There's been quite a flurry in the blogosphere in the last couple of days over this and it's clear that a lot of people aren't really looking at this from the right angle.

First misconception:

There's a long thread currently going on on core-devel about scripting within KDE.

Here's the executive summary:

Effective as of the upcoming e.V. meeting, after four years of active membership, I've decided to make my membership passive (for those not familiar with the terminology, that's where you're still technically a member, but aren't on the list and don't have voting rights).

I believe that there is something of an identity crisis for the KDE e.V. at the moment; there are some conflicting notions on what the organization is.

I found Celeste's recent post interesting as it took to breaking out the different tasks that are currently lumped under the menu. As I read it, I found myself stepping a bit further back and rephrasing the tasks as questions. Here's they are, in blather-rific format, in hopes that they may serve as a bit of food for thought:

Ok, here's a little tip -- turn off your RSS feed before upgrading your blog software. Really. Please. For the sake of all things good and holy. It just happens to be Anders' feed today, but it seems like about every 2-3 days somebody decideds to upgrade their blog software, thus flooding the planet with everything that they've ever written.

Since I'm on a blogging kick, here we go again:

There's a hard balance in the Open Source world in answering "I'm interested in...but where do I start?" mails. I think one thing that invariably people that write them don't realize is that you're doing really good if 10% of those turn into contributors. 10% actually sounds way too high. 2% is probably closer. Actually, thinking about it, I've probably written a few hundred of those and I can only think of maybe 3-4 that translated to patches coming in.

Reposted from the Dot:

> Didn't knew about that. On the other hand its still the only information that looks relevant.
> The official kde.org site does not give any hint on the status of neither Kat, nor Tenor; the
> latest information I found is dated 2005. SVN activity is at a low level (latest update 4
> month ago).
>
> IMHO, the fact that Scott leaves a Linux related job in favor of a more multimedia related one

I've got some code around that I'm thinking about shuffling a bit and putting out in a library. But I can't find the right license. I basically want to say, "Try to give back any changes that you make in a sufficiently demonstable way." (i.e. patch to the publicly archived project list with a template of information that needs to be there)

One of the hardest things about being a framework developer is getting things right. There are a lot of tough choices you face when you're looking at an open set of applications. Getting things adequate is often fairly easy, but getting them right is a lot more conceptual work. As a framework developer you're often stuck with your choices for a lot longer. Three related examples:

Standards vs. Sanity

I hate moving. I've lost the grace with which I was able to execute such during my early 20s. Oh, I'm looking forward to being in Berlin, but fear and loathing is sinking in as I look at the mess that is my apartment and realize that it has to be fully packed, moved out of and clean in something like 39 hours. I suppose I can see where my true loves are in the pile of instruments (9 now), hundreds of CDs and records, assorted pro-audio equipment and naturally a pile of computer gear. And books. Lots of books.