Feb
1
Sebastian Kuegler of KDE recently agreed to give an interview, the first in what I hope will be a series. His responses are well thought out and detailed. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
1. For the readers unfamiliar with you, tell us about yourself and the work you do for KDE.
I’m a 31 year-old German, living in the Netherlands with my girl-friend and my two chinchillas. My KDE history involves coding on Guidance, a set of system administration tools written in Python using PyKDE and PyQt. My current coding activities for KDE focus on Plasma, KDE4’s new desktop shell.
During aKademy 2005, I’ve started with the help of some others the KDE Marketing Working Group. With this group we have improved KDE’s PR work consistently over the past years. In 2006, I was elected into the Board of Directors of the KDE e.V., the foundation that is backing the KDE Community legally, financially and administratively.
2. How was the Release Event? What stood out the most to you?
The most amazing thing during the late Release Event was that KDE, while traditionally a bit Europe-centric, has an impressive presence in America as well. The event in Mountain View almost felt a bit like our yearly get-together Akademy. From a community-building and -strengthening aspect, it was a huge success. I also got to meet some people I’ve never met before. This kind of event is vital to nourishing a community and was a great success.
On the other hand, the event was a great opportunity to show what KDE offers right where the industry is. We got quite some people from companies interested in KDE, and we showed well what KDE has to offer, and how to make use of it.
The event itself was well-balanced between community and industry. Something which I particularly liked is that we kept it open, we gave everybody, including the press a look into the “KDE kitchen”. We don’t have anything to hide, this is how we work.
3. You have mentioned being thrilled at how KDE has improved its processes. Would you mind elaborating?
Sure. While the most apparent presence of KDE is often screenshots and surely new software for those who want to try the new version, during the last two years we were also able to improve the organisational side of things. Project governance is an important aspect for Free Software projects, and KDE has managed to make itself more sustainable and stable from this point of view.
2.5 years ago, the members of the KDE e.V. decided to formalise certain aspects of the KDE Community. This was achieved by creating a set of so-called Working Groups, small committees that deal with a field of interest within KDE. The initial set of Working Groups was the Technical Working Group (more on that later), the Human Computer Interaction Working Group, dealing with usability, accessibility and artwork and the Marketing Working Group.
The Technical Working Group didn’t work out very well. The members, that had been elected by the KDE e.V. members, all core developers of KDE didn’t have
enough time left to formally deal with issues related to release management and decision-making in technical matters. The only real result of the Technical Working Group was the decision to use CMake as a build system for KDE (back then, there were 3 buildsystems in use). CMake turned out to be an excellent choice for KDE, of course, but the TWG itself didn’t last that long. After some discussions about the form and members of the TWG, we have decided to put back this problem into the hands of the wider community, calling for people to take responsibility and form a release team.
Some people stood up to take this responsibility, a mailing list was set up and the release team started its work. Most important aspect was to get on the release train towards KDE 4.0. It turns out that this Release Team works really well. It’s very open, everyone can subscribe to its mailinglist and follow discussions, and its members are respected so the decisions that are being made are followed by the rest of the community.
The HCI Working Group has been working continuously to integrate usability and accessibility engineering into the KDE development process. Recently, there is for example hardly any developer meeting without a usability expert present. This way, we make sure that usability and accessibility are not applied as an aferthought, but are one of the bases of the technical design process. To make applications more consistent, and developing easier for the hackers, the HCI group is also working on human interface guidelines, which explain how certain aspects of our user interfaces should be designed. The Oxygen team, which is responsible for artwork in KDE is also flourishing. We can see that KDE has gotten a new, contemporary and modern look through the last 3 years.
The Marketing Working Group has taken care of good relationships with the press, has fostered the idea of “Guerilla Marketing”, promotional activities carried out by the wider community, and has also provided guidance for those that want to get involved with promoting KDE. One of the most important achievements of the Marketing Working Group is being accepted by the developers, and creating a strong brand which is based on fairness, honesty and other elements of the Free Culture spirit. More tangible improvements are materials telling about KDE (remember Troy Unrau’s “The Road to KDE 4″ series of articles?) and generally improved communication channels with the press.
This all shows one thing well, KDE as a Free Software community is turning into a community of Free Culture people. “Just coding” is not enough to spread Free Software, making Free Software a success is something that requires a multi disciplinary team working together well. That is what we see happening in KDE.
4. How can everyday users help with “Guerilla Marketing”? Is there an easy way to step in and help?
Yes, there are many easy ways to help. The most obvious is helping people installing KDE, answering questions on forums, IRC and other media. Lately, we’re getting also an increased amount of requests for speakers. Often local LUGs are interested in talks by KDE knowledgeable people. It might sound a bit scary, representing KDE in your local LUG, but it’s really what KDE is about. Everybody comes from a local community, that is where our grassroots are. People often don’t think that they are entitled to represent KDE, but that’s just not the case at all. In fact, the marketing and promo team have a hard time finding enough speakers for all events. Slides are usually available, so it doesn’t need all that much preparation.
There are of course many more areas where you can support KDE. Writing articles for magazines is a way to even earn some money, helping with maintenance of websites, submitting KDE-related news to your local newssites, maybe even writing for them, translating news (or of course applications), helping out at events and fairs, there’s lots to be done, much of which doesn’t involve writing a single line of code, but it’s just asimportant.
5. I was excited to see the new release schedule for KDE. How did this come about?
Well, we obviously need a release schedule, otherwise our developers don’t get an idea of when their code should be release-ready, and of course not knowing when to release doesn’t have a great effect on motivation. That’s the immediate reason why we worked on a release schedule quickly after 4.0.0 was released, but our release plans are really two-fold. The next 6 months with a monthly bugfix update and 4.1 in July are only part one. Part two is that we agreed to release a feature release every 6 months.
This is where public perception and our own didn’t really match lately. Looking into the past, KDE had a pretty steady release rhythm where we released a new feature version (3.x) at least every 8 months. Unfortunately, this was found to unpredictable by some external parties, especially distributors, so we thought how we could accommodate them better. At the same time, we need to have a close look at our development cycle. How long will people need to stabilise the codebase? How long does it take to implement new features? What part of our development time between releases do we want to spend feature-frozen? All those are important questions. First and foremost, we want to develop software, if we don’t, we don’t need to release at all. So our development process is what should dictate release schedules.
If we have a look at how the KDE 3.x cycle worked, we can get a clue of what’s to be expected for 4.x. With 3.0 we had put the pieces necessary that are necessary to build great applications in place. It turned out that we could release more than once a year, and with every release provide exciting changes and nice new and updated applications.
Now with 4.0 delivering even better frameworks, we can build on those. Having a stable basis in place makes it possible for us to cut down the time between
releases — because changes don’t need to be done under the hood. Oversimplified, we don’t need to change much but can build exciting new stuff on top of our frameworks. The issue how long a feature takes to be implemented becomes less important. Our community has reached a size where there will always be the bigger thing that just won’t make it into the release. We should learn to live with that.
On the other hand, we seem to have lost a bit of our traction with larger Linux distributions. We hope we can address parts of that with being more predictable. I don’t think that merely a release cycle is to be blamed for that, but really, we are putting the pieces together to make living with KDE easier for our commercial partners. We have emphasised focus in UI aspects such as usability and artwork, but we’re also more actively working together with distributions and try to engage them more in our development process. The release schedule, as an example, has been created after consideration of some distributions.
6. Are there any misconceptions about KDE 4 you see regularly and would like to address?
The most striking misconception I saw in the review is that people don’t really get what KDE is. I saw quite some bad press that didn’t go any further than “The panel lost some features”, but without really having a look at what changed. The Panel, belonging to Plasma is a completely new component. As that, it’s not exactly surprising that it has not yet reached feature parity. It’s quite a pity though to see that some journalists don’t look any further than that. We have some terrific new applications, our frameworks are greatly improved (which will make for many more new and improved applications in the near future). KDE 4.0.0 is really what it’s called. A dot-oh-oh release. Some people said that we should have waited half a year and released 4.0 as 4.1, but those don’t seem to understand how the Free Software development process works.
Having 4.0.0 out gives it more exposure to users, but also shows some other components down the stack that they really need to catch up. We’re raising the bar of what’s being done with desktop operating systems, this is not free of pain. Plasma for example exposes some bugs in video drivers and other toolkits such as GTK — simply because we’re the first to make extensive use of ARGB visuals (or, for the less technical inclined, transparency effects). Hadn’t we released 4.0.0, nobody would’ve tested their drivers with it. Result, if you then release 6 months later: the bugs are still there, simply because no one has run into them (well, except for us developers, but we are only so many). See, we’re not an island, we cannot create all great stuff only by ourselves. We’re highly dependent on projects like X.org, the Linux kernel and of course a lot of Freedesktop components. And some of those just don’t accept bug reports that come from a beta release of KDE. It’s a chicken-egg situation, if you want.
So sure, 4.0.0 is not as polished as anyone (especially ourselves) would have wanted it to be. It certainly is a usable desktop, if not up to all the goodness of 3.5.8 (which is what people seem to be used to, which shows that we do deliver quality work). We knew from the beginning that the development cycle leading up to a stable KDE 4 release would be painful. The fact that the definition of stable varies widely within our userbase and the expectations of everyone doesn’t make it any easier.
And then, most of the issues people have been complaining about are already fixed (and will be released in early February with KDE 4.0.1). Others will certainly be addressed with KDE 4.1, coming this summer. And of course, we always have our good old proven 3.5 branch, which is the perfect fit for those that cannot or do not want to live on the bleeding edge. KDE 3.5 is still fully supported, we’ll be releasing an update with quite some improvements especially in the KDE-PIM components in February. KDE-PIM in KDE 4 is scheduled to be released along with 4.1, making this release much more attractive to the users that are a bit more hesitant than our average developer.
7. What in the upcoming 4.1 release excites you the most?
I think the part that most people — just like me — are really looking forward to is an improved Plasma desktop shell. It really is the most visible part of the desktop. The good news here is that Plasma, a relatively young subcommunity within KDE is really alive and kicking. We’ve already been able to fix most of the problems that were still there in 4.0.0, and if we continue to keep the current pace of development, it looks like we have exceeded feature parity in those part with the 3.5 series already by summer.
Then of course, I’m looking forward to KDE-PIM in 4.1. It will make use of the Akonadi storage framework and as such be more stable and usable as the 3.5 series. Then, just recently, Dragon Player has been merged into our 4.1 tree. Dragon Player is a very simple but powerful video player, which of course makes use of Phonon, our new multimedia framework. For non-Linux/UNIX users, 4.1 will also bring the first stable applications to Mac OSX and Windows, which is another very big thing in my eyes.
Other features include more scripting support, newly ported applications (Amarok for example seems to be aiming for a summer release as well), performance improvements all over the place, new plugins for the KWin window manager with its nifty compositing features, and many more.
This really suggests what I expect from the KDE 4 series, new, innovative and really exciting features and improvements at a steady pace. With the KDE 4
series, we’ll simply outperform our proprietary competitors in terms of speed of innovation and user orientation.
8. What are your feelings about Gnome? People love to play up a war between KDE and Gnome and fight it out in comment sections. How is your relationship with Gnome? Do you find anything interesting about the Gnome desktop?
It’s sometimes a bit tiring that people try to put everything into the KDE vs. GNOME perspective. We’ve been working together with people from GNOME for a
long time and reached a lot together. A quick glance at freedesktop.org shows that there is plenty we have in common, and that we are doing quite a good job sharing efforts where it makes sense. I feel that the sentiments are often caused by people that simply have nothing better to do, or are out for sensationalism. The friendly competition between KDE and GNOME has probably helped both projects to become what they are now: Serious competitors of proprietary desktop systems.
On the other hand, GNOME often is not all that interesting to us to work with since one essentially can replace the other. Our issues up an down in the stack usually don’t hit GNOME directly, and GNOME offers an alternative to KDE, which also means that we don’t have to suit everyone’s need.
Frankly, I don’t like the whole concept of the “Linux Desktop”. Linux is really just a kernel, and in this case very much a buzzword. Having to mention Linux (which is just a technical implementation detail of a desktop system) suggests that something is wrong. Should it matter to the user if he runs Linux or BSD on his machine? Not at all. It only matters because things just don’t work so well (mostly caused by to driver problems, often a matter of ignorance on some vendor’s side).
The result is that people talk about Linux, then get confused between KDE and GNOME. The first question they ask “Why do I have to choose?” which expresses
that they are having a hard time dealing with the complexity that is offered immediately. The really important concept is plurality, and that is where we
can all win. Once people understand that the choice for KDE and GNOME is very much like the choice between, say Mac OS and Windows (nobody ever says: “Well, the world would be much better off if the effort wouldn’t be spread between Apple and Microsoft!”), so I keep asking myself why people often come up with this when talking about the Free Desktops. What we want is raising consciousness that you don’t have to swallow everything that a certain vendor wants you to, that there is choice, and that consumers can actively influence the market and put pressure onto those that don’t respect the consumer’s needs.
The term “Linux” serves more or less as a buzzword, but I think calling KDE “The Linux Desktop” is harmful. First, it ignores the concepts of plurality and choice, which are very much core values in the Free Software community. Second it ignores the efforts being undertaken to push KDE onto other Free Platforms such as FreeBSD, OpenBSD and OpenSolaris — those are not second class citizens for us.
To fix this problem, we need to increase awareness of the Freedom concept and not so much “teach people what Linux is”. The concept of Freedom is also much
more appealing to the masses than the concept of an operating system kernel, it just requires us to start thinking outside the box. Creating strong brands of user-visible components makes a lot of sense here.
John Palmieri, a top GNOME developer who attended KDE’s annual conference two years ago said: “Competition and collaboration are not mutually exclusive”. I
agree with this statement.
9. Thank you so much for your time, Sebastian. It certainly has been illuminating. Any final thoughts?
Thanks a lot for offering the opportunity to share my thoughts.
Thank you Sebastian, for an interesting and thoughtful review. It is appreciated. Be sure to check out Sebastian’s blog, vizZzion.org, for news on planned features of KDE 4.1, a horrific story of a crocodile attack and much more.
Jan
8
Interview with Fused Network’s David McKendrick
Filed Under Hosting Providers, Interview | 3 Comments
Fused Network is the best webhost, period. When I have a problem, I hear back almost instantly. When my site was flooded, it went offline for four minutes, compared to two days with my previous host. I’ve reviewed them here. Fused’s David McKendrick is amazing work with. He serves as an inspiration. Of the many great things I can say about David and Fused, two jump right out. Fused Network has offered free web hosting for Open Source projects since 2005. Can you say that about your web host? They also recently ended a Holiday Giveway where 100% of proceeds from the month of December went to the charity of your choice. David agreed to be interviewed, after humbly telling me my readers would be more interested in hearing from a coder. I thought you would like to hear about someone that loves Open Source (sorry RMS–Free Software) and puts his money where his mouth is.
Interview with David McKendrick of Fused Network:
1. Fused Network has a generous offer to host open-source projects for
free. Can you tell me about the projects you currently host, and give
details on the offer?
Well, since our inception back in 2003 under an alternate brand name,
we’ve always been firm supporters of open source. Fused Network was
primarily initiated to help cover the costs of hosting a couple of
existing open source projects like e107 (http://www.e107.org), a content
management system that I’ve spent several years using personally.
Since starting the open source hosting program (which is less than
official) we’ve hosted the likes of e107, BitComet, mirrors for FreeCiv,
Lingua and a wide range of other projects. We’re always on the lookout
for new projects to host, it’s our way of giving back to the community.
Essentially the offer is for any open source project that requires web
hosting of any sort, we’re open to any arrangement of any capacity.
While most projects these days are satisfied with providers like
SourceForge, it never hurts to have alternatives just in case they want
a full-fledged site and a bit more control. Fused Network offers just
that along with very reliable connections, gorgeous performance and a
small vessel full of features.
2. What is the appeal of open-source to you?
Almost every aspect of open-source appeals to me in some form. There’s a
number of key features of the movement itself that really spark my
interest though. Primarily, the fact that it’s community driven is one
alluring quality. Not only is it powered by people from all different
walks of life but in a number of cases they’re developing selflessly for
the greater good. The end-users are equally as vibrant though: Open
source offers a wide range of benefits all the while being free in most
cases!
The second reason is the fact that it’s open. The ‘open’ aspect of it
allows there to be greater security (ironic, isn’t it?) in that masses
of people can audit the code, add & subtract from it and develop it to
fit their needs. If they need a specific feature they can add it in;
Likewise, if they don’t need a specific feature they can remove it to
lessen the bulk of the software itself.
That isn’t to say that closed-source or proprietary software doesn’t
have its’ own benefits as well but it’s simply not as selfless. There’s
a great deal of downsides to closed-source as well including lack of 3rd
party code auditing and in the end if a company goes under, the entire
project tends to cease. Anyone left holding a license is essentially
left holding a worthless piece of paper.
Open Source tends to alleviate a lot of those fears because projects can
continue on essentially forever.
In a nutshell, Open Source is freedom.
Freedom from obscene licensing fees, freedom from oppressive licensing
structures & with it comes the ability to contribute, use & spread
software freely.
3. What open-source software do you use the most? Do you have favorites?
One of the benefits of open source software is the ability to try
multiple projects. At any given moment I’ve got at least ten different
audio players, browsers & operating systems floating around on my pc and
laptop. I’m a kid in the candy store when it comes to options.
On the larger scale, there’s a wide range of ‘internet only’ open source
applications I’ve been utilizing as well. To merely say I’m addicted
would be a far cry from the truth.
These days, wordpress & e107 are my current favourites on the web. Both
projects have excellent leadership, development speeds and goals. While
each has an entirely different purpose, to me each are gorgeous in their
own respects.
Wordpress allows the easy dissemenation of information & e107 allows
communities to be effortlessly constructed. There’s a number of other
projects out there like Filebrowser, Vanilla & SMF that I also consider
works of art.
On my desktop, Ubuntu’s release of Linux is probably 3rd in line for my
love: It’s a feature-packed distribution that makes it very easy for
end-users to utilize the product. Aeons ago, I recall being reprimanded
for destroying our home computers with my horrible linux administration
skills. At the time, we were floating around on the slowest dial-up in
existence so I kept finding copies of redhat in the bargain bin at
walmart to supplement my needs.
These days, I’ve had everyone from my aging grandparents to family
members try out Linux. It’s impressive to watch them try it for the
first time & see just how easy it is for the end-user. They themselves
are surprised at the ease of use. Most find it easier to wrangle than
Windows!
Beyond the operating system itself, I’m a huge fan of XMMS, Audacity,
gnuCash, Ktoon, Songbird, Firefox & most of all the SWORD project. All
of the software I enjoy using fills a need in my life that never could
have been fulfilled in a closed source operating system: The licensing
fees alone would have bankrupted me long ago. There’s hundreds of other
projects that I could mention and use frequently but I’ll spare that for
another time.
4. Tell me the history of Fused Network.
Fused Network has been involved in the web hosting industry since
February 2006. Prior to 2006, I had operated a smaller web hosting
provider that merged with Fused Network. Since our inception, we’ve had
absolutely insane growth rates. Just this year, we’ve tripled our
clientbase and now host almost 1,000 domain names — a far cry from the
150 we hosted at the beginning of this year.
A large part of our success can be attributed directly to open source
projects. A great number of users from every project have signed up as
clients after hearing about us supporting their projects selflessly.
It’s great seeing the community rewarding those involved.
5. If you don’t mind, tell us about yourself.
How in depth one could go on about this question, I was born in the
woods & raised by wolves? Not quite, but close.
I’m just a regular ol’ joe, since about 2003 I’ve been involved in web
hosting, web development and online media.
After having spent a number of years handling support for web hosting
companies like HostGator, Hostingplex & several others I decided it was
time to launch a solid provider for a change. At the time while working
my full-time job, I had a small ‘hobby provider’ but there was always a
limit on how much time I could really devote to the project. In April of
this year, I went full-time with Fused Network and haven’t looked back
since.
Every day since our inception we’ve experienced explosive growth and
there’s always something different going on.
As far as myself — I’m fairly regular. I enjoy sailing, technology,
scuba diving & piloting small cessnas are on the top of the list of the
things I enjoy most though. I spent most of my childhood living in a
number of diverse areas like Florida, Costa Rica & Prince Edward Island.
In 2001 I returned to Canada for University and spent a couple of years
hacking away at an Economics degree at the lovely Carleton University in
our nation’s capital, Ottawa. It wasn’t for me, so I tried web hosting
instead: Less math that wasn’t directly related to cashing cheques.
The majority of my days are spent helping clients and exploring the big
city of Toronto while chowing down on more raw fish than any man should
intake.
6. What prompted the Holiday Giveaway Promotion?
Well, since our meager beginnings, Fused Network has always been
involved in charitable activities. I would consider myself a
philanthropist of sorts, and I’m always on a quest to help others no
matter how small or large the cause.
In Toronto and any large city we often see the needy strewn across
sidewalks & sleeping under stairwells. We’re reminded daily that there
are others out there that are not as blessed as we are — so that’s one
place these programs launch out of, pure need.
Spending 12 hours a day helping clients & generating revenue simply
isn’t enough, each of us has a responsibility to help those around us.
Since I can’t get out there as frequently as I would like to myself,
this program simply offers a way for myself and my clients to help in
whatever way we can, no matter where we’re at in life.
7. What do you find the most challenging in web hosting? The most
rewarding?
Technology is always a challenge. The beauty of it, is every day there’s
something new going on. That’s also a downside, though. The entire
industry seems like it changes on an almost daily basis — what users
might want today, will be entirely different tomorrow. Technology can be
fun on the other hand in that it’s quite exciting to work with something
or someone new, all of the time.
The most rewarding aspect is definitely the giant smiles & the thank
yous. Client satisfaction is what I got into the industry for and it’s
what has kept me here. Just recently, a new client from Germany
overnighted me a bundle of chocolate and a postcard telling me about her
city — the mere thought of having someone from halfway around the world
thank you from the bottom of their heart — ah, that’s what keeps me
going 
My clients are blessings.
