KDE 4.8 release party in Malaga

If everything goes as expected, KDE will publish a major release on January 25th. Our KDE 4 series keep improving with the 4.8 version shipped with many new features.

After releasing two beta versions and another two candidate releases (check the announcements for further information), the moment to feel a new freedom experience with KDE 4.8 Platform, Workspaces and Applications has come and we want to celebrate it all over the world.

If you are around Malaga, Spain, on Friday Jan 27th, come to our release party and bring your family and friends with you. We will have a great time. Please add yourself to the list (if you are a KDE member) or send me an e-mail, so we can make an accurate reservation in La Garrafa restaurant.

Should we go for another Desktop Summit?

During more than a year, back in 2008 - 2009, I invested a good amount of hours, along with many friends, local contributors and companies, KDE and GNOME members, local public administrations and universities, sponsors, etc. to make true an attractive and risky idea: co-hosting GUADEC and Akademy in Gran Canaria. Two years later, another great group of people did exactly the same to take that idea further, creating a better defined product, the Desktop Summit.

The last few months both communities are discussing about the results of that effort and the challenges we have ahead us. I would like to share my vision. I've found tons of arguments to support it. It is pretty clear to me. I've just written what I think are the most relevant ones.

1. I've written in the past my concerns about keep laying most of the organization tasks on volunteers and pretending at the same time to celebrate a big and high quality event. That is simply impossible. Every time we get the best we can give. The question is if that enough to achieve our goals in the following years. Do we have other options? Our communities deserve and demand a well organized event. That takes a lot of resources and people. I have no doubt that sharing the organization tasks have made us more efficient.
2. The Desktop Summit is far from perfect. But both, GUADEC and Akademy are not either. Promoting the idea that globally we loose more that we gain by joining efforts is not accurate.
3. This joint conference is, by far, the biggest example of cooperation between two free software communities in history. It is an example, one more, of the idea that has bringing us here. Together we can do much more and much better. Supporting that this principle only works within our communities do not make sense to me. This is an universal principle.
4. During the past two editions, there haven't been any single key issue that could not be solved in the future by representatives from both communities with effort and honest negotiation. We are walking through an unexplored field. We have done many mistakes and many more will come. This is a well known situation for both, GNOME and KDE. We know we can handle it if we have a clear common goal. We've done it in the past within our communities and we can do it during the next Desktop Summit too.
5. KDE and GNOME boards have came to basic agreements that ensure a fair event for both communities in most basic aspects. Instead of concentrating our efforts on going 50-50 in every single detail, we should be putting our hands on multiplying the impact of our current efforts in every way.
6. From the economic point of view, we have a better chance to succeed together than by our own. This might not be true in every Desktop Summit for both communities, but in the medium term I'm sure the Desktop Summit will be more profitable than the addition of both, Akademy and GUADEC.
7. Our communities are mature. Both, KDE and GNOME have a well defined identity. We have a clear view of who we are and what we want. But most of the people out there don't know it. In fact, most of the people out there do not know we exist. We develop two great desktops but less than 2% of the market use it. Unless something dramatically change, we won't become relevant players in the next few years. We simply will face another "this will be the Free Desktop Year", once more. Our contributors, our developers, our users, deserve a different status quo. This event is, by far, the best opportunity we have to induce that change.
8. In order to increase our impact, we need to reach a wider audience. Our current efforts should be complemented with media coverage. The Desktop Summit is the most attractive product we can offer them to help us.
9. Having a joint conference do not put in risk our own branding. Fear is what is behind that idea. Fear makes us become conservative. Innovation, means exactly the opposite. Yes, the Desktop Summit is, somehow, about innovation.
10. Being conservative with less than 2% of market share, having a good product like we both, GNOME and KDE have, is a huge failure in many aspects. Not trying seriously to change that situation is assuming we belong to our projects just for our own interest. The current situation is totally unfair, not just for our communities, but for every single user out there. Having a great product is not enough. We have to do our best for people to know it and, hopefully, use it. Nobody will do it for us.
11. KDE and GNOME relation is not just about cooperation but about competition. Introducing this second aspect in a natural way during the Desktop Summit is good, very good. I would said that is even necessary. We just have to agree on the red lines. We can do it.
12. GUADEC and Akademy have a different structure. The Desktop Summit cannot replicate both. The structure of an event must serve the defined goals by the organizers with the available resources. GUADEC/Akademy and the Desktop Summit do not have exactly the same goals. Once we understand this, the structure conflict becomes an affordable problem. I like to think that we want something new, something bigger and, in the medium term, much better than what we have now.
13. The Desktop Summit takes a whole week. There is plenty of time for accomplishing GNOME and KDE self expectations and needs.
14. Yes, becoming mainstream means assuming sacrifices. We have to face the challenge of keeping that cool sense of friendship and personal contact we have in GUADEC/Akademy. I think there are ways of doing it. To enforce this, I want to say that I support the idea of doing the Desktop Summit every two years, instead of every year. I understand we cannot have it all. We cannot satisfy everybody during the Desktop Summit...but neither during GUADEC/Akademy.
15. Instead of dividing efforts, by celebrating the same year GUADEC/Akademy and the Desktop Summit (like some have proposed) I would increase the impact of the Desktop Summit by also hosting other desktops/distribution events like XFCE, OpenSUSE, Fedora, Linux Mint, Mageia, ODF, X.org.......Unity, Trinity (yes, why not?), etc. We have already taken the most difficult decisions.
16. We are in the position of incubating a movement towards Freedom in the mobile world by inviting key communities and stakeholders to join us under the Desktop Summit umbrella. At least it is worth trying.

For all the above, and many more arguments, I do not agree with those who want to stop celebrating the Desktop Summit, but I do not agree either with those who want to basically keep the Desktop Summit as a KDE and GNOME joint event. I'm one of those who think that we should move further, leading others with our same principles to share our effort and rewards.

What we did in Gran Canaria and Berlin is not the Desktop Summit we deserve, the one I want. I see them as steps in the right direction. Let's take the next one.

Business around AGPL software? Oh yeah.....

I've heard many times to executives say that AGPL is a license incompatible with business. This is a well spread idea specially in the web world.

A few years ago a friend of mine, a visionary, Gonzalo Aller, from Fotón SI, the oldest Spanish Free Software company,  told me that AGPL is the GPL of the web world. He tried to convince me to put that license in a web project I was involved with. I thought he was crazy, like many times before (and later). I was one of the ignorants who used to see AGPL as business unfriendly.

Like many times before, little by little, I changed my mind and I got convinced, once again, that license define conditions but never determine business. Business is more related to having good ideas, taking smart decisions, execute them correctly and put your hart on it, and not so much about license.

This statement is backed up by many examples. The following projects:

• CiviCRM
• Zarafa
• Gitorious
• Launchpad
• ProcessMaker

and many more are AGPL based Libre Software projects run by companies that build services around the product, successfully.

We have a new example, announced just today. OwnCloud Inc is born to support OwnCloud, a KDE project based on AGPL. Good luck and happy business!

Libre Software Communities and Universities: talk at La Laguna University

On September 19th I planned to give a talk in La Laguna College, Tenerife, Canary Islands. The idea was to promote involvement in Free Software Community projects, like KDE, among students and teachers.

Due to a problem on my trip to Tenerife from La Palma (my mom's car decided to stay in La Palma instead of taking the ship to Tenerife with me) I had to cancel the talk the day before.

Since I visiting my family for Christmas in the Canary Islands, I will be able to give the talk next Monday, December 19th, at 18:00 hours (local time), at the ETSIIT of La Laguna College. Once again, the Libre Software Office of La Laguna College organices it.

You can check the slides of this talk, which I also did in Malaga's college a few weeks ago.

Libre Software Communities and Universities

View more presentations from Agustin Benito Bethencourt

Link to the official announcement done by the ULL Free Software Office.

Remember that this college have about one thousand KDE desktops deployed in their computer labs for students. Their maintenance is done by the Free Software Office (ULL's OSL).

OpePyME (OpenSME) is the most relevant Free Software applications catalog for companies published in Spanish. It is also a OSL project. Their technicians receive the requests, test the applications, categorize and publish them in the catalaog. They also have a Linkedin group (OpenPyME) with almost 800 members to answer questions.

My experience in an install party.... after so long.

Yesterday I went to an Install Party in Málaga. It's was back in 2005 when I attended to the previous one. It took place in La Casa Invisible, a well know place because of the activities organized there related with free software, and free culture, among others. I friend of mine, Gabriel Ochoa, was the main organizer.

I went there with a friend of mine who wanted to try GNU/Linux for the first time in her PC. Since the Party goal wasn't to install Ubuntu, I didn't push my friend to install KDE. It would be unpolite. But it wasn't necessary.

I took my netbook with me (Acer Aspire One, the first model with 512 MB RAM and 8 Gb HD) with Debian + KDE (Plasma Netbook) and it was a huge success. Nobody knew about it so I ended up explaining to a couple of people how to install it.

It was my first experience with Unity and I must confess that I liked it, which it is not a surprise since I'm a big fan of clean desktops and shortcuts. My friend loved it to. Somehow the Party took me back to previous days where I used to screw up my computer trying all kind of things, since I had technicians hired who fixed my computer every time. Oh man, poor guys. I used to torture them so frecuently ....

So my conclusion is that we need a lot of promo actions (no news here right?) because our desktop is pretty and attract a lot of attention instantly. Here in the south of Spain GNOME and Ubuntu are very popular so there's a lot to do. My second conclusion is that Unity is a good competitor so I guess we have a third player in this business. Welcome Unity. Let's kick some proprietary desktops ass.

KDE eV Sprint in Berlin

The KDE eV Sprint started yesterday for me, waking up early for preparing all my stuff. I had to unpacked my winter cloth since this autumn has been soft in Malaga and I haven't traveled much lately. My plane to Madrid arrived so late that I had to run to take the one to Berlin, so obviously, my bag didn't make it. So Berlin received me with 0ºC and I had no clothing. Not a good start.

On Friday night most of the attendees to the eV Sprint met the developers from the Mobile sprint. Albert, Aleix and Pau from KDE Spain were there. Unfortunately I couldn't make it since I decided to buy some cloth for the following day. Thanks God my bag was waiting for me when I came back to the hotel on Saturday night.

Day 1 of the KDE e.V. Sprint was very productive. We pretty much accomplished every task planned. The second day (Sunday) we worked on more complicated tasks. As usual, we ordered pizza to finish everything on time. Both nights we ended up eating Arabic food (From a Syrian and a Persian restaurant). The overall Sprint went well. On Monday, Stuart Jarvis and myself worked during a few hours in the KDE office in Berlin. We had Italian food at lunch (no German food this time although we did had some German beer).We had the chance to talk to KDE Interns and also with a FSFe employer. As you probably know, we share the office with them. I liked the place, by the way.

On Monday afternoon I had a coffee with Gil Forcada, who just moved to Berlin. At night I had dinner with Pedro Jurado Maqueda, a long time KDE contributor from Seville, Spain, that is also working in Berlin as System Administrator. Thanks Pedro for your hospitality.

As expected, it was a busy and productive long weekend. I'm already looking forward to see many of the attendees again at FOSDEM 2012, in February.

KDE Organizational Network Program structure

The Organizational Network Program is divided into three subprograms:

1. KDE Organizational Network Program Guest: basic level
2. KDE Organizational Network Program Membership: intermediate level
3. Patron Forum

    Depending on the evolution of the network, more levels can be added. Each level with take into consideration the nature of the three basic targets. Each subprogram offer different kind of networking activities and implies different requirements and commitments.

    The general idea from KDE perspective is that the differences between the first two subprograms, Organizational Network Program Guest and Organizational Network Program Membership are low, while the Patron Forum is a little more that the top level subprogram, that include some extra services.

    The KDE ON can also be described as a business opportunity KDE offers to organizations related to our project, linked to our community and our software.

The KDE Organizational Network Program is based in networking

    KDE Organizational Network Program is a networking based service associated to our community and our software with the idea of building a network of organizations around us that, through a structured program, build new relations among them thanks to the creation of an adequate environment. That environment will be possible to build because of:

• The involvement of KDE members with experience in two areas:
• Community management and development.
• The field where the organizations belong (Education, business and non-profits).
• The experience KDE have in key areas like
• building communication channels.
• community decision making procedures.
• mentoring programs.
• organizing events.
• Existence of a Core Group of organizations already interested in building such a network. Most of them have a very strong relation with KDE actually. Some of them are Patrons.
• KDE support to the Program.

    KDE Organizational Network Guest/Member Program are networking (sub)programs, while the Patron Forum is an institutional/political/commercial program, so it has a different nature. Each subprogram is described in following sections.

    KDE  ON Guest/Member subprograms must be seen as a two stop journey to become part of KDE. By becoming a Guest, the organization will have the opportunity to build relations with KDE, other Program Guests and Members. Every networking activity will have a digital nature.

    If the evaluation is positive, KDE will offer to the organization the chance to become a Member of the Program. If the organization accepts, it will participate in further activities. Several of them are physical.

     KDE  ON Guest/Member subprograms are designed for three different type of organizations:

1. Education
2. Business
3. Non-profit

    Some of the activities and procedures are common to those three, but some will be different.

Please remember that this articles is just the latest of a series (7 more articles). Please read the previous ones to fully understand the ideas proposed above.

All the above are personal ideas, even though they are written in third person. Do not take this as a KDE strategy or Plan. They are not.

What is the KDE Program?

Executives find valuable to become part of a common network that allow them to open their organizations to new markets, more opportunities in current markets, new products, services and talent. KDE can offer them such a worldwide network formed by many organizations.

In order to do it, KDE build a structured Program based on the following global principles:

• Networking as a major value to build self-sustaining cooperative system.
• Meritocracy and compromise.
• Mentoring.
• Single contact point for every organization.
• Think global, act locally.
• Scalability, depending on the organization dimension and expectations.
• Building the field first, creating the rules, and then, let the players play.

The KDE Program(*) is the result of our determination to create a global network formed of organizations committed to KDE related principles, technologies, products and services. It also is:

• A structured project to add value to KDE, while increasing market opportunities for every member through coordinated networking  activities.
• A way for KDE to connect with end users through new organizations.
• A new approach for supporting KDE in a way every member gets, not just the result of our work, our software, but also the knowledge that allows us to create it, so they can learn and add it to their production process.
• A channel to introduce KDE into new markets through a worldwide network of organizations that actively contribute to it.
• An opportunity to recognize and reward those organizations that have historically supported KDE.
• A new approach to take free software communities beyond their current influence area.
  
  
  (*) Remember that I am still looking a good name for the Program

KDE Program: Mission and Goals

The last weeks I've been putting some effort in thinking about how KDE (and any free software community) can build a network of organizations taking in consideration the weaknesses and strengths KDE (or any other FLOSS project) have.

I wrote a few posts about previous ideas I thought it should be taken in consideration before putting effort in defining a formal design for a Program that leads us to the discussion and execution of an action plan.

Now the idea is to define the Mission and Goals of such a program. In order to understand why of the following ideas, I recommend reading previous posts about this topic in my blog:

Some preious ideas about building new ecosystems around free software projects (I, II, III, IV and V)

Mission

Since we develop and publish KDE for free (as free beer), organizations usually do not understand well where our value is and how can they take advantage of it in a way our ecosystem is nourished, which is essential to keep the wheel spinning. Most organizations, especially corporations, associate value with money. This classical, product oriented, point of view must change in order for us to be recognized as we think we deserve. We can improve the way we communicate our value associating networking (as a service) to our software.


So the KDE Program Mission is:

1. Helping organizations to know us, what we do and how we do it, so they appreciate the value of KDE and support our action.
2. Giving them something valuable associated with our software, affordable for KDE, that allow them to increase the chance to grow.

Both ideas can be summarized:

The mission of such a project is to create a global, sustainable and structured network of organizations that shares KDE principles and interests.


KDE Program Goals

Major Goal

The major goal of the KDE Program (KDEP) is to establish the conditions and develop the actions needed to create a network of organizations committed to KDE principles and goals. This network will evolve in an ecosystem by increasing the relations among them and with the KDE community.

This network/ecosystem will be defined to grow, not just in number but in value, satisfying its members shared goals.

Other goals

Other goals of the KDEP are:

• Present KDE as an attractive opportunity for organizations to become part of a global network that will benefit all of us.
• Increase the number of organizations involved with KDE.
• Improve KDE’s relationships with other organizations.
• Create new business opportunities for those organizations involved in this Program.
• Support local teams. Relations grow better in common environments.
• Open job opportunities for KDE developers.
• Increase the number of new developers so we make sure the new ecosystem can grow.
• Spread KDE principles and vision to other organizations.
• Feed KDE with third party experiences, knowledge, technologies, etc.

One of the things that is taking me some time is to look for a proper name for such a program. Any help is welcome.

KDE at the Libre Software World Conference 2011

Libre Software World Conference (LSWC'11) is the most important commercial event related with Free Software in Spain. It is organized by ASOLIF, the National Federation of SME's Free Software Associations. As you might remember, I was its Manager Director just a few weeks ago.


Last year it was organized in Málaga, Andalusia, and this year it will take place in Zaragoza. The regional Association from the region, CESLA, along with the Municipality, play a key role in the organization of the event.


This edition includes the Joomla Day and the Python Day, which will help bringing to the LSWC'11 even more people than last year, specially technicians, which I think is really good. The event will take place on November 9th and 10th.The following two days, Zentyal celebrates it first Zentyal Summit in the same place. Zentyal contributors , partners, users and employees from all over the world will meet there to take this Free Software Business Server one step further. A lot of good news will come out of it.

Representing KDE Spain, I will give a conference called KDE as a solution in business environments. It is scheduled on November 10th at 10:30 a.m. Although there are several activities at the same time, I expect a lot of people attending since it take place in the central room. That is pressure :-)

As you can see in the program, more than 70 talks and workshop are scheduled. More than 100 companies will be there and more than 500 atendees will participate those two days.

By the way, Microsoft is sponsoring the event.