Re: Talking about the KDE Free Qt Foundation

On miércoles, 18 de diciembre de 2019 9:35:03 (CET) Ben Cooksley wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 18, 2019 at 11:07 AM Martin Konold <[email protected]> 
wrote:
> > Am Montag, 16. Dezember 2019, 12:44:34 CET schrieb Paul Brown:
> > 
> > Hi Paul,
> > 
> > thank you very much for you very professional questions. While I am not
> > able to answer them in total I want to give my 2¢.
> > 
> > > > Sure, I'd say it's more about saying the right thing in the right
> > > > forum though, rather than the world.
> > > > But a bit of everything needs to be done, yes.
> > > 
> > > This is one of those things I need to get my head around to do it
> > > properly.
> > > So, excuse me, but I have more questions:
> > > 
> > > What sort of readers are you interested in attracting? Developers?
> > > Managers? The general public seems not to be it, correct?
> > 
> > From my PoV the following is kind of important to know:
> > 
> > The KDE Free Qt Foundation is currently being pressurized to make more and
> > more rather one-sided confessions towards the The Qt Company.
> > 
> > IMHO this is in most cases not to the best for KDE nor the Qt developers
> > as a whole.
> > 
> > I think we need public support in keeping up with the increasing pressure.
> > E.g. just today we learned that Lars Knoll, long term KDE person steps
> > down
> > and is going to be replaced with Juhe Häkämies.
> > 
> > Rough times are ahead as I have been told that Juhe is a businessman with
> > no understanding of free software only his numbers ....
> > 
> > Basically they want to make the free Qt version less and less usable and
> > only for hobbyists. (e.g. making LTS releases only available to
> > commercial customers, more and more components commercial only and move
> > more and more compontents to business unfriendly GPLv3 instead of LGPL.)
> > 
> > Olaf just recently made an excellent effort in describing the benefits of
> > the Foundation, its role and its contracts.
> > 
> > https://www.olafsw.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Benefits-of-Free-Qt.pdf
> > 
> > > See if any of these fit what you have in mind:
> > > 
> > > - Does the Foundation accept fellows, supporters or something like that?
> > > If
> > > that is the case, do you want more of them?
> > 
> > We are currently looking for supporters watching the Qt code and the Qt
> > website. E.g. currently there are Terms & Conditions on their website
> > which
> > are incompatible to our contracts. Also we must what when they add or
> > phase
> > out functionality e.g. they plan to phase out XML Module without an
> > appropriate replacement.
> 
> Would this include also watching for things like inconsistent
> application of the open governance concepts within Qt Project, along
> with different rules surrounding compatibility promises for
> contributors (with one set of rules for Qt Company employees and
> another for Community contributions)?
> 
> I ask because we've definitely encountered both of these in the past few
> years.
> 
> For those wondering why we don't have MacOS CI - you can blame the Qt
> Company, it's 100% their fault and a direct consequence of the conduct
> of their employees.
> 
> > > - Do you want the Foundation to be taken into account in the business
> > > world? Get its members invited to summits, consulted by companies, and
> > > so on?> 
> > Yes.

Hello Martin and Ben,

Thank you both for your detailed responses. This helps a lot and will give us 
a good idea on how we can focus the campaign and what goals we should aim for.

Cheers

Paul
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