News

Desktop Summit Survey Report

symons — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 07:55:36 +0000

Thanks to the people who completed the survey for the Desktop Summit 2011!

To improve Desktop Summits in the future, the Desktop Summit organizing team collected feedback from attendees through this survey, which 192 people answered. The survey asked for brief background information, a general evaluation of the Desktop Summit and various elements of it, and feedback on the social events.

The overall feedback was positive. People enjoyed Desktop Summit 2011 Berlin and the forum it provided for exchanging technology and ideas among different free software communities. In addition, there were suggestions for improvements to upcoming Desktop Summits.

Details can be read in the report if you're interested.

We appreciate you taking time to give us feedback and look forward to seeing you again at the next Desktop Summit!

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Wrap up - Desktop Summit 2011 Berlin

symons — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 16:28:30 +0000

A big "Thank You!" to all the sponsors (shown to the right), Technologiestiftung Berlin (TSB; in English, Technology Foundation of Berlin), Humboldt University of Berlin, and nearly 800 attendees who gathered from around the world to make a successful Desktop Summit 2011!

Attendees gathered in Berlin to review progress, share ideas and work together on various free software projects relating to desktop and mobile user interfaces. While many participants were from Europe as expected, other contingents came from Brazil, India, the US and beyond. The GNOME Foundation and KDE e.V. sponsored travel and accommodation costs for 80+ attendees.

More than 50 volunteers pitched in to help the Desktop Summit run smoothly--preparing the venues and cleaning up afterwards, helping with registration, selling t-shirts, recording video streams, chairing sessions, running errands, managing networks, and more. Desktop Summit organizers--mostly volunteers--worked for nearly a year to coordinate all the details that made the event successful. The collaborative spirit of Free and Open Source technology was an essential factor in how the group worked together.

c-base, the world-renowned hackerspace, hosted the Summit's pre-registration event sponsored by Igalia, where attendees had a chance to meet face to face in a relaxed environment and become acquainted. While working on projects via email and the Internet is efficient and productive, personal contact is also important, and to that end, two evening parties organized by the Summit provided opportunities for people to spend time together without the stress of project deadlines. The Summit thanks Collabora and Intel for sponsoring these events.

Other social activities included the traditional soccer and volleyball matches, sponsored this year by SUSE. As participants mostly concerned themselves with having fun (as well as a bit of beer drinking), it was not clear which of the KDE or GNOME teams won. On Tuesday, there was a SUSE-sponsored ice cream dessert gathering, and unofficial curry cook-outs on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, attracting about 35 people each evening with food, drinks and conversation--both work and fun.

As one of the foremost free and open source gatherings, the Desktop Summit was in the right setting in the City of Berlin. At the Summit, the City announced the winners of its open source competition “Berlin – Made to Create”, a program promoting Open Source and open standards ideas and solutions. At the same session, the GNOME and KDE communities also announced their outstanding contributors.

Desktop Summit 2011 Berlin (click for larger image)

The Intel AppUp workshop on the first day of the BoFs (Birds of a Feather sessions) was one of the most sought after events at the Desktop Summit. The "sold-out" session explained several aspects of Intel's long term strategy for the MeeGo operating system, including a considerable push with developers to create mobile apps. After the session, each participant received a tablet PC to support their development efforts. Within a few hours, people were already creating hot new stuff.

From Tuesday to Friday, 85 BoFs and countless informal hacking sessions took place. Two hacking rooms and the hallways were full of people working on projects. BoFs ranged from small working groups to popular and multi-faceted projects to the introduction of new projects. The GObject Introspection Room shows the kinds of work undertaken at the Summit: a dedicated space with 12 to 20 people at any time, it ran the duration of the Summit, and was primarily focused on bugfixing GNOME API bindings. The KDE community also participated by working on bindings between GObject libraries and Qt/C++ and smoothing out other cross-desktop issues.

As another example, the KDE Release Team got together to talk about their strategy for Git versioning migration and the move to Frameworks 5. The BoF session was well attended, and included release team members and downstream packagers. In a short time, the team gathered feedback and came up with a plan for adding predictability to the release team's work and output, and for making the work within the team more effective and sustainable. Working remotely, this would have taken considerably longer and would not have achieved such good results.

The fifth Text Layout Summit was held concurrently with Desktop Summit 2011. At present, there are several font and text shaping technologies and no unified system library. As a result, complex text layout scripts such as Arabic or Myanmar are not well supported, and Western/European fonts often lack advanced text formatting capabilities. As FOSS applications are intended for use by all nationalities and languages, this is a serious shortcoming. Text Layout Summit 2011 made substantial progress toward a common approach, especially with Graphite, which is focused on the minority languages of the world.

The Desktop Summit is an important enabling event, making it possible for teams to learn, share and make substantial progress in their Free and Open Source projects.

During the GNOME and KDE Annual General Meetings (AGMs), the respective projects recognized the achievements of members, made important announcements and reflected on the lessons learned over the past year.

New Executive Director Karen Sandler led the GNOME AGM, with the recent release of GNOME 3 being a central topic. Many perspectives were contributed, including design, marketing, bug fixes and quality. Numbers were presented on GNOME release parties, member registration and finances. The location of the 2012 GNOME Users And Developers European Conference (GUADEC) was revealed. With 3 impressive bids to host GUADEC, La Coruña, Spain, was chosen! The GNOME community looks forward to seeing its members next summer.

At the KDE e.V. AGM, President Cornelius Schumacher presented the work of the Board and KDE e.V. activities of the past 12 months. KDE e.V. organized or helped to organize several successful international conferences such as Akademy 2010 in Tampere, conf.kde.in in India, Camp KDE in San Francisco, and financially supported 21 contributor sprints. Cornelius Schumacher also explained the e.V.'s role in supporting and representing the KDE community in legal issues like domain handling, trademarks and similar areas. Frank Karlitschek, Treasurer, gave an overview of the financial situation of KDE e.V. and the budget for 2011. There were reports from the sysadmin, community and marketing working groups, and from the representatives of KDE e.V. to the Free Qt Foundation.

This year, two positions for the board of directors were up for election. Both candidates, Cornelius Schumacher (running for his third term) and Lydia Pintscher, now the newest member of the Board, were elected.

Speaking for both organizations, Pintscher said, "We consider Desktop Summit 2011 in Berlin to have been a huge success for the collaboration among free software desktop communities. We learned a lot during the first Desktop Summit in Gran Canaria and were able to improve on many big and small things that made a real difference for the conference. We are looking forward to seeing the results of this work and to increased future collaboration."

The location of KDE's Akademy 2012 conference is still to be decided; a call for hosts has been made.

The Desktop Summit received favorable publicity from Radio Tux, which covered the Summit with their mobile studio. A successful press conference was also held, pulling together key GNOME and KDE contributors with about 15 local and international tech journalists. There has been other press coverage as well.

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Desktop Summit in the News

symons — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 17:23:30 +0000

News stories and interviews about Desktop Summit 2011 - Berlin

Blog posts

Many Desktop Summit 2011 attendees and presenters blogged about their experiences. Blog posts have appeared on Planet GNOME and Planet KDE. Searching the web unearths more treasures.

Day 3 - Toasters and Pants

symons — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 17:24:20 +0000

The third and final 'traditional' conference day began with Mirko Boehm, Claudia Rauch, Stormy Peters, Karen Sandler and Cornelius Schumacher meeting with members of the Berlin City authorities. The city officials wanted to get acquainted with the free and open source leaders involved in the Desktop Summit, because open technology is important to the local government (more below).

The Contour concept

Perhaps as a result of the beach party the night before, attendance was slightly reduced at the first round of talks, but picked up quickly. However, there was plenty of interest in the track that included social capabilities in free desktops. And of course, many participants are eagerly awaiting the rest of the week which is filled with meetings, workshops and BoFs.

Getting Smart with Nepomuk and Zeitgeist

In a surprisingly well attended session (considering it started early), Vishesh Handa and Sebastian Trüg discussed Nepomuk, and how it is much more than a search service. Nepomuk is currently being used by high profile projects like Akonadi and Telepathy where it serves as a powerful backend and supports substantial linking of data.

While Nepomuk mostly tracks file metadata, Zeitgeist tracks data about events. Federico Mena Quintero explained how Zeitgeist can record all kinds of events for items, such as the webpage from which the file was obtained - so you can download an image or web page and always be able to find the source again later.

Such tools are interesting, but they only become really useful when integrated into other software. Fania Jöck and Marco Martin showcased an activity-based mobile user interface built on Plasma and Nepomuk, in which the system adapts to user needs. It does this by keeping track of context (location, time, active files etc) and patterns (common user activity in similar contexts). A recommendation interface provides access to likely actions such as calling Grandmother if it's her birthday.

In a last minute change to the schedule, Dario Freddi presented an innovative project to bring easy video calling to your TV. Based on Telepathy and GStreamer, with user interface components built with Clutter, the project acts as a plugin to Media Explorer. It is specialized to focus on just a few features (video and audio chat - text chat is not really relevant to a TV). Zeitgeist provides data to prioritize your contact list so the people you are likely to want to contact are easily accessible.

Keynote: The Making of a Toaster

Thomas Thwaites describes himself as a designer, and has some Computer Science background (he dropped out). Practically speaking, his training, experiences and design approach involve an eclectic mix of disciplines. Based on this background, he suggests that there is a relationship between complexity and design; and that arriving at the most effective design solutions depends on people working collaboratively. In essence, to have a satisfying life, we need the help of others.

Even a cheap toaster has lots of bits

In his entertaining keynote talk, Thomas shared his experiences and lessons learned from the Toaster Project. This project started with a quote from "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" and eventually exposed Thomas to old mining methods and a variety of production techniques.

After reading "left to his own devices he couldn't build a toaster. He could just about make a sandwich and that was it", Thomas decided to discover the real origins of stuff we take for granted. "What would it take to make a toaster these days?" He bought the cheapest toaster possible (about 5 Euro) and took it apart, creating a bewildering range of components. Analyzing the basic components, Thomas undertook to duplicate personally the processes required to produce them. His search brought him iron and copper ore, primitive plastics from potatoes that snails feasted on, and proto-ore plastics from garbage dumps, commemorative Canadian nickels from eBay. The overall product cost, without any labor costs, was about 240 times more than the cost of buying the basic toaster that he took apart

So timesaving devices individually are not that important, but taken together they free up time to do more interesting and important things. He also discovered in a real way how critical collaboration is in producing even the most mundane things.

Recognizing Achievement

Both GUADEC and Akademy have their own awards ceremonies to recognize outstanding contributions over the past year. At this year's Desktop Summit, we also had the honor of hosting the Berlin's Future is Open awards (link in German), an award system set up by the Berlin City Government aimed at recognizing the best projects and planned projects in free and open software.

Martin and Matthias collect their awards

The "Berlin's Future is Open" awards included recognition for efforts to standardize webforms, spread OpenDocument usage online and keep track of events in wikis. The overall winners were Finnlabs with OpenProject, a project management infrastructure and Sugarlabs for concepts about using the Sugar interface for schoolchildren.

This year's Akademy Awards were, as usual, chosen in part by last year's winners. The award for best non-application contribution went to Dario Andres for his work with the bug triaging team. The application award went to Martin Gräßlin for his work on KWin. Finally came the jury award, a tough choice between many of KDE's dedicated system administrators, including Ben Cooksley, Eike Hein and Jeff Mitchell. However, in the end, it was awarded to Tom Albers for his work in building up a team of contributors, while continuing to do much work himself.

For GNOME, the Travelling Pants ceremony concluded with the award of a well-worn set of trousers to a man described as "possibly not quite human" due to the amount of work he does. Matthias Clasen received the fashion accessory of Desktop Summit 2011 for an outrageously high number of commits to the GNOME codebase over the past year. The origin of the Traveling Pants award is not known to most Desktop Summit participants. However it is such a venerable tradition that to stop would likely shift the Earth's on its axis.

Not to be outdone, Intel announced the results of a raffle held at their booth over the three days, giving portable laptops to seven lucky winners.

Closing Thoughts

The head of the summit organizing team, Mirko Boehm, closed the conference track of the summit with a review of things we have learned in the last few days. There were too many to list fully, but highlights included the informative copyright assignment panel (and the discovery that at least one panel member sees Firefox and Chrome as wasteful duplication), the news that 30% of Qt developers discover the framework through free software, and even the trials and tribulations of building a toaster from scratch.

We saw keynotes that went beyond KDE and GNOME to a much wider world of devices and opportunity. Having brought down the wireless network, we were given food for thought in learning that by 2015 there will be twice as many devices with an IP address as there will be people in the world. Finally, a well deserved round of applause was given to the organizing team and volunteers who have looked after over 700 attendees. It was agreed they would get to keep the red t-shirts they have been wearing as a well deserved prize for their efforts.

So much has happened already and yet we are barely halfway through the summit - there are still meetings and workshops through to Friday, with much more news and views to come out of those. Stay tuned.

Keynotes and Sandals - Day Two at Desktop Summit 2011

symons — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 18:35:33 +0000

Nick Richards

For the second full day at the Desktop Summit, the organizers played a little trick on us by starting talks at 9:00 a.m. Those who were awake enough after the dinners and chat of the previous night were treated to talks on Calligra (the KDE creativity and productivity suite), suggestions about blending the web and the desktop, color management and the build process for GNOME. Those who were still in bed will have to wait for the videos and slides to be posted online in the next few days.

The hallways and courtyard were again busy with small, lively discussions. As the morning went on the attendance at talks increased noticeably. Sunday was also the day of the press conference, where key figures from GNOME, KDE and the cross-community organizing team met with the press to answer their questions about the event and the future of free software.

An Exciting Day for KDE and GNOME

For KDE, there were many highlights among the day's talks. Sebastian Kügler presented the plans for Plasma Active and explained how it was different from other user interfaces designed for tablets and other mobile devices, especially with its context-awareness. The plan is to replace the long established metaphor of objects and icons to one that is based on an awareness of what the user is doing and where. The interface operates by activity centric interactions and integrates common actions like "share", "like" and "connect" for content - for example the ability to share your own photos, "like" someone else's or to discuss them. Plasma Active integrates with social web applications and is extendable via scripted plugins.

Boudewijn Rempt shows off Krita

Krita, KDE's natural drawing and painting program, has gained momentum and praise over the past few years. Boudewijn Rempt explained the project's history, from an attempt at a Photoshop or GIMP clone to finding its own unique place. The focus now is on being a great tool for professional digital graphics artists, distinctly different from anything else available, FOSS or not.

Perhaps the biggest KDE news of the day came in one of the last sessions, "KDE Platform 4 Roadmap". KDE's core developers unveiled a plan to switch from Platform 4 to Frameworks 5, a far more modular approach to the KDE libraries and closer ties to Qt than they currently have. Smaller, more specialized library modules will make it easier for developers to pick just the KDE pieces they need for their applications without large increases in dependencies or size of binaries. For those who prefer to install all of KDE Frameworks, it will be just as easy to package them in large groups as is currently the case, thanks to a common release schedule and automated tools to combine modules. Moving KDE technologies into Qt will continue, if it's possible to do so.

For GNOME there was the community keynote from Nick Richards (more details below). There were also presentations on the future of GTK and the present too with a guide to theming GTK widgets with CSS. Florian Müllner explained how design drives development in GNOME shell and Richard Hughes explained how to make color management work properly.

Keynotes

As on the first day of the summit, we had two keynotes to enjoy. Both were focused on the process of design and what lessons can be applied to free software. Claire Rowland discussed design issues in cross-platform and cloud experiences, exploring what effective design looks like. Later in the day, Nick Richards gave the GNOME community keynote, again with a message broadly applicable in free software.

Claire Rowland - Design Across the Device Spectrum

Claire is not a technologist. She used to be a UI designer but no longer. She's now a researcher, specializing in understanding how people use computers, with a particular interest in designing for wide range of devices. Referring to designing for multiple devices, Claire spoke about the influence of commercial enterprises. At present, we are slaves to a proprietary empire, doing whatever Steve Jobs thinks is best.

Most Desktop Summit attendees will fiddle with tech to get it to work. Most other people, including Claire, are not like that. People want tech, but they do not want to spend time learning it.

We are getting more devices. Smartphones outsell pcs. TV programs are on the web. Cars even are connected. The number of devices connected to IP networks will be twice the global population by 2015 and the non-PC part of that is growing rapidly. That's a lot of connectivity and potential problems making stuff work together.

The view Claire takes is service design. It's hard to describe because we interact with services at multiple points and most people see the service as that interaction point. For example, we see our post man, not the mail service as a whole. Consider a mobile app linked to weighing scales. The app is just an entry point to the weighing service. It doesn't matter how good the app is if the entire service doesn't work well.

The prevailing view of usability is of one main device with a screen, and making sure it works well there. The new view is that there are lots of devices, some without screens, that may be context aware, and there may have multiple users. Thus there are many interaction points, touch points.

So what's good design for a touch point? It must be appropriate to the device (size, complexity, etc) and demand only the minimum amount of attention. We need to be better at prioritizing features where and when users need them. At the moment, smartphones are just buckets of apps on a desktop. Every service needs a clear mental model--what is it for and how is it used. For example, Dropbox (Personal Storage in the Cloud) hides internals. It looks to a user as just a folder where you can share stuff.

Claire's key message...Think about much more than the desktop and make your stuff work everywhere. Include free services to replace proprietary ones.

Nick Richards - Iteration's What You Need

The GNOME community keynote was presented by Nick Richards, a user interface designer with Intel who is heavily involved in GNOME Shell.

He explained that designers have a nice job because they get to solve people's problems. Nick believes that "GNOME 3 is a really good example of design led stuff" and says they aim to "listen to what people are saying and deliver that in as generic and scalable manner as possible". You can't say no all the time, as it is easy for people to take the code and do their own thing, either via extensions or forks. Therefore it is better to say yes, but not always possible.

Nick said that GNOME 2 was great, but the end of the line was being reached in terms of scalability, so a big switch to GNOME 3 was needed. He acknowledged that some of the GNOME apps are not as good as the rest of the desktop, and there are plans to work on this to raise quality overall.

Among free software in general, Nick believes that tools for designers still need to improve if designers are going to be persuaded to move away from working on paper. He also noted that individual designers do not scale, so there is a need for many more designers in free software

Press conference panel

Turning to the main topic of his presentation, Nick argued that "iteration is not a rewrite from scratch". An iterative process would never have led to GNOME 3, but it can lead to rapid improvement once you have got the basics right. Feedback is essential and it is perhaps true that a free software community cannot do the same level of testing as companies. The best way of improving quality can be getting software out as quick as possible and getting reaction, by making it easy to install test versions.

Meeting the Press

The press conference was well attended by journalists from several magazines and a local radio station. They were pleased to hear that the Summit has already attracted around seven hundred attendees.

Questions ranged from specifics of the summit to larger issues in free software, such as levels of deployment in enterprises. The panel mostly agreed that this is hard to measure, since very few companies publicly disclose the software that they use. Governments and educational institutions are much happier to do this and so we hear more about them.

Another question that arose was when the next desktop summit would be and whether it would include Unity. While there are no firm plans, there is a concensus to combine summits once every two years so the next Desktop Summit will probably be in 2013. On the subject of Unity, the organizers prefer to wait and see how significant that project is in two years. However, there is an intention to invite more free software developers in general, making the Summit attractive to all people interested in consumer-facing software.

Party at the beach

Party Time

A full day of presentations and sharing of ideas was followed by a party at the Box on the Beach of the River Spree--thanks to the party sponsor, Intel. Hundreds of people at the barbecue and karaoke extravaganza enjoyed complimentary drinks--mostly beer, and a variety of grilled goodies and salads. The line for the food was long enough to keep quite a few people down at the beach for conversation and informal get-togethers.

The coat check lady asked, "Who are these people? I have one coat and a room full of laptops." The karaoke was excellent--it's hard to say who was best and who needs more practice. There was no shortage of talent with a 3 hour waiting list to get onstage. The police came...the hallmark of a great party.

The End of Another Day

All in all, it was another great day at the summit. There is too much to report in detail, from the fun of getting hundreds of people together for the group photo to revealing who did the most karaoke at the party. One great thing is the real sense of how happy everyone is to be here. At least two of KDE's Google Summer of Code students from India even used their payment from that program to fund their travel costs to the Desktop Summit and they seem to think it is money well spent.

There is only one more day of talks to report on now, but that will include such highlights as Thomas Thwaites revealing how to make a toaster - from scratch, including mining the iron and copper to make power cables. Check back for that news tomorrow and throughout the rest of the week for the latest from the workshop and interviews of some of the hot topics arising from the past few days.

Everyone having fun at Desktop Summit 2011

symons — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 15:14:17 +0000

Friday, 5 August—preparing

People were standing a bit lost in the cloakroom of the Humboldt University at Unter den Linden, Berlin. They were the volunteers for the Desktop Summit 2011—but without guidance and leadership, they were just nervously looking around and talking to each other.

At 11:00, Mirko Boehm came in, gathered everyone together, and told them what to do! Tables got moved, tape stuck to floors, posters hung up.

Meanwhile, another group of volunteers began gathering at c-base, world's first hacker space and site of the oldest crashed space station on Earth. Thanks to sponsor Igalia, several hundred attendees came to this pre-registration event to have drinks and conversation in the creative space of c-base. This also gave the registration team an opportunity to figure out good processes for namebadges and lunch vouchers. And allowed the first visitors get their badges, a welcome hug and lunch tickets for the rest of the week. A long day of hard work, and the team was ready for the official opening of Desktop Summit.

Saturday, August 6—beginning

Dirk Hohndel

Boehm opened the Desktop Summit and handed over the microphone to the first keynote speaker, Dirk Hohndel. Dirk spoke about where Linux Desktops came from and where they are going. He expressed his happiness with Free Desktop projects moving beyond copying commercial products to making their own choices and providing leadership. He stressed the importance of listening to users in making those choices. Dirk then got on the subject of collaboration and suggested that while disagreements might make the news, restraint, flexibility and openness make for better products and more satisfaction for users and contributors. Dirk's talk was a delightful, meaningful introduction to the collaborative Desktop Summit.

As the conference moved into the general schedule, attendees heard from project leaders and FOSS contributors in more detail on various subjects related to to common desktop interests. For the most part, presentations will be available on line soon.

Copyright Assignment Panel

The panel on copyright assignment, licensing and similar rights assignment policies was highly anticipated. CA is a hot issue in the Free software world, dealing with the potential conflict of interests between company/project managers and contributors. Some companies and projects require copyright assignment, while developers naturally want to understand what will happen to their code. The discussion touched on Project Harmony, an effort led by Canonical to define a set of contributor agreements and simplify the choices in the same way that Creative Commons makes it easier to choose a free license for creative works.

The panel was made up of key figures in the Free Software community from both sides of the debate. Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical, promoted contributor agreements as essential to building a thriving ecosystem around Free Software. Michael Meeks, part of the LibreOffice founding team and long time GNOME contributor, explained how he was once in favor of assigning his copyright to larger projects. Now he has come to see problems in terms of what he calls the "Scalability, Copyright and Ownership" problems. Most companies that require copyright assignment (e.g., MySQL) end up doing most of the work themselves rather than getting real support from the community. Moreover, you can expect conflicts and FUD due to copyright issues. Finally, CA leads to less feeling of ownership by the community which in turn leads to maintenance problems. Bradley Kuhn of the Software Freedom Conservancy and the Free Software Foundation is also generally against copyright assignment to companies, arguing that projects choose licenses that reflect their values and contributor agreements change that.

The panel was moderated by Karen Sandler, the new Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation and former General Counsel with the Software Freedom Law Center. She kept the debate on topic and explained jargon when necessary.

The discussion was lively. Mark asserted that "freedom is not on the table for discussion. Freedom is absolute", a point challenged by Bradley who argued that software freedom is "always on the table" and thus needs to be actively protected.

Shuttleworth's comment that "Linux, the Free software system, is not thriving on the client" set off another series of comments and rebuttals about funding vs contribution. In order for FOSS to thrive in the desktop environment, Mark says that companies--especially startups--need what copyright assignment offers. It gives them a competitive advantage which makes it easier for them to make money. Meeks agreed that a stronger, broader ecosystem would be great, but copyright assignment defeats the point of Free Software as it creates monopolies. Mark didn't like to talk about monopolies, as "in terms of access to the code there is no monopoly", but Bradley disagreed, pointing out that, under most assignment circumstances, only one company can take the code proprietary. This is indeed the 'competitive advantage' which was being discussed.

Michael said that ownership is critical, because "if people don't feel they own part of the code, they feel very differently about the project ... they have at best weak allegiance to the project."

Bradley pointed to the value of placing trust in an organization like the Free Software Foundation. Mark suggested that it makes sense to "trust the organization where your code fits, if you want your code to thrive." And added that, "you have to choose how you want your code to behave in a world of change. I believe the moral right lives with the project." In other words, code without the project it belongs to loses its value. So ownership by the project or company makes sense.

We spoke with Karen Sandler on this subject afterwards, asking for her personal view in this. She agrees on this point, noting that a GPL "or later" kind of license effectively commits a contributor to a license they have not yet seen. This worries even some developers who trust the FSF, as the FSF is the organization which can then incorporate new things with a later version of the GPL. If the code is owned by a strong, independent, charitable entity which is trusted by the contributors, they can ensure the goals of the community and the license stay aligned. This trust can be achieved in a number of ways, including assignment agreements that limit how the code can be licensed later, or by ensuring election of leadership by a broad membership. However, she opposes assigning the code to a corporate party due to the earlier mentioned monopoly on the ability to take the code proprietary, which goes against the software freedom ideals she supports. It gives them too much power, something Meeks also brought up several times.

On the issue of patents, the differences of opinion were again on display. Mark asserted that, under the Harmony agreements, a contributor does not give away patent rights, but rather provides the necessary rights to ship the code. The debate centered on whether contributors receive the same rights back from the company with respect to patents that they themselves are expected to provide. Meeks said he has problems with the inequality which is created by the copyright assignment and he believes there's enough competition already, we don't need an advantage for a single company. He pointed out that contributors could end up in a situation where even they themselves don't have the right to ship the software they wrote themselves, despite a permissive license, because the patents are owned by the company they assigned their code to.

Mark Shuttleworth ended the discussion with a comment on generosity: "giving something to somebody is generous, you should try that, it is very satisfying". This resulted in quite some hallway discussions. It seemed to be inappropriate to some to lecture on generosity to a room full of Free Software developers!

Hallway track

Between and during the talks, the hallway track was well attended. Groups of people were meeting face to face everywhere; some were grumpy that there wasn't enough 'hacking space'. Access to AC was also limited, but an empty battery means having talk to people, which was quite good for the general atmosphere! The main hall was quite lively, with a number of info booths and in the registration area you can buy t-shirts, stickers, flyers and other swag. Outside, people gathered for a smoke or just to enjoy the sun, escaping from time to time into the shade of the majestic trees in the courtyard. Some even took a stroll, enjoying the area around the University.

Lunch was in the Uni's canteen with pasta and salad. This was all washed down with the drink of the week, Club Mate, a carbonated caffeine drink made from the popular South American tea. It's not too heavy and keeps you alert. Thank you, Intel, for keeping us in supply.

In the evening, a large group headed back to c-base for a barbecue, while others went out in various directions to enjoy Berlin and its good food. Berlin is a fun city. Big, but friendly, active, accessible, with a mix of old and modern. Crumbling cement alongside elegant structures, greenery. There's no opportunity to be bored.

Conclusion

We've heard many people say how the Desktop Summit again exceeds expectations. As Karen mentioned during the press conference, it is amazing to see how well everyone is getting along. Or perhaps, as Aaron argued, it is not amazing at all - he claimed the communities have worked together so well for so long that it shouldn't be surprising anymore. We all want Free Software to succeed on the desktop and the new form factors. We work on similar things, according to similar values. We learn from each other and we should focus on getting the best from having two major Free Desktop projects--don't duplicate technology just for the sake of it, but compete and make sure the best technology wins! For that, it's important to be open to each other's technology, to be more accepting and to be more aware of what each community is doing. Where we can build on one another's technology we should. If we think we can find a new way and do something in a better way, then everyone can benefit.

Read this article plus a section on GNOME-specific Desktop Summit news.

Read this article plus a section on KDE-specific Desktop Summit news.

Copyright Assignment Panel

symons — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 17:21:41 +0000

Should free and open source projects and companies require developers to sign community agreements in order to contribute, possibly signing over their copyrights? Some do, some don't, others have a blend. Canonical is leading an effort, called "Harmony", to create standardized community agreement documents, an effort they compare with the license standardization work of Creative Commons.

Of course, free and open source developers don't want to give away too much control over their contributions. On the other hand, some project and business leaders say that they must have copyright assignments to be successful. Is there a middle ground?

Copyright assignment is a controversial topic in the FOSS community. The Desktop Summit is fortunate to have thought leaders who are willing to engage openly in a panel discussion about copyright assignment. It's hard to imagine 4 people better suited.

Canonical's Mark Shuttleworth is an entrepreneur and a proponent of copyright assignment. Unity and other Canonical projects require copyright assignment.

Michael Meeks is a developer and an opponent of copyright assignment. He worked on the OpenOffice.org (OOo) project, and is one of the core developers instrumental in the creation of LibreOffice, based on the OOo codebase. A major factor in the LibreOffice fork is the copyright assignment required to contribute to OOo.

Bradley Kuhn is the Executive Director of the Software Freedom Conservancy and a Director of the Free Software Foundation. He has an extensive background in free software licensing and advocacy, and has given much thought to conflicts between software freedom and other considerations, such as business, fundraising and cloud-based computing. In Bradley's view, copyright assignment can be acceptable if the assignee is a trusted nonprofit organization.

The panel will be moderated by Karen Sandler, the GNOME Foundation's new Executive Director, who was previously the General Counsel of the Software Freedom Law Center.

The panel should appeal to everybody who is involved in free and open source software—hackers, community managers, other kinds of contributors, business managers or lawyers.

Conference Attendee Policy Published

lydia — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 23:20:12 +0000

As we want all our attendees to have a great experience at our conference and to provide an adequate environment, we have developed the conference attendee policy. All participants are valuable parts of the Desktop Summit. We want to make this a wonderful event for all of them.

From the introduction of the conference attendee policy:

The Desktop Summit is dedicated to providing an enjoyable conference experience for everyone. We, as a community, value and respect all people—regardless of gender, orientation, race, ability, shape, size or preferred desktop environment—and will not tolerate vilification, abuse or harassment in any form. We appreciate that cultural differences may cause misunderstandings, so we will try to clarify these and smooth misunderstandings as they arise. But we also expect people to avoid playing dumb, and to make an effort to ensure a pleasant conference experience for everyone.

Conference participants behaving in ways that run counter to these principles risk being denied entrance or expelled from the conference at the discretion of the conference organizers. Conference Speakers should be especially aware of these concerns.

Please read the complete conference attendee policy. We encourage all participants to share in making the Desktop Summit valuable and memorable for everyone. Thank you for your thoughtfulness.

Community Keynote Interview: Nick Richards

symons — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 06:49:12 +0000

Nick Richards is an interaction designer. Not to be confused with graphic design, Nick's work is about the communication frameworks that connect people to data and tools. He helped the GNOME project with creating a useful and meaningful environment in GNOME 3, and he has also worked on the Moblin and MeeGo mobile OS projects. A Senior Interaction Designer at Intel, Nick contributes an important usability voice in design-driven development.

Nick will deliver the GNOME community's Desktop Summit 2011 keynote address on meaningful connections for humans and technology. To provide some insights about Nick, William Carlson asked him a few questions:

Nick Richards

William: What brought you here, and what do you do?

Nick: Hi, so it all started with the SuSE 7.0 boxed set and didn't really stop.

As for what I do, I'm an Interaction Designer, working for Intel in London at their Open Source Technology Centre. I've worked on Moblin, MeeGo and GNOME at Intel. Before that I worked for a design agency (along with Claire Rowland in fact) and a mobile operator.

William: What is important for you about being in the GNOME community, and where would you like to see it grow?

Nick: The diversity of voices and opinions is very important to me. That so many people from all over the world get together to make something is inspiring.

What I'd like to see grow? GNOME is people, and having more people would be great, especially if we could get more people from different places and backgrounds.

William: How does the community's diversity drive design development?

Nick: With design you're always looking to satisfy an audience. Given that the existing community is one of the audiences an open source project has, and certainly the most engaged, their priorities are most often going to be heard since by and large, they actually do the work.

William: What kind of things do you do as an Interaction Designer? Walk me through a typical day.

Nick: Draw boxes and then hook them together with arrows!

But seriously, most of the job is about communication. Talking to people to try and find out what needs to be done, what can be done and what is best to be done. Then when you've all come to an agreement, communicating that as simply and crisply as you can. That's what the aforementioned boxes and arrows are there for.

One thing I'm not so good at is making pixel perfect, super pretty mockups, thankfully that normally isn't part of the interaction designers remit.

William: What is your idea for tech gadgets of the future? A subtle presence, or more space-agey Star Trek kind of stuff?

Nick: Neither of the two really. Ever cheaper, ever more specialized. What once felt intrusive becomes subtle, not always with domestication, but certainly with the passage of time.

Star Trek technology is awesome to look at and maybe think about, but doesn't tend to fit easily into a life. We should aspire to make things that people can and want to use all day.

Currently my favourite '5 minutes into the future' author is Charles Stross, excellent for dystopian product ideas.

William: Well the way technology is going, it doesn't surprise me how science fiction sometimes become science reality.. :-)

Thank you very much for your time Nick, and see you in Berlin!

You can see Nick deliver his GNOME community keynote speech on Sunday August 7 at 4:10pm at the Desktop Summit 2011 in Berlin. The KDE community keynote will be delivered by Stuart Jarvis, who will speak on August 6.

Other Summit keynote speakers are Dirk Hohndel (Chief Linux and Open Source Technologist, Intel), Claire Rowland (UX Designer, Fjord) and Thomas Thwaite (Technologist).

Registration for the Desktop Summit is free. Sign up today

Social Events at the Desktop Summit

symons — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 12:31:56 +0000

We are pleased to announce the Desktop Summit social events, bringing even more excitement and fun to the Conference program. The social events vary from sports to parties, and will take place throughout the week in different locations in Berlin. They will provide opportunities for attendees to get together informally while enjoying foods and drinks provided by our sponsors—Intel, Collabora, SUSE, Igalia and corporate partner, c-base.

Those who arrive a day early are welcome to join the pre-registration event at c-base, the world famous hacker space, on Friday, 5th of August from 4 to 9 p.m. Enjoy drinks sponsored by Igalia while meeting other attendees and getting warmed up for the Desktop Summit. You will be able to check in early, get your conference badge, and skip the wait on Saturday morning. At the party, people can buy food vouchers for lunch and sign up for one of the day trip choices. More information on the day trips will be announced soon.

Sunday night features a BBQ on the beach of the River Spree. Starting at 7.30 p.m., Platinum sponsor Intel welcomes you to the barbecue and open bar. The party will continue inside from 11.00 p.m. with dancing and karaoke. This is an opportunity to enjoy the personality of Berlin and the party all at once.

On Monday night, a football match will be held supported by SUSE with t-shirts and refreshments. For those who would like to participate, please sign up for the football match on the Wiki. More information on the location of the match is available.

The last, but certainly not the least party, is on Tuesday, 9th of August from 7.30 p.m. on. The Island Party will be on the Insel Berlin in Treptower Park. After a nice walk along the Spree river from the Treptower Park S-Bahn station, you will reach the party venue with lush greenery surrounded by the Spree river. Collabora is sponsoring food and drinks, and there will be a Soul DJ.

News

Desktop Summit Survey Report

Wrap up - Desktop Summit 2011 Berlin

Desktop Summit in the News

News stories and interviews about Desktop Summit 2011 - Berlin

News articles (in German)

News articles (in English)

Interviews

Radio Tux (German)

Blog posts

Day 3 - Toasters and Pants

Getting Smart with Nepomuk and Zeitgeist

Keynote: The Making of a Toaster

Recognizing Achievement

Closing Thoughts

Keynotes and Sandals - Day Two at Desktop Summit 2011

An Exciting Day for KDE and GNOME

Keynotes

Claire Rowland - Design Across the Device Spectrum

Nick Richards - Iteration's What You Need

Meeting the Press

Party Time

The End of Another Day

Everyone having fun at Desktop Summit 2011

Friday, 5 August—preparing

Saturday, August 6—beginning

Copyright Assignment Panel

Hallway track

Conclusion

Copyright Assignment Panel

Conference Attendee Policy Published

Community Keynote Interview: Nick Richards

Social Events at the Desktop Summit