely have not.

Minor nitpick but s/open source/free software

But yes, the free software movement is political, and the FSF is by all intents a political organization with a specific political goal and message.

Politics is multifaceted, it doesn't purely relate to government either. Politics is how humans decide who gets what, when and how. You can't run a community or organization without politics.

Re: KDE at 30

#25

Post by sham1 »

chekibreki wrote: post #3
Kye wrote: post #2

The master of ceremonies is a proper creature: https://floss.social/@kde/116673618808097094 edit: I appreciate the quality of discussion below, so far.

I lament the times when open source projects were open source software projects instead of political platforms for people who arrogantly think that their private political opinion is important enough to overshadow the project they participate in. This will undoubtedly create tensions and will lead to fewer donations, thus having a negative impact on KDE.

The Free Software community has always been political. Where have you been?

Introducing a non-binary mascot for KDE is no more or less political than for example Richard Stallman demanding that printer drivers should be free, back in the 1980s. And same way the use and preference of the term "open source" over "free software" -- or vice versa -- is also very political because it depends on if one wants to go with the described values or not necessarily want to stand behind them.

The Free software community involves people, and with people come shared values and politics. That's kinda what "community" implies. And if we really want to go into it, given the circumstances of the invention of things like computers, the Internet, etc. it'd be very erroneous to asset that software in general has ever been value-free or non-political. Computing artillery trajectories is political just the same way as promotion of LGBTQ+ people, even if people get more upset about the latter rather than the more kinetic kinds of politics implied by howitzers et al.

Re: KDE at 30

#26

Post by chekibreki »

sham1 wrote: post #25
chekibreki wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lament the times when open source projects were open source software projects instead of political platforms for people who arrogantly think that their private political opinion is important enough to overshadow the project they participate in. This will undoubtedly create tensions and will lead to fewer donations, thus having a negative impact on KDE.

The Free Software community has always been political. Where have you been? Introducing a non-binary mascot for KDE is no more or less political than for example Richard Stallman demanding that printer drivers should be free, back in the 1980s. And same way the use and preference of the term "open source" over "free software" -- or vice versa -- is also very political because it depends on if one wants to go with the…

Your comparison is dishonest and wrong. printer drivers are a piece of software, sexual orientation is completely disconnected from software or technology.

Re: KDE at 30

#27

Post by ACS_Solver »

One of the most impressive and useful free software projects. My first experience was being totally confused by KDE 1 during my first attempts to use Linux, and I'm writing this from my KDE desktop.

Other than the really bad KDE 4 release, the project has consistently been great for me. I've submitted a few smaller patches over the years and that experience was also low friction for a project of this size. KDE is highly customizable, full of power user features but also really simple with its current defaults (looks pretty much like Windows) and generally robust.

Shoutout to some KDE applications like Okular (great document viewer), Kate (solid tech editor), Krusader (double pane file manager) and KolourPaint (a simple image editor even I can use).

Re: KDE at 30

#28

Post by Kye »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #14

I feel quite repulsed by the fact that the first thing you see when opening the post is a huge donation card.

I want to see KDE still improving and keeping up in another 30 years. To me it's no different from a telethon for PBS or a poster for Friends of the Library. Intrusive? From a certain point of view, but it pays the bills.

Re: KDE at 30

#29

Post by YorickPeterse »

chekibreki wrote: post #3
Kye wrote: post #2

The master of ceremonies is a proper creature: https://floss.social/@kde/116673618808097094 edit: I appreciate the quality of discussion below, so far.

I lament the times when open source projects were open source software projects instead of political platforms for people who arrogantly think that their private political opinion is important enough to overshadow the project they participate in. This will undoubtedly create tensions and will lead to fewer donations, thus having a negative impact on KDE.

[flagged]

Re: KDE at 30

#30

Post by sham1 »

chekibreki wrote: post #26
sham1 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Free Software community has always been political. Where have you been? Introducing a non-binary mascot for KDE is no more or less political than for example Richard Stallman demanding that printer drivers should be free, back in the 1980s. And same way the use and preference of the term "open source" over "free software" -- or vice versa -- is also very political because it depends on if one wants to go with the…

Your comparison is dishonest and wrong. printer drivers are a piece of software, sexual orientation is completely disconnected from software or technology.

This implies that the difference actually matters. In both cases there is a political goal behind the actions. Yes, printer driver software itself is very different from sexual and gender orientation, but wanting for the printer drivers to be free is a political statement and principle, and so is the uplift of LGBTQ+ people and celebrations of PRIDE month. Both are political despite being about distinct subject matters.

You can disagree with the politics in question, but to say that FLOSS has no room for politics is itself a political position, leading you to a paradox!

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