Re: [campkde-organizers] [kde-usa] Fwd: KDE Cascadia

> On 10/19/2011 07:59 PM, Carl Symons wrote:
>>>>> I think there are two issues here. One has to be solved before the other.
>>
>> Definitely 2 issues. The dependency is not so clear to me. It seems
>> doable to have an event with LFNW, and start that process. Part of the
>> message would be that this event has regional appeal and that other
>> CampKDE's may take place at other times and places.
>
> Well, one of the issues is whether it's a Camp KDE or some other event.
> That certainly needs to get solved, although not before deciding to *do*
> the cohosted event, which I'm all for. Just before we go to potential
> sponsors, and publicly announce it.
>
>>> I think the losses in contributors are likely to mostly be from outside
>>> North America, especially if money is spent towards holding more of
>>> these and flying local contributors to more of them, rather than flying
>>> non-North-American contributors in.
>>
>> There needs to be some hard thinking about the focus. It's surprising
>> and disconcerting (to me) that there is not more development
>> involvement in North America. Where are the Google SoC participants?
>
> Mostly from outside North America.
>
>> Why is it that Europe, South America and India contribute so heavily
>> and the U.S. and Canada barely register a blip?
>
> Here are three reasons:
>
> 1) In the States, the youth of today (by which I mean our historically
> most valuable demographic, college students) buy Macs. They don't tend
> to give much of a shit about Linux, because, why would you, Macs are so
> awesome and what everyone else has and run anything you'd care about on
> Linux anyways.
>
> Macs are well over 25% of the total laptop market share, and among
> incoming college freshmen the number is far higher. In 2009 it was 58%;
> in 2010 it was 70%. No idea about 2011, but I'd wager it's above 80%.
>
> Macs run Python, Ruby, Java  and HTML5/JavaScript without any problems,
> which covers the majority of languages that students who are our target
> demographic think will earn them scads of money when they get out of
> college (of course, there's a glut of these programmers, unlike the lack
> of qualified Qt programmers, but try telling them that when Hot Web Site
> X is built on Rails and Node).
>
> Macs are simply too expensive for many in South America and India.
> They're overpriced here and they're horrendously overpriced in Europe
> and elsewhere, and Windows sucks as a development platform, so people
> turn to Linux.
>
> Outside the States, people also tend to be more cautious of buying into
> walled gardens and signing away their freedoms to large corporations,
> something we in the States have down to a science.
>
> 2) Students these days (here in the States, I mean) are taught that the
> way to make money is to build the next Mafia Wars or the next Angry
> Birds. They're being indoctrinated into the idea (that Apple and
> Microsoft and Facebook desperate to sell them, since they take 30%) that
> the App Is King. (Google, and now Intel, are trying to tell them this
> too, though far less successfully.) This makes the idea of building
> something with a community a far less profitable, and thus interesting,
> proposition.
>
> 3) The major (read: company-backed...Red Hat/Canonical mostly) North
> American distros use GNOME by default (with the exception that Ubuntu
> has now flipped to Unity, but used GNOME for many years), so when people
> did pop a Linux install disk in to try it out, their sense of the Linux
> desktop became GNOME. KDE was that other stuff that some weirdos spent
> the time to install, and that they heard is big in Europe.
>
> This isn't to say that we haven't actually had a decent following in the
> U.S., but it's never been nearly as visible as the GNOME following.
>
> KDE's U.S. presence has historically been screwed by the momentum behind
> the company-backed North American distros. Now the Linux desktop is
> getting screwed as a whole by Apple.
>
>> With such a small developer/contributor community, there seems little
>> value in getting IRC colleagues together in person. Except for Plasma
>> Active, I don't think many users are on IRC.
>
> Yes...which is why explicitly targeting users, as opposed to trying to
> make the U.S. events developer-focused, is a better bet IMHO.
>
> There's not much presence of users on IRC, but we might find that the
> users are out there waiting to be found at these fests, if we provide
> them with opportunities to meet and rally...to tell them that they
> should get in touch, join us on IRC, that they too can make a difference.
>
> Maybe it won't help, or make a difference...maybe it will. We probably
> won't know unless we try.
>
>> CampKDE--whether national or regional--don't seem to be events that
>> would attract the large, national FOSS corporations. It's missing for
>> me what this type of organization wants from KDE...so it's also
>> missing what the message if for them and how it should be delivered.
>
> Not sure what you mean by FOSS corporations, specifically, but the
> message I've been trying to hammer into Google -- after at Camp KDE at
> LFCS they said how committed they were to expanding open source into
> education -- is that with KDE being the largest FOSS project in the
> world by most metrics, we are also the single largest entity providing
> opportunities for students to engage in FOSS (and our GSoC numbers show
> it)...and they should put their money where their mouth is.
>
>> Based on my experience with observing Plasma Active development (IRC
>> is the best!) and demonstrating the ExoPC, it might be interesting to
>> have a focus--at LFNW or elsewhere--on that. Surely there are
>> companies that would like to escape the Android & iOS concentration of
>> market power. And developers who would like to participate either in
>> PA development or in creating QML apps that run on the
>> platform...create a QML and HTML5 horde. Intel is a natural big-time
>> sponsor.
>
> Not anymore, they're not. Not unless we're looking at Tizen, and Qt/QML
> on there is AFAIK unlikely.
>
> The message we need to be getting out to companies is that iOS is
> completely unsuited for their own products and Android is not a good fit
> for many uses, especially many enterprise uses. I won't go into all the
> details why, although I could do so at some length (in fact, I'm giving
> a presentation on this exact topic on Tuesday). A better fit for a great
> many needs is a mobile device running an optimized, full Linux stack.
>
> There are some really awesome things coming out. Look at Raspberry Pi
> for an example -- which seems like it'll have Mer on board, including
> Qt/QML capability, and the videos they show of it pumping out graphics
> are quite impressive (check out the size of it on the Media page, and
> the price tag). If it pans out, it'll be the Little Development Board
> That Could.
>
> If they have good development boards, and they have a full stack to play
> with, KDE suddenly can provide cool stuff...especially if we can get our
> libraries upstreamed with Qt Open Governance. Plasma Active can be very
> important here too -- it can be a flexible default development desktop,
> replacing such legacy things as OpenEmbedded/Yocto's GTK-based Sato
> desktop, or the Unity desktop on Linaro's Ubuntu offering.
>
> For some proof, take a look at this:
> http://lockheedmartin.com.vn/news/press_releases/2010/MFC_060810_LockheedDevelopsTac.html
>
> This is a device that runs a piece of software that the U.S. military
> uses heavily called FBCB2. There's not a chance in hell of making that
> software an Android app, so instead of making FBCB2 run *on* Android,
> they developed their TDA that runs both FBCB2 *and* Android. So, what
> should their user interface look like when the Android bits don't have
> front-and-center? How much nicer would it be to take something
> flexible/customizable like Plasma and build what they want than to do an
> entire UI on their own?
>
>>> One possibility then would be that Camp KDE is a traveling show with
>>> whatever fests we can partner with..."Camp KDE will be at LFNW in
>>> April!" "Camp KDE is coming to Ohio Linux Fest!" and so on.
>>
>> ++good
>>
>>>
>>> The other is that LFNW has KDE Cascadia, Ohio Linux Fest has KDE
>>> Buckeye, and so on. The danger here is just the risk of confusion from a
>>> multiplicity of names.
>>
>> Colocation with other events for a Camp KDE event would require "Camp KDE".
>> Camp KDE Cascadia
>> Camp KDE Cape Cod
>> Cactus Camp KDE (with ableconf.com in Phoenix)
>> Camp KDE Cajun
>> Camp KDE Carolina
>> Camp KDE Calgary
>>
>> If you can't alliterate with CampKDE, you can't have an event B^)
>>
>> Toscalix has been talking about broadening the definition of
>> organizations to include .edus. We could recruit students at colleges
>> and universities across the country.
>> Campus KDE
>
> All great ideas. "Camp KDE is coming to the Cascades for Camp KDE Cascadia!"
>
>>>> I think it is our best option for this year. We're running out of time
>>>> to do a solo event
>>>
>>> This is only a problem if you think that our best move is to keep doing
>>> solo events.
>>>
>>> The suggestion I've been making and trying to get feedback on is that we
>>> ditch the idea of a solo event entirely in favor of a traveling event,
>>> or a series of separate colocated events.
>>>
>>> --Jeff
>>>
>>
>> I like this, Jeff.
>>
>> However it doesn't preclude a solo, stand-alone event for KDE in North
>> America when we get enough interest and support for this. The stars
>> don't seem to be aligned for this at present.
>
> Oh, totally agreed. I hope I didn't accidentally imply that we can't do
> solo stand-alone events. I don't think we can successfully do this right
> now (for the Board's definition of successful, which isn't really
> off-base at all), but if we can at some point, then we should.
>
> --Jeff
>
>