FOSS
Free Software communities produce tons of great software. This software drives innovation and enables everybody to access and use computers, whether or not they can afford new hardware or commercial software. So that’s that, the benefit to society is obvious. Everybody should just get behind it and support it. Right? Well, it is not that easy. Especially when it comes to principles of individual freedom or trade-offs between self-determination and convenience, it is difficult to communicate the message in a way that it reaches and activates a wider audience. How can we explain the difference between Free Software and services available at no cost (except them spying at you) best? Campaigning for software freedom is not easy. However, it is part of the Free Software Foundation Europe’s mission. The FSFE teamed up with Peng! Collective to learn how to run influential campaigns to promote the cause of Free Software. The Peng Collective is a Berlin based group of activists who are known for their successful and quite subversive campaigns for political causes. And Endocode? Endocode is a sponsor of the Free Software Foundation Europe. We are a sponsor because free software is essential to us, both as a company and as members of society. And so here we are.
tl;dr: If you are a committed KDE contributor and not a KDE e.V. member, you are doing it wrong. If you are a KDE user, consider helping the KDE User Working Group. Read KDE e.V.’s quarterly reports.
Akademy 2013 is still on its way, and as usual the KDE e.V. General Assembly was held as a part of it. KDE e.V. is the representation and governance body of the KDE community. Membership in this not-for-profit association registered in Berlin, Germany is open to all KDE contributors . Members usually assemble once a year to coordinate, to vote on issues important to the community and to elect representatives and board members as needed. The highlights this year where the discussion of the role of the Community Working Group, the report on the first activities of the newly established Financial Working Group, and the election of one new board member. I was the chairperson of the assembly, and this is my inofficial report.
Akademy, the annual conference of the KDE community, will take place from July 13 to July 19 2013 in Bilbao, Spain. It will be prefixed on July 12 by the general assembly of KDE e.V., the charitable foundation that supports the development of KDE. As usual, it will be followed by a full week of frantic, collaborative hacking, birds of a feather sessions and mini-conferences. Qt Project and the KDE Community are very close companions, and this year for the first time the Qt Contributor Summit will be co-located with Akademy and take place July 14 and 15. In short, if you haven’t been to a Free Software community conference like that, this the one of the most awesome of them all, and the Qt Contributor Summit only adds more greatness to it. I am on the way to it, to chair the general assembly and to give a presentation on the concepts and philosophy of Threadweaver.
