Mario Fux

We plan to close the Doodle for the Randa Meetings date selection at the end of this week. So if you plan to participate please vote on the date that best fits you! And keep in mind two things:

• You might bring your partner or family with you to Randa. We started this last year and people really liked it (and Randa is a nice holiday place in the Alps too – near to the world-known Zermatt).
• If you see a lot of well-known names on the Doodle don’t think you shouldn’t be part of this. We always want to see new people with fresh energy and inspiring thoughts and ideas in Randa.

So please add yourself as quickly as possible or write me an email (fux AT kde) or ping me on IRC (unormal).

I’m close to being back to KDE joy and work. Just one last exam on Thursday and I’m done with my final exams. But let’s concentrate on the subject.

For the topic of the Randa Meetings this year it’s planned to focus on tablet/smartphone and touch platforms and make our software fit for them (e.g. touch ui for Kdenlive or Android CI) and work further on already adapted software (e.g. KDE Connect, GCompris or KPhotoAlbum). And e.g. the Visual Design Group of KDE might help to design these new UIs (e.g. a tablet-ui for KRecipes where you can recook all the great dishes of the recent Randa Meetings 😉 or make them better. Or what are your ideas for this topic?

So if you think you should be part of this endeavour and you want to come to Randa this year please go to Doodle and select the start date that fits you best. The dates that can be selected are the possible start dates of the respective Randa Meetings. Just add another 6 days till you need to leave Randa again ;-).

Oh and please forward this information to potential other participants and people you think should come as well.

Konqi – the friendly dragon is our well-known mascot. There is the traditional one which didn’t change much over the years and was even created in plush. And on our historic KDE clipart page you find some versions of Konqi and his friend Katie.

There is even a moving Konqi and if you’re talented enough you might create your very own Konqui.

Then there is a collection of new Konqis by Tyson Tan. (And this is not the place to discuss which ones are nicer and you like more. As it’s my blog I dare to say that I like both versions very much. So thanks Tyson for the new ones and whoever did the historic version (after Kandalf?;-)).

But what about the question in the title of this blog post? Today I found some time to read about the “Plasma Sprint 2015” by Ken Vermette (kver). Thanks Ken for this nice outside (and now inside 😉 perspective. Ken is one of several people of our Visual Design Group. Under this blog post I read a comment with the question “why are there no women in the picture?” (another and IMHO very important question but not the topic if this blog post, so for another time!) and later a small discussion about Konqi and his friend Katie and why a female version and why a pink dress and eyelashes. Unfortunately the comments are gone now (although they were very well written and had some good ideas and perspectives).

And as this is a topic (gender research) that interests me very much I had a short discussion with my wife how it would and could be possible to draw a female Konqi without using any gender stereotypes. We didn’t find an answer.

But in the end the answer is actually quite simple (thanks again Ken and his commenters for the insight) and even visible on this picture: KDE Dragons Ensemble.

Konqi is female, male and nothing at all. Just take a look at the ensemble above and you’ll see that there are a lot of different Konqis, different colors and some might be male, some female and some something else. So there’s no specific need for an additional female version of Konqi as we’ve already female Konqis. But there is always need for new Konqis…

But the ultimate proof (at least IMHO) gave my son when I asked him (he is a huge fan of Konqi and I’m completely innocent about this fact 😉 if Konqi is female or male? He answered: “It’s Konqi.”

PS: Another question could be (for bikesheding purposes ;-): if our mascot’s name is “Konqi” or “Konqui”. (Please note the irony, sarcasm or rhetorical character of this question ;-).

There was another successful IRC meeting about KDE CI before xmas and you can read about it in the summary. For our third meeting we’d like to do another Doodle to get as many people from as many timezones as possible.

And in general we’re making quite some progress. Most of the work is currently done for a QStandardPaths upstream patch to get our apps running under MacOSX and Windows and there is even more to read about the amazing work our SoK student Scarlett Clark is doing.

Oh and don’t forget to help our new member GCompris to get some new looks.

Our first meeting was quite successful. Something like 10 people participated. We discussed and introduced the current state of the CI system and got an introduction to the current Season of KDE project which Scarlett Clarks is working on and about the Mac OS X CI system. Afterwards we talked about what everybody could do and then decided what do to next and who works on what. Some work items are:

• Evaluation of different CI solutions
• Different platforms like Windows and Android
• Continue with the current work

So there is progress (just today I saw huge progress on the Mac front) and I’d like to thank all the people who help for their time and dedication.

Interested people should read the summary (including a full IRC log) for more information.

And if you don’t have (yet) a KDE Account and thus can’t check the logs, mail me and I’ll send them to you.

Next IRC meeting is going to happen on Tuesday, 16th of December 2014, 8 pm CET (UTC+1). So if you want to help, see you there, speak up on kde-devel or ping me (unormal) on freenode IRC.

First about the upcoming IRC meeting about KDE’s Continuous Integration (CI) system. The Doodle resulted in the 2nd of December us our meeting day. We’ll see you in #kde-devel at 20.00 (8pm) CET (UTC+1). See this notepad about the agenda and Co.

And now about the way you can contribute to KDE even though you can’t program:

• Do you like to write thrilling articles about KDE and its software?
• Do you like to interview people?
• Are you an English native speaker and spot writing errors on first sight?
• Would you like to take care of regular and repetitive jobs like e.g. the beta release announcements?
• Do you know something about promo work and marketing?

Then we want you! Come to our mailing list or ping me on IRC in #kde-promo and tell us on what you’d like to work, what you’d like to improve and what your ideas are.

As a first task you can read the Promo and Dot page. As it’s a wiki and these pages might be outdated please fixed them and ask on the kde-promo mailing list if you’re not sure.

This blog post is about another possibility to contribute to KDE. It’s about taking work off Ben’s shoulders and about fixing the bus factor for our great CI (Continuous Integration) system.

I’d like to start a series of weekly or bi-weekly (to be decided) IRC meetings to coordinate the work to understand, change and enhance our CI system and therefore we need a first date. So if you’re interested please add yourself to this Doodle (think about different timezones!).

Prospective agenda for the IRC meeting:

• Ben: Short introduction to KDE CI
• Everybody: Short introduction incl. their skills and wishes for KDE CI
• Ben: What needs to be changed
• Everybody: Work on a roadmap and distribute work till next meeting
• Everybody: Determine date for the next IRC meeting

This is your chance to help KDE to enhance the code quality and spread to even more platforms and thus bring our great software to even more computers and people. But if you prefer to support us in another way their is our ongoing fundraiser. Thanks for considering to help us!

And one last thing about the KDE CI system: we’ve a page about CI on the Frameworks wiki too.

Short Personal note: My diploma thesis was finally accepted (and thus again thanks to everybody who wished me all the best for my thesis!) and thus I’ve a bit more time (to coordinate some stuff in KDE ;-). But I still need to learn and pass the exams (and there is some other big private change in my life soon to come ;-).

As some of you probably already noticed I was much less active in KDE in the last weeks after the Randa Meetings (which were a big success and great: thanks all for this!) and I will disappear even more for the coming months.

Yesterday I had a discussion about my diploma thesis and what shall I say: it was ripped apart :-(. So I need to collect all my remaining energy and try to focus and try to safe my thesis. And if I should be able to get it accepted at the end of October the learning will start for the final exam phase from January to March 2015.

I’d have so many thoughts about KDE at the moment, so many ideas I’d like to write about and tell you and so many things I’d like to work on for and in KDE (you should see the pile of notes I made during the last months…) but this needs to wait now.

But expect me back, the earliest somewhen around the beginning of 2015. Good bye ;-(…

Just some more hours and the Randa Meetings 2014 fundraiser will close. It will end at 23.59 UTC, afterwards you need to go to the normal KDE donation page to support us ;-). So may I ask you one last time this year to help us and give something. It’s high time and we can still achieve a big jump on the progress bar with your help!

In the picture below you see the group photo of the Randa Meetings 2011 in the form of a jigsaw puzzle. The year and place when the KDE Frameworks 5 planning and work started which achieved an interim stop with the first stable release yesterday. Some great (KConfig, KArchive, Sonnet, ThreadWeaver, etc.) Qt addons for you Qt developers and for many different platforms.

Jigsaw puzzle of the group picture 2011

And guess what we plan to work on this year in Randa? Porting even more KDE applications to KDE Frameworks 5. The KDE Edu group will be there too and will port its collection of educational software to KF5. Software for kids and people that want to learn and understand the world. Understand why it’s important to be free in your decision to choose the tools you use to create great things and communicate it to the world. All these are things we work on for your and our freedom.

So take a look at your wallet and give what you can and thus help to make another great edition of the Randa Meetings possible where we create even better software for you.

The Randa Meetings 2014 fundraiser is quite successful and I want to thank everybody who already donated or supported us. But there is still some time till the 9th of July and thus we have still some time to convince more people for this good cause.

So please, remove the dust from your blog or social media account and spread the word and convince your friends and environment to give something. Just ask them politely and the worst you get is a “no”.

You can tell everybody that they will get even better KDE software, software that runs on almost all platforms and in the future on even more and software that everybody can use and share. Concretely this means that at the end of September 2014 you will get an updated KDE Book that helps you to work with KDE Frameworks 5, a more stable Kdenlive, a first port of KMyMoney to KF5, a glimpse at Amarok 3, another beta of GCompris based on Qt, a reinvigorated Gluon Games Framework, at least a first idea of the KDE SDK and much more. Isn’t that worth it?

And we will try something new this year at Randa to keep you, dear supporter, better informed about what happens at the meetings. Everyday you can check this work page and see in a short and concise form what everybody has done and achieved.

So thanks for donating, spreading the word and supporting us!