Akademy 2014 is still in full swing in Brno in the Czech Republic with the traditional hack week that started on Monday. At about 200 participants it was well attended and organized. This years conference will very likely mark a milestone of change for KDE – a new board was elected, and a strategy discussion was started that will affect the direction and development of the KDE community for a decent amount of time. When I traveled home from Akademy 2014 on the train from Brno to Berlin, I personally felt a sense of satisfaction, because the community has managed to steer clear of the dangers of bike shedding about the board succession, and is accepting the change imposed by a shifting environment as a positive force.
Of the five positions of the KDE e.V. board, three were up for re-election. Lydia Pintscher’s first term on the board lapsed, and she ran for re-election. Marta Rybczyńska took over mid-term when Agustin Benito Bethencourt stepped down from the board, and stood for election for a regular board seat. Because of their proven commitment and steady hand, both won their seats with ease. Together with Albert Astal Cid and Pradeepto Bhattacharya they will provide the experience and continuity needed for the board to perform it’s function. The remaining board seat was contested between Jos Poortvliet and Aleix Pol, both long-standing and committed KDE community members. It was won in a tight race by Aleix Pol. He will bring his experience from building KDE Spain to the mothership of KDE e.V. Good luck to him and the whole new board, and many thanks to Jos for standing up for election.
The new board is facing a number of challenges. Some are simply of operational nature, like finding a new office manager and other permanent staff. More significantly, there are some long-term shifts that need managing. In a time when Free Software contributions in an industrial setting are becoming more and more institutionalized, a volunteer driven, decentralized community like KDE has to adapt its ways of fundraising and attracting and retaining contributors. This is of course not the reponsibility of the board alone, but the board does set the tone and priorities as stewards. It is great and promising to see fresh and driven people joining the board, adding new attitudes and ways to get things done. I would like to extend ginormous amounts of gratefulness, thanks and hugging to Cornelius Schumacher, who stepped down from the board after serving on it for nine (9, sic!) years. For a long time, he has with his particular calm and well-reflected opinions been solid as a rock as the president of KDE e.V. He leaves pretty big shoes to fill for the new president.
Which leaves the question of what the structure of the new board is. It was announced to the KDE Community mailing list by Albert Astal Cid:
- Pradeepto Bhattacharya – board member
- Albert Astals Cid – board member
- Aleix Pol – vice president
- Marta Rybczynska – treasurer and vice president
- Lydia Pintscher – president
Good luck again to all of them. Quite impressively, our board is 40% female, 60% male. With five board members an exact 50/50 ration is hard to achieve, so in my opinion, anything between forty and sixty percent should count as properly balanced, gender-wise. This again serves to illustrate the composition of contributors that makes KDE great.
The new board will need all the support from the KDE contributors that it can get. It may be worth to point out that all board members are volunteers and do not receive any remuneration for their work. If you want to pitch in and help, consider joining the kde-community@kde.org mailing list. If you are already a KDE contributor, you may want to ask to be a member of KDE e.V. And if you are a member, many thanks for your contributions, and keep going!
Filed under: Coding, CreativeDestruction, English, FLOSS, KDE, OSS, Qt Tagged: Akademy, Creative Destruction, FLOSS, free software communities, KDE, kde community, Open by Default, technology
