KDE/Vision/Drafts/A

So, were would we like to see KDE in 5 years, i.e. 2020 ?

A great community

KDE will be a community developing free software for graphical user interfaces, centered around the Qt libraries. "Developing" in the broader sense, with everything which belongs to it, not only programmers, but also designers, user support, translators, etc. etc. Everybody who wants to contribute is welcome in the community. The goal is to provide a user-friendly, consistent and powerful experience for KDE applications across the device-spectrum.

• I mentioned Qt here because this is what we have been doing since KDE started, and since we don't have a plan to port away from it to anything else. Why hide our experience in this field ? (Alex N)
• Since this point covers what "KDE" by definition now is (a community), this seems to be the heart of the proposed VisionA. (the following points are then visions by itself for the individual projects like KF5, Plasma Shell Desktop/Mobile, KDE Applications, etc., which are interesting by themselves, but imo not in the broader KDE sense). Therefore if one only looks at this point as the main vision, you see it is exclusive and narrow as it only picks out and mentions specifically "graphical user interfaces typically using Qt" (which can be good or not so good depending on what we as a community want the vision and focus to be, so I am not judging here). So with the premise that any following points are not part of the definiton of "KDE" as in the community, but concrete project visions, this should be the main point discussed and focused on. (Clemens Toennies)
• Some nice words about free software, freedom of the user, respecting the privacy, etc. should be added. (Alex N)

The best classic UNIX desktop

The KDE desktop (Plasma ?) will be the most polished, most easy to use and most flexible desktop for PCs running a UNIX-compatible OS with X11 or Wayland.

• that's basically the original vision from Matthias Ettrich (Alex N)
• with "PCs" I mean workstations, desktop PCs and notebooks (Alex N)
• I excluded Windows and OSX on purpose, those have native desktops, trying to replace them won't fly (it didn't for the last years) (Alex N)

The mobile/embedded Linux user interface/desktop of choice

KDE will be the "desktop" of choice for "mobile Linux", in case some of the projects for Linux on mobile devices takes off (Plasma Mobile, or Sailfish OS, or Firefox OS, ....).

• not sure about this one. No such platform currently really exists. (Alex N)
• Should this include stuff like TVs, in-car/plane-entertainment systems, technical/industrial user interfaces ? Or just things like RPi ?
• Should this target mainly the hacker community ? Or also commercial use ? (Alex N)
• Or leave this point away completely ? (Alex N)

The Leader in Cross-platform applications

KDE will be well known among end-users for high-quality applications, robust, stable and running smoothly under Windows, OSX, Android and Linux (and "mobile Linux"). This way we enable end-users to use free software to manage their "digital life". The applications should integrate well into the "native" desktop of the respective OS. Consistency and good integration between applications is reached by following common guidelines and using common technologies.

The set of applications should include an office suite (at least word processor, spreadsheet and presentation) and a state-of-the-art web browser (using a widely used web engine).

• Currently there are very few KDE applications which are used widely outside desktop Linux. Krita comes to my mind. This point means we want to change this, and people will use Calligra instead of LibreOffice on Windows, and Okular on their Android tablets. (Alex N)
• This also means users should not have to install a system similar to cygwin, but the KDE applications should feel like normal applications for each platform. (Alex N)
• Should we mention/target also iOS and Windows Phone ? (Alex N)

First Class Qt addon libraries

KDE will be well known among FLOSS- and commercial developers as the Number One source for high-quality Qt addon libraries: the libraries are robust, stable, they provide source- and binary compatibility guarantees and they work smoothly on Windows, OSX, Android and Linux (and "mobile Linux").

• We are aiming at this with KF5, so make that a top priority. (Alex N)