Re: Inspiration

On Tuesday, September 14, 2010, Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
> What's the why of KDE?

first, thanks for asking this question :)

the answer is So Important that i'm even going to use capital letters in the 
rest of this email. ;)

what follow is just "my humble opinion", and I may get a bit "radical" in the 
ideas, though i hope i'm not alone in thinking this way.

=========

Freedom.

(This features big in both Jos' and Stuart's replies, too, so there's some 
common threads here! Yes!)

We just happen to do the "How" of Freedom by making software and the various 
creative artifacts around it (art, documentation, web sites, marketing,etc) 
that embody and spread freedom.

One aspect of it, then, is the idea of free-as-in-freedom software, the kind 
of thing that Jos wrote about in his blog that he links to in his reply. It's 
a very important aspect of it.

It's not the totality of it, though: how we do the why results in a whole 
world of freedom that matters in very real ways to real, "normal" people.

With our magical digital goo, I can:

* Use it where and when I want

* Share it with my friends

* Know that KDE is never going to screw me by dropping a product where I can't 
get to it or by closing down their services (ala Apple's app store or 
Android's development model)

* Know that I am engaged in a community that puts personal as well as shared 
(national / tribal / etc) freedom on firm grounds through open implementations 
of open standards (yes, this is one more for the plugged-in socially conscious 
group)

* Get involved in an amazing community of creative sorts without asking for 
permission or paying an entry fee

* Discover what software designed by people who think from the vantage point 
of Freedom is like: sharable music downloaded in Amarok, downloadable widgets 
to your desktop, open-as-in-freedom maps of the world that you can also dive 
into, etc. etc. etc.

* Use that same software on all kinds of hardware and devices because KDE 
isn't just one entity with one kind of product but a whole world of people and 
organizations free to actd. KDE is creating software for everywhere. Marble on 
your N900? Yep. Kontact on your tablet? Hell yes! Krita on your killer laptop? 
Ooh yeah.

* Get it in my language, with my localizations and at a price that works for 
me.

* Get that "ooh, gee, cool!" feeling from knowing that researchers from 
universities as well as some of the biggest companies around as well as some 
of the most passionate people one can meet are involved .. and I get to watch 
it all go down in real time.

Best of all, when I stand in the middle of a group of people associated with 
KDE, I am standing in the middle of self-affirming freedom. When I use KDE 
software, I am taking part in an enthusiastic community that has one of the 
most powerful and pure ideas in the human mental vocabulary driving them from 
their core: Freedom. 

KDE software is a result of the pursuit of freedom.

And who _doesn't_ want to be free? 

(Ok, I'm sure there must be some, and unfortunately they just aren't our 
target audience. ;)

Therefore, there is a very direct and tangible set of benefits: "we are driven 
by Freedom, ergo here are the results", but there is also an ephemeral spirit 
of Freedom that runs through KDE that is also hugely compelling even when I 
can't draw a concrete line between it and results. When i log in to Plasma 
Desktop, I am watching freedom embodied on my screen. When i go to 
forum.kde.org, I get to hear freedom. When people add new content to 
userbase.kde.org, I am seeing freedom in action. When I go to a KDE event, I 
get to feel Freedom pulsating in the air. When I see someone using KDE in an 
airport (it happens from time to time these days :), I get this awesome 
feeling of seeing another person who cares on some level and who gets to enjoy 
the Freedom, too. I'm compelled to go up and introduce myself and talk about 
it; that's something no other technology has ever made me feel like doing, and 
it's because it isn't the technology that matters, it's the essentially human 
aspect of being free, together.

Yes, I can use something more ordinary like Microsoft's stuff. I could use 
something that is very trendy right now, like Apple's stuff. But I use KDE 
because I want my life to be filled with products made by people who also want 
me to be free. A slick UI is great and sexy artwork does all kinds of amazing 
things for me, but when I know that object has Freedom at its heart .. hell 
yeah.

In one sentence: Fuck being cool, I want to be free. Fuck "thinking different" 
if that just leads to me being locked into a platform pushed by an aging 
megalomaniac in a black shirt and jeans that doesn't give me one bit of that 
sense of owning my own life, my own future, my own now. Fuck falling into line 
just because someone says I should, I've seen how that works out in the course 
of human history. I want to stand outside or sit in my living room and know 
that the phone in my pocket or the laptop on my table is mine, supports me 
being me and isn't ever going to get in the way of me living as I wish to. I 
want it to support my desire to be free.
=====

to make that work, though, to make that our communicated (versus our implicit 
but well-hidden) Why, we need to embrace the idea and make it central to our 
discussions. we don't need to use the word "Freedom" in everything, but we 
should approach things from a Freedom perspective: getting involved, 
experience centric, community, connectivity with other ideas and projects, 
open (if defined) processes of discovery and creation, easy access, etc.

but maybe that's just me. :)

i do know that more and more people care about this stuff. here's a great 
regional campaign that is seen all over where I live now:

	http://www.vanaqua.org/oceanwise/

people ask for oceanwise by name, refer it to each other, make purchasing 
decisions based on it.

organic (biological, for your europeans ;) and locally sourced food are two 
other huge trends here when it comes to food. (is it dinner time? i keep 
thinking about food.. hm.)

society seems to be moving (back?) to being more driven by a desire to care 
rather than only a desire to exploit and consume. it's why people buy cars 
they think are more "environmentally friendly" even if they cost a bit more 
and even if they really aren't. more and more of us are making decisions 
because we put caring about the idea behind the thing at a higher and higher 
value.

so i think that our Why of "freedom", which translates into community and 
support of democracy and business risk management and .., is growing in value.

it's also a completely open space. if we stand and beam out that Freedom we 
embody amongst our peers of today's technology offerings, we will be all 
alone, unobscured and allowed to shine as a result.

ok, enough nutjob rambling from me. to turn the question back to you 
Cornelius: what's the Why for you?

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
humru othro a kohnu se
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

KDE core developer sponsored by Qt Development Frameworks

 
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