URL: http://dot.kde.org/118
3385741/
From: Jos Poortvliet and Danny Allen <>
Dept: keynotes
Date: Monday 02/Jul/2007,  07:15
aKademy 2007: The Keynotes
==========================
aKademy 2007 [http://conference2007.
kde.org/] has kicked off! The
first weekend hosted our user conference, which brought many
talks about
various topics, ranging from very technical to more
practically
oriented, which were spread over two tracks. The tracks were
interweaved
with keynote talks. Read on for the report of the aKademy
2007 keynotes.
I. TROLLTECH
Saturday opened with Lars Knoll, talking about KDE from
the
perspective of a troll [http://trolltech.com/].
Trolltech employs over
50 full-time developers on Qt itself, accompanied by an
assortment of
testers and support personnel. Following the ideas behind
'extreme
programming', Qt employs extensive code reviews and an
incremental
design. Focusing strongly on the API's while letting the
developers work
in loosely defined projects or even fully releasing them on
'creative
friday' - it all fits very well with Open Source ideals and
methods of
development. This way of working is bearing fruit, and Qt
4.4 will bring
us work on multimedia, hardware integration, with Trolltech
even working
with Apple on integrating Webkit as a new, distinct module
in Qt.
Research is going on in the areas of resolution-independent
interfaces,
multi-threading and extensive IPC.
[http://static.kdenews.org/dannya/akademy_trolltech.jpg
]
Yet, Trolltech also has another strong focus: the
community. The
Trolls realize they need to cooperate more, and thus are
trying to
pursue the common interests. By introducing developer blogs,
releasing
early snapshots and having a community manager, they hope to
increase
communication with the community and encourage
contributions. Until now,
KDE developers often worked around limitations in Qt, but in
the future
they could send patches.
This work is bearing fruit, with co-operation with
Pango and
OpenOffice.org developers on a common textlayout engine,
contributed by
Trolltech. Of course, Trolltech is higly committed to KDE,
showing this
by sponsoring developers, events and code. They want more
feedback from,
co-operation with and contributions to the community - and
these can
only bring good things to the Free Software ecosystem.
II. 13 LESSONS FOR THE FREE DESKTOP
Mark Shuttleworth of Canonical (and Ubuntu) fame gave a
keynote
about his vision for Free Software. He presented the Top 13
challenges
the Free Desktop faces from his perspective.
Pretty is a Feature Consistent Packaging Simplified
Licencing Pervasive
Presence Pervasive Support Govaritye pa Russki Great Gadgets
Sensory
Immersion Real-time Collaboration More Organised Community
The Extra
Dimension Granny's New Camera Keeping it Free
Consistent Packaging
Talking about Packaging, he urged developers to re-think
their
procedures and priorities. There are many areas where we
create
different and incompatible systems, like RPM and DEB. Long
ago, in a
time of great flux and fundamental innovation, these
differences where
meaningful and useful. Nowadays, they are just barriers to
broader
adoption of the Free Desktop, and lead to a lot of
duplication and
useless work.
Great Gadgets
Another challenge lies in the rise of new gadgets. A new
generation of
mobile phones, powerful enough for traditional desktop
software are
emerging. Interoperability with the latest digital cameras
and
multimedia devices is becoming more and more important, and
Mark feels
we should do more to bring the two spheres of Asian hardware
engineers
and European and American software developers on board. Asia
is where
the digital innovation is going on, and we should be there.
Sensory Immersion
Also interesting is the merger between the digital and the
real world.
They become more and more connected, and Free Software can
play a role
here. Sound, according to Mark, is crucial here. He gives an
example of
the bush: if you really want to experience one, you should
stand in one,
and close your eyes - the environment will 'talk to you'.
Not the
smartest move in the Darwinian sense, but definitely the way
to a cool
sensory experience. The sounds of everything trying to not
be eaten, and
eating other things can be overwhelming yet.
Other challenges Mark mentions are real-time
co-operation, the
'extra dimension' brought by the latest 3D technology on the
desktop,
and finally, the challenge of keeping Free Software really
'Free'. Mark
says that he is highly committed to this freedom, both in
the 'gratis'
and 'libre' sense, and we should be, too.
[http://static.kdenews.org/dannya/akademy_shuttlew
orth_crowd.jpg]
An interesting talk which became even more so when Mark
suggested
that KDE move to a more predictable (preferably 6 monthly)
schedule.
Mark mentioned that if KDE, GNOME and OpenOffice.org could
agree to a
common, regular release period, the rhythm and beat of
publicity would
be a frightening prospect for proprietary competition. This
certainly
prompted heated discussion, which is still going on. When
KDE 4 is
released later this year, who knows what the exciting future
will bring.
[http://static.kdenews.org/dannya/akademy_aaronvsmark.jpg
]
III. BEAUTIFUL FEATURES
Aaron Seigo held an energising talk named 'Beautiful
Features'.
Starting by mentioning the negative (yet undeserved)
reputation KDE has
in the area of the so-called 'bloat' and associated bad
usability, he
pointed to the many unexperienced users working with KDE
without issue.
However, having a basically usable, complete desktop
isn't enough.
First, you need to make a great First Impression. And the
current KDE
would have given a good impression 5 years ago, but not now.
We need to
start bringing good eyecandy to the desktop, while at the
same time
increasing its usability. A good example are toolbars.
Having many
toolbar buttons doesn't just look bad, it also makes using
the
application less efficient. Developers are used to
complexity, but most
users aren't - they are just not 'wired' that way. Using
images and
ideas from Joga, Aaron told us with what mindset we must
develop
software.
Showing a picture of Charles Darwin, he started to talk
about the
connection between real-life and what happens on a computer.
Using
subtle animation, a computer can feel a lot more natural. Qt
4.3 offers
great features in this area, and we should make use of it.
Effective
use, of course. One second animations make the interface
feel slow,
whilst short, 0.25 second animations become functional.
Aaron's grand
vision of the future, a KDE out-innovating all competitive
desktops,
brought with a lot of humor, inspired many questions, and
even led to
some quotes we won't mention here.
IV. DESKTOP LINUX - THE NEXT PHASE
Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of the Linux Foundation
starts by
mentioning the Linux Desktop Architects meeting at Google's
headquarters. Nobody from KDE was there, so it was a rather
limited
meeting - something clearly went wrong in the communication
area. We ask
him why KDE didn't get any invitations - after all, we
represent the
majority of the Linux Desktop and are working on its future.
Jim told us
there was a serious screwup, and apologizes - next time,
they promise to
get it right. We discover later on that there were a few
invitations
sent, but only to individual developers. Jim is offered the
address of
the KDE e.V., our legal organization, which will ensure the
message will
get through next time.
Then Jim starts to talk about our proprietary
competition, and its
strengths (mostly a bunch of lawyers) and its weaknesses
(less
innovation). What is our situation? Firstly, we grow faster
than our
competition. And we innovate. And we have lower costs. All
this is due
to the way Free Software works, both by increasing
competition and
co-operation. The Free Software market is much more dynamic,
and thus it
offers a much stronger eco-system.
Where does the Linux Foundation come in? Well, aside
from paying
the bills for some high-profile kernel hackers (for example
Linus
Torvalds), they are here to defend us. Our biggest
competitor has a
habit of trying nasty things to continue its monopoly and
sustain the
huge income it has (during the time you read this article,
several
millions are brought in to Redmond). It is spreading fear,
uncertainty
and doubt [http://en.wikipedia
.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt],
trying to get proprietary, non-interoperable standards
everywhere, and
even denying our existence (even though Linux is a
multi-billion dollar
business). The Linux Foundation tries to co-ordinate our
defence, both
in the marketing and the legal area. There are a lot other
organizations
working on these things, like the Software Freedom Law
Center and the
Free Software Foundation. The Linux Foundation mostly tries
to focus on
the long-term, building a defence, for example lobbying for
a reform of
the patent law.
Jim proceeds to talk about the Linux desktop. He begins
with the
image it has, where we're at in that area. He points out
that most talk
is about what's wrong with Linux, what's missing, while
we're already
very good. Not perfect, of course, but what is? We should
focus more on
our strengths, communicate them. He told us how easy it was
to impress
some journalists from big American papers like the Wall
Street Journal
with a Ubuntu live CD.
He finally talks about things that the Linux Foundation
has done,
like the Linux Standards Base (LSB) or the co-operation on
Text Layout
(failing to mention it was Trolltech who donated the bulk of
the initial
code). He also asks KDE to stop locking in users and
applications to our
framework. Partly due to time, we didn't really interpret
and understand
what he meant by this statement.
V. CONCLUSION
The keynotes were fun, interesting and
thought-provoking. Thinking
is good, and most of us like it, so we are grateful to the
speakers for
joining aKademy 2007, and sharing their perspectives.
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