 Hello everyone. Today I'm joined with Nicolas. Can you tell us a bit about yourself for those that don't know you yet? Sure. Well, about KDE, I joined KDE just two to three years ago actually and I mostly joined because I tried KDE and I thought it was the most like beautiful working software I ever tried since I joined Linux so I thought I want to help out and that's what I did but if I have to talk about myself I also do so many different things like I have a channel as an example but I also play chess, write poetry, I study mathematics, I just try to do as much as I can until I burn out and that's a bit about myself. Truly a man of renaissance I would say. A little bit of everything. Until I burn out. We're talking today about goals as the current set of goals is about to be replaced by a new set that that process will start very soon and regarding the goal you are the goal champion for consistency, is that correct? When you first proposed it what was the what was the goal of in the years that it was ongoing? Sorry, what was that? When you started with the consistency goal did it what was it about basically and did the scope of it change in any way between the years? The consistency goal at the beginning had this idea that you should never do the same thing twice and this was actually super broad. Let me make you a couple of examples. This applied to code first of all if you have two pieces of code that actually do the same thing they should probably be extracted away into a function or a library as a starter but also for the UI if you have two different elements that actually do the same thing they should probably be extracted away into a UI library and then those apps when they actually need those components will just take that library and embed the component into them. That's usually what happens of course with UI design and the goal was actually to make sure that it happened consistently that the same components were used in the same way same ways throughout apps but not just that it was also about websites. As an example all KDE apps have some slightly different way of hosting their website some have like their own some are inside of KDE but they are all in different directories of the KDE.org website. So it had really a wide scope also different applications that do the same thing and the idea is that those applications should probably be the same so merged together that was the initial idea. Of course after trying that we had to meet with reality and that is two different applications that do the same thing often they don't do exactly the same thing and so they actually have a reason for being different. You might have two music players inside of KDE but there is actually no way to merge them together but also for the UI you maybe you know maybe you don't. KDE has two different sets of components that is KDE widgets and QML, QRIGAMI and it's rather difficult to make sure that both of them follow the same exact style. So that's also something that really improved over the years and so mostly what happened in the years after selecting the consistency goal it has changed it has changed in the fact that it had to meet with reality and even though most of the stuff that was initially proposed wasn't actually accepted sorry wasn't actually acted upon and fixed we did a lot that was not in the original task but that after some third realize was actually more important such as making sure that QDE widgets and QRIGAMI have the same appearance sorry. Yeah so even though the initial scope changed do you feel that the goal overall achieved its purpose? I would give if we wanted to like give scores out of then as an example I would say seven because there is clearly much more that could have been done especially from me that I'm the goalkeeper I have the responsibility to make sure that the goal here goes forward and even though a lot was achieved and if I try to use older KDE Plasma versions I was like how did I ever fall in love with this nowadays it's much better but still a lot more could have been done of course I try to excuse myself by saying well I'm working also with the promotion group and visual design in other ways so I'm a bit busy anyway but I tried my best and I think it went well not fantastic but well. What would you say was the biggest achievement done within the goal? I would probably say the fact that nowadays if you open up a modern KDE app like discover as an example I do think it's a modern KDE app and you also open up I don't know the system tree or kickoff even though those are different components in completely different ways to actually be implemented sorry discover is QML, KDE whereas kickoff is actually SVGS they look the same they use the same colors the same design elements the same typography and that's super important and it's something that was not done at all when I first started the goal. Yeah that's I think that's great and I'm sure most of KDE users appreciate it even though they might not actually notice it consciously because everything just fits you know but on the flip side why would you say you could have done better or could have gone better with the goal itself? In general the goal was extremely poorly organized all together and if I had spent two to three times the time I spent on it I would have been able to have an active chat just about consistency and then actually see what was implementable for consistency and start asking people to please try to working on these things I could have tried that I did that for the first six to 12 months and after that I realized that I wasn't actually able to keep up if at the same time I was also like doing I was working to do videos for promoting KDE and I was like redesigning the panel and adding floating panels which is not consistency but it's something that I really wanted to do so that's what went wrong in my opinion and let's go back in time for a bit. Do you remember the moment when you learned that your goal was actually selected? How did you feel then? Yeah I do remember and actually I think most people think that I don't know there was this voting and then an email was sent out and there was like the consistency goal was selected and I saw the mail and was like wow nice it did not go like that so I had just like joined KDE but not formally I was just close to KDE I was doing some very very small things and then I proposed the goal and the announcement of the goals actually happened in academy which is when all of the people actually meet together and talk and there is this big talk with a lot of people watching and there was Lydia I think and Lydia announced that the consistency goal was selected and immediately thereafter he asked the person that actually proposed the goal so me to stand up and go on stage in that specific moment to actually talk to everybody in front of everybody about the goal and I was like whoa that's a lot and I did not prepare anything so you can actually see the videos of academy 2019 that is I think of me just being on this chair in front of everybody scared without knowing what to say so it went pretty well after that I was helped a lot by Lydia and everybody that's good to hear you mentioned that you were let's say a beginner in the KDE community when the goal was selected how was your relationship with KDE changed since then since you become a gold champion the how my relationship with KDE changed it changed a lot I got involved a lot more with KDE just to make a simple example there's the KDE EV which is the actual non-profit organization that represents the KDE community and now I'm a member so I can participate in voting and for the board and stuff like that but I also do much more development and I know much better stuff like how the plasma theming works I've worked on the panel and in general widgets are placed I try to make sure that they work and I already had actually back then a good relationship with the promo community now I'm just always looking at the promo and VDG which is visual design chat so I'm much more active from that point of view and I also now have a channel about KDE so that is completely new so yeah it sounds that you're a beginner when the goal is selected but now you're really involved with the community do you think you'd be as involved if your goal wasn't selected absolutely not now the being selected as a goalkeeper was actually a very very good way of um um onboarding people in general and that's why I think that for the next goal we should try to select goals that have been proposed by members that are very new in the community or maybe that actually created their account just to propose something it doesn't mean that they will become part of the KDE community but it's it's a very nice way to say okay we're listening to you so yeah yeah and speaking of the upcoming goals that people might submit and propose uh in your opinion what makes a good goal for the KDE community the goal should be uh a very broad if it's something like uh I think that KDE plasma theming is a mess and should be redesigned that's not a goal because I don't know all applications are have nothing to do with this goal a goal is something that applies to everything going from uh the actual code the UI of all apps and shells how KDE is structured as a whole how the website works everything should be affected by the goal um of course there are certain goals like I don't know Wayland as an example which of course are not related to the website or how KDE works but nonetheless actually getting things implemented in Wayland require work from all KDE applications and shells so it's very broad it should also be very practical if it's something like I don't know KDE should have as its goal to make sure that everybody uses KDE sure that's a very nice goal but how exactly and that's the how that you should provide when you propose a goal yeah very good ideas um I have a feeling that uh at least one next goal champion is watching this right now what tips do you have for that person for either becoming the the champion or after the selection actually running the goal before proposing the goal or whilst proposing the goal I would sure say try uh to work as much as possible to make your proposal realistic and practical and detailed if you go see the consistency uh the very original my first proposal for consistency it's very long it's the longest goal that was proposed and I think that helped it make it selected because people went through it and thought okay here we have somebody who was clearly willing to put work into this that wasn't true but clearly wanted to give a work into this and also has a very clear plan so we should maybe try to trust them if you just do a couple of lines saying I think that KDE Plasma should improve on touchscreens and that's it that's not going to work try to make all of the steps all of the changes that you think KDE has to do to get to your goal after being selected uh be ready to meet with reality because sadly it's all very nice in words but then you discover that I mean it's not like you're the first person realizing that KDE needs more uh better wayland support better consistency better anything it's just that it's actually hard to implement it so you will need to put a lot of work into it to make sure that other developers are interested because sure you were selected as a goalkeeper that doesn't mean that anybody should listen to you that means that you have all the infrastructures but you still have to convince even developers so you need to say okay I'm maybe a beginner maybe uh already in the KDE community I should try to do my best to make my goal feasible and if it's something I want to achieve but it's impossible forget about it maybe maybe it will be possible in 10 years from now who knows but try to focus on what you can do and try to focus on how you can convince people to do things that they can do very good tips during this year's academy uh as as was in your case the new goals will be revealed and at the same time uh all the current ones including consistency your goal will be uh well not ended just not in focus anymore do you plan to continue work regarding consistency in KDE or do you have other plans for yourself personally I think I'd like to say okay the consistency goal as we knew it is over that's how it went I will focus on doing the other um in the other areas of KDE involvement that I mean again that is the promotion group or making sure that the KDE panel and outlets work that's what I usually do I do not plan to make huge changes or huge pressures to consistency in particular we are already in a very good spot and what's missing is very very hard to implement and right now I don't have the energy to go around and start booking people to say hey can you do this can you do that I just want to keep it simple and do what I know I can do and I'm sure you'll be great at it thank you very much Nikola for having this interview and also for being our uh champion for the last couple of years thank you Eryup I did a nice job you did you did thank you bye thanks