And yet again, like previous years, around 50 KDE developers from around the world will come together in Randa from 6th September, 2015 to 13th September, 2015 and strive hard to make KDE softwares much more better for all the KDE fans.
Programming sprints like these are very important for any open source community, including KDE because it allows developers, who are generally spread out in different parts of the world, to come together for atleast once in an year to discuss the next major plans for their open source technology and also to sit together and solve some of the most intricate issues in their open source project.
I have been a participant of a similar KDE meetup held last year in Berlin, named digiKam Coding Sprint’14. This was the first time I was participating in any such meetup and I was truly truly amazed by the outcome of the sprint. After some thorough and cogent discussions during the coding sprint, the KF5/Qt5 porting task timeline was finalized, porting tasks were prioritized and these tasks were then delegated to the concerned developers. Apart from this, we had also worked to improve and add some new features in digiKam. Like I worked to implement KIPI tools functionality in BQM of digiKam, Marcel worked on memory consumption problems with the database functionalities as well as several reported memory leaks and similarly each one of us worked to either add a new feature or improve an existing one.
 |
| digiKam Coding Sprint'14 |
It’s been 9 months since the digiKam Coding Sprint last year and I am really happy to say that a lot of work has been done in this span of time, as per the plans made during the coding sprint. And it did not come as a surprise because afterall it was a well planned effort. Still, some tasks need to be completed to be able to mark digiKam as totally ported to KF5/Qt5, but we are sure that by the end of this year we will proudly announce the release of the newly ported digiKam 5.0.0 to all our dear fans around the world. And hence, I am truly optimistic that this year’s Randa Event will also be a huge success and all the KDE projects participating in it will be able to make their softwares far better than before for all the KDE lovers.
Also, not only such meetups allow the open source community developers to push the technology beyond its current limits but it also plays a major role in community bonding. I am sure you will agree that for any open source community(and in fact for any community) to produce outstanding products, it is of primary importance that there is a bond of trust and mutual understanding between the community members. And KDE very much understands the importance of this and hence emphasizes greatly on meetups like KDE Randa Meetup’15.
For KDE to be able to successfully organize Randa Meetup’15, it needs the support of all the KDE fans out there. Since most of the developers are students or young professionals from around the world, KDE has launched a Randa Meetup’15 fundraising drive to help the developers cover atleast some part of their travel and accommodation expenses. You can (and must, if you are a true KDE lover ;-) ) support this cause by donating some amount to the Randa Meetup’15 fundraising drive and help the developers make KDE better and better for you !
