Sponsors

Project co-financed by ACIISI

Agencia Canaria de Investigación Ministerio de ... Plan Avanza

The Finishing Touch

Submitted by admin on Tue, 05/12/2009 - 17:08
Printer-friendly versionPrinter-friendly version
Author(s): 
Sebastian Kügler

KDE, while being technically integrated and rather complete isn't so in terms of being a product. KDE, and Free Software components in general are to be considered a raw product, which augmented with a device, installation, support and possibly a handbook makes for a whole product, i.e. something that a consumer would buy, something that covers a complete need ("I want to be able to surf the web") rather than being just one component needed.

While the software side of the Free Desktop has come a long way, there are still very little products using these technologies in the real world. And to be perfectly honest, most of these offering are way below of the potential a software package like KDE can deliver.

So what is going wrong here, what is the true potential of a finished product based on KDE? What are the steps necessary to be taken to bring KDE to the consumer / customer? The presentation outlines answers to the question how state of the art desktop technology such as KDE can be made into a finished product suitable for end users.

Author photo: 
Author bio: 
Sebastian Kügler has been a KDE hacker since 2004. Sebastian has spearheaded KDE's marketing efforts and joined the KDE e.V.'s Board of Directors in 2006. Sebastian is also involved with KDE's release team where he coordinates the promotion and thinks about higher-level development issues. Sebas is currently working in KDE's Plasma team on power management, network management, web and email integration. Sebas is also exploring using Plasma on mobile devices. In his free time, sebas, as he's called on IRC, likes photography, skating and programming, not surprisingly on KDE and Plasma.