KDE Receives $1.4 Million Investment From Sovereign Tech Fund (kde.org) 34
The German Sovereign Tech Fund has invested 1.2 million euros ($1.4 million USD) in KDE Plasma technologies to help strengthen the structural reliability and security of the desktop environment's core infrastructure, including Plasma, KDE Linux, and the frameworks underlying its communication services. Longtime Slashdot reader jrepin shares an excerpt from the announcement: For 30 years, KDE has been providing the free and open-source software essential for digital sovereignty in personal, corporate, and public infrastructures: operating systems, desktop environments, document viewers, image and video editors, software development libraries, and much more.
KDE's software is competitive, publicly auditable, and freely available. It can be maintained, adapted, and improved in-house or by local software companies. And modifications (along with their source code) can be freely distributed to all users and departments within an organization.
KDE will use Sovereign Tech Fund's investment to push its essential software products to the next level, providing every individual, business, and public administration with the opportunity to regain their privacy, security, and control over their digital sovereignty. Slashdot reader Elektroschock also shared a statement from Fiona Krakenburger, Technical Director at the Sovereign Tech Agency.
"We have long invested in desktop technologies for a reason: they are the primary way people access and use digital services in everyday life," says Krakenburger. "The desktop holds personal data and mediates nearly every service we depend on, from booking the next medical appointment, to education, to the way we work. We are investing in KDE because it is one of the two major desktop environments used across Linux and plays a key role in how millions of people experience open technology. Strengthening KDE's testing infrastructure, security architecture, and communication frameworks is how we invest in the resilience and reliability of the core digital infrastructure that modern society depends on."
KDE's software is competitive, publicly auditable, and freely available. It can be maintained, adapted, and improved in-house or by local software companies. And modifications (along with their source code) can be freely distributed to all users and departments within an organization.
KDE will use Sovereign Tech Fund's investment to push its essential software products to the next level, providing every individual, business, and public administration with the opportunity to regain their privacy, security, and control over their digital sovereignty. Slashdot reader Elektroschock also shared a statement from Fiona Krakenburger, Technical Director at the Sovereign Tech Agency.
"We have long invested in desktop technologies for a reason: they are the primary way people access and use digital services in everyday life," says Krakenburger. "The desktop holds personal data and mediates nearly every service we depend on, from booking the next medical appointment, to education, to the way we work. We are investing in KDE because it is one of the two major desktop environments used across Linux and plays a key role in how millions of people experience open technology. Strengthening KDE's testing infrastructure, security architecture, and communication frameworks is how we invest in the resilience and reliability of the core digital infrastructure that modern society depends on."
Two sad points. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Plus, places that don't collect taxes tend to not have things like roads, hospitals, laws, civilization.
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STFU, you moronic coward.
Tell me how when the US government buys from Boeing, after telling them what they want, that's communism, based on your idiocy.
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You're a complete ignorant idiot.
1. Iran's not communist.
2. You put words in my mouth - I support the Persians, not the religious government. But people like you want *exactly* the same, a religious government in the US, though you can't decide *which* idiotic sect of self-proclaimed Christians are the Real Christians.
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I believe this is not the first time they've donated to this project, but that does not necessarily mean my memory is accurate on this front.
Re:Two sad points. (Score:5, Informative)
the Sovereign Tech Fund has actually been putting $$$ into multiple projects. They did a similar donation to FreeBSD recently as well, and tons of tools/libraries. And yes, OpenSSH is on the list! https://www.sovereign.tech/tec... [sovereign.tech]
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This is Pleasing (Score:5, Insightful)
Certainly a far more useful investment than yet another never-to-be-built AI data center.
Re:This is Pleasing (Score:4)
Certainly a far more useful investment than yet another never-to-be-built AI data center.
Investment in an AI server farm which never materializes, is probably a net good when compared with investment in an AI facility which DOES get built.
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And a shitload cheaper.
Have you seen RAM and SSD prices recently?
$1.4m might get you a single rack these days.
Unleash the Kraken (Score:4, Funny)
Fiona Krakenburger, now there's a name.
Re: Unleash the Kraken (Score:3, Funny)
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Re: Unleash the Kraken (Score:1)
this is good (Score:4)
Happy with flyng under the radar (Score:4, Interesting)
Leave the consumerist operating system in place for all the happy consumers. I don't want Linux adapted and enshitified to meet their needs - which is what will happen if they start switching in significant numbers. Keep the year of Linux on the desktop perpetually somewhere in the future.
Re: Happy with flyng under the radar (Score:2)
Re:Happy with flyng under the radar (Score:4, Insightful)
You know there's more than one distribution of Linux, yes?
You know that there's more than one window environment on Linux, yes?
If you don't like the roadmap that a particular distro has, find another one that you do like.
Put it all in usability (Score:3)
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What you've described is one reason why I don't touch GNOME any more. If that's supposed to be good UX, I'll say "Hell, NO!".
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If KDE had proper human interface guidelines that didn't fit on a cereal packet and adopted a UX ethos & direction rather than a kitchen sink
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I've used Linux professionally, on the desktop, and literally everybody and his dog around me also switched to KDE due to not getting along with Gnome, which was the default (Redhat). We didn't get offered many other choices, but boy were we glad we could get away from Gnome.
In terms of usability, I think the KDE defaults are okay, but with some tweaks, KDE surpass
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I fail to see the relevance, I take 5 minutes on any fresh KDE installation and it behaves exactly the way I want, minus the things that have been undone since KDE 3 for reasons (virtual desktops with a different backdrop on each, for instance), which no other major system can do.
I don't know what UI things I should beg the KDE team to improve, I'm not aware of any glar
Eurostack (Score:2)
That's what I take this for, that the EU's Eurostack, which they're building to get off M$ and the rest of US tech companies, they're going to standardize on KDE.
Long ago, I thought that KDE was bloatwarre, until Gnome blew way past that.