Saturday, October 22, 2016

Happy 20th birthday, KDE!

KDE turned twenty recently, which seems significant in a world that seems to change so fast. Yet somehow we stay relevant, and excited to continue to build a better future.

Lydia asked recently on the KDE-Community list what we were most proud of.

For the KDE community, I'm proud that we continue to grow and change, while remaining friendly, welcoming, and ever more diverse. Our software shows that. As we change and update, some things get left behind, only to re-appear in fresh new ways. And as people get new jobs, or build new families, sometimes they disappear for awhile as well. And yet we keep growing, attracting students, hobbyist programmers, writers, artists, translators, designers and community people, and sometimes we see former contributors re-appear too. See more about that in our 20 Years of KDE Timeline.

I'm proud that we develop whole new projects within the community. Recently Peruse, Atelier, Minuet, WikitoLearn, KDEConnect, Krita, Plasma Mobile and neon have all made the news. We welcome projects from outside as well, such as Gcompris, Kdenlive, and the new KDE Store. And our established projects continue to grow and extend. I've been delighted to hear about Calligra Author, for instance, which is for those who want to write and publish a book or article in pdf or epub. Gcompris has long been available for Windows and Mac, but now you can get it on your Android phone or tablet. Marble is on Android, and I hear that Kstars will be available soon.

I'm proud of how established projects continue to grow and attract new developers. The Plasma team, hand-in-hand with the Visual Design Group, continues to blow testers and users away with power, beauty and simplicity on the desktop. Marble, Kdevelop, Konsole, Kate, KDE-PIM, KDElibs (now Frameworks), KOffice (now Calligra), KDE-Edu, KDE-Games, Digikamkdevplatform, Okular, Konversation and Yakuake, just to mention a few, continue to grow as projects, stay relevant and often be offered on new platforms. Heck, KDE 1 runs on modern computer systems!

For myself, I'm proud of how the KDE community welcomed in a grandma, a non-coder, and how I'm valued as part of the KDE Student Programs team, and the Community Working Group, and as an author and editor. Season of KDE, Google Summer of Code, and now Google Code-in all work to integrate new people into the community, and give more experienced developers a way to share their knowledge as mentors. I'm proud of how the Amarok handbook we developed on the Userbase wiki has shown the way to other open user documentation. And thanks to the wonderful documentation and translation teams, the help is available to millions of people around the world, in multiple forms.

I'm proud to be part of the e.V., the group supporting the fantastic community that creates the software we offer freely to the world.

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