 How does KD think? How does it take decisions? Do we have, like, the boss of KD that decides everything, like companies does with the CEO? Or let me explain by drawing. So let's suppose that we have Bob. Now, Bob, which is this person here, I'm so good at drawing, Bob, has made a patch or a merge request and he asks KD, do you want it? And we can say yes, but we could also say no. Well, who decides whether Bob's patch should be accepted or not? Well, there are many people who are strictly related to this thing. First of all, we have one very person, which is the maintainer of whatever Bob is trying to contribute to. Now, KD has many projects and usually each project has one maintainer or more, or if there's no maintainer, then that's going to be an issue. But not always. But let's suppose that we do have one maintainer, which is this person here. I'm still very good at drawing, which is the Mr. Maintainer. Now, the Mr. Maintainer looks at the code and can kind of understand it because he wrote or he maintains all of the code of that project and is probably the best person to actually understand whether this is a good idea or not. So he is probably the best person to ask to and is usually the first one to answer. And you can say, yes, this is good. No, I don't think this is worth it. Or most of the time it says, okay, I think this is good, but we have to make these changes first. And that's fine. But let's say that the maintainer is saying, no, I don't want to implement this patch. But maybe it's actually a good patch and the maintainer disagrees with it personally. Well, the maintainer is not the only person who takes decisions here. And mind you, I'm probably talking about the development side of this. So in this case, I'm not talking about, I don't know, managing money. This is purely about the development and accepting merger quest. There's not there's not only the maintainer, but there are also like working groups. Let me make some make an example. Most of the application have a good relationship with a group, which I'll represent as a circle with smaller circles in it, which are people, which is the VDG. What's the VDG? It's the visual design group. And inside of the visual design group, there are all of the people who want to contribute purely by, you know, visual design UI, UX, and so on. And usually the VDG looks at the merger quest, give a quick look at the code, but mostly comments on the idea, which is behind it and the appearance and the UI side of it. And if they really think that it's a good patch, even though the maintainer disagrees with it, they will try to convince the maintainer and show their support to the patch. Now, the maintainer could say, no, I still think this is a terrible idea. And if they do so, well, they're the maintainer. And usually it's not a good idea to try to force things even though they disagree, but they might also say, okay, I disagree with it, but I see that there is support. So let's merge it. So this is a very informal rules. And technically speaking, everyone and maybe also Bob, like literally everyone could just click on the merge button and merge it at any time. But of course, if you merge it too soon, then you'll make other people angry because maybe their issues weren't solved. So there is like a very mutual bond of agreement. Let's throw it like this. I'm so good at drawing and I don't understand why I decided to do this whole thing by drawing it, but there is this mutual bond of agreement where each one says, okay, I'm going to try to understand your arguments and I'll try to make the best decisions even if I don't personally agree with it. Because if everyone is like, no, I want my thing to get accepted regardless of other people opinions. Well, this whole thing isn't going to work because other people are going to get angry, they will merge it even though you disagree, you will do an unmerge by merging a patch that reverts everything and they will merge it back and chaos, chaos, sorry. So we try to be like, has nice to each other as possible and understand each other arguments. And that's very much the basis of it. Now Bob could be a developer or not. And there's actually a formal, a kind of formal moment when you became a developer, although it doesn't mean much, which is when you actually get the power to, you know, like, I think create work branches or merge, merge requests. And to do that, you show that you have some interesting KDE and you asked for a developer account. I did this years ago. And honestly, it's really easy. And if you contribute to KDE, I think you'll get one right away. About this, there's this very nice, sorry, very nice post by Nate, which is about the structure of KDE or how anarchy sometimes work, which is very nice. And I recommend you to read it. But this is not all. And there's actually another very important stuff, which is when people are going to get much angrier, which is about the management, let's call it management. And by that, I mean a legal stuff, be managing money, which is sort of, you always get people angry when it's about how do we spend our money? And so on all the, you know, all of the things that aren't related to the product per se, but the things are on. So should we hire who and should we spend the money that way? Should we like see that company that is violating our trademark stuff like that? Also, should we have good relationships with other companies? This is the more management part of it. Now, whereas the development is brought forward by the KDE community, which is very vague in starting like, who's the KDE community? Well, whoever wants to be part of it truly, because if you want to contribute or use KDE or say your opinion, you're part of the KDE community, and there's not like a list of the members of the KDE community, no such thing. Whereas management, a bit more tough, and we do need a list of the people who work on this. And that's why we have separate like organize, which is called the KDE EV. And hopefully that clears up a bit what's the difference between the two. The EV is like a legally nonprofit organizations that represents the KDE community in legal stuff. And I think basically, I basically cited the website, KDE EV is a registered nonprofit organization that represents the KDE community in legal and financial matters. Mission statement, blah, blah, blah. Okay, so we have the KDE EV. And let's actually do a big circle with the KDE EV people. So who's inside the KDE EV? Now, mostly all of the KDE developers are in the KDE EV and mostly all of KDE EV members are KDE developers. There's a strong overlap. It's not a rule and it's not always so, but there is a strong overlap. Now, inside the KDE EV, there is a smaller circle, which is the board, the elected board, which I can also show you the website of. And if you need more information, of course, the KDE EV website is the first place you should be looking for, the board of directors. And those people are five people, these faces. And these are those who represent the KDE EV and run its business and they are elected. So we have all of the EV people. And then we have inside of it the board with five, one, two, three, four, five, which are elected. Now, if you want to join the KDE EV and you are a KDE developer, you probably know already how to do that. But for those who don't know, you ask to join to somebody who's already in the EV and you give some information about yourself, what you're doing. And then there is a vote internal of the EV. And if you get 50% or more of the votes, and that usually happens without any issue, then you're in. That's as easy as that. It takes a bit of time because, you know, voting bureaucracy, but the board of members also has like the big boss. Let's call it like that and give it a crown, which I'm honestly not able to draw. This is the best I can do. This is a crown. And in this case, right now, we change every, I think some years, I don't know. Right now, we have the president, which is Alex Paul. And I want to clear something now. Let's say that let's get back to the KDE community and the development side of it. Let's say that during all of this process with, let's take off the mutual agreement, there is the VDG. By the way, there might also be different groups from the VDG. Sometimes there's promo or Plasma Mobile. There are so many of them. VDG was just an example. But let's say that another person steps in and anybody could do that. Anybody can step in and say, this is my opinion. Absolutely. And let's say that the person that steps in is actually the king of KDE, which you should now know is not like the king of KDE, but rather the president of the elected board of the KDEV, which is completely different stuff. But let's say that you walk in and say, hello, I am the king of KDE, please accept this merger request, even though you disagree with it. Well, it's not like we listen to all of the words of the president and all of the words are true for he is the president, not at all. And actually, when it comes to development is very much one person like another. And of course, it's usually one person that knows KDE very well. So his opinion is considered valuable. But it's his opinion. And if the maintainer who probably knows that particular quote even better says, now look, this is a bad idea. Well, it's a good idea to listen to the maintainer as well. And being the king of KDE doesn't make like doesn't make you immediately important on all of KDE decisions as a whole, especially the ones about development, the one about management. Well, of course, that's why you're president to deal with those sort of things. And actually, it seems like it's not easy at all. All of the people that I see being like the president of KDE and in the board of representatives. Well, they seem to be really interested in KDE, obviously, and also very, I don't say like drained from the that sounds negative. But well, most of the time, I don't see like, if you're inside the board of KDE, you might not have free time to like work on that off man side of it. I see people working up. But most of the time, it seems like once you join the board, you have got so many stuff to work on that free time disappears. But I've never like been inside of it, of course. So I don't know. It seems like you have a lot of stuff to do. Yeah. But this is the board. What does the board does more specifically? Well, it makes meets sorry, weekly, monthly, I never understand that. And discuss all of the legal management stuff of it. And I don't see more information here. By the way, you can see also the components of the previous previous boards, all of the previous presidents. And I don't know if there's like more detailed information, because I don't like technically speaking, all that's inside of the EV is private, which is very different from what happens in the development side of things, because everything here is public. And you can join in, you can discuss, join the groups. If you want to join the VDG as an example, you can do that right away. There's not like a list of the people in the VDG, you can just join the chat and see what's going on. The EV obviously not because it's legal stuff and legal stuff is always a bit of a mess and you can't just make everything join in. And that's why I don't know. I can't like take you the emails from the board and read them to you to make you better understand this because you know, they're private. And another important thing which is, which I'm forgetting is, oh yes, the meetings. So the EV, as it's the whole EV, has annual meetings. They have a weird name that I forget each time. I think it's AGV or something. And those meetings last hours, they are sorry, a bit like the school meetings if you were a school representative for students or I don't know, for teachers. And where you all sit together and you have an order of the day of things to discuss. You have the working groups. Let me tell you about the working groups. So inside of the EV, and I think even intersecting with the EV to some extent, there are the working groups, WG. And those are the people who work on some specific things that as an example, there is the financial working group. There is a working group, I think to have a good communication with QT. And in during this annual meeting, they have like the presentation to show what's going on with those financial groups. And there are like, they're all selected. So there are votes to actually vote people in those groups. If somebody leaves, there are also votes in that meeting to replace members of the board if necessary. If there is some particular person. I don't know if it's changing the president. I don't remember if there is a vote for that. I think not, but I'm not sure about that. So don't quote me. And what else? During this meeting, there's also this thing that also again, happens on like school councils, where you do like a legal, you how do we say that you all take responsible legal responsibility of what's happening in the KDEV. And I mean, it's, it's a long meeting with lots of discussion on like how to spend money and stuff like that. And by the way, I'm always checking to make sure that I'm not like seeing anything that I shouldn't be saying. So the working groups are actually public. And there is the advisory boarding work group, but I talked about the financial working group and the KDEV free cute working group. And you can even click on it. And there's the goals, the rules, the members. So these are the members of the financial working group as an example. Past members, actually there's, I thought there was someone from the board as well, but maybe I'm just forgetting something. So let me redraw this better. Okay. Nice. And so good at drawing. And that's about it. I hope this somewhat clears up the difference and how KDEV thinks as far as KDEV things as the development side of things. And usually the one that you're actually interested in, if you're interested in KDEV, you're interested in the product. And as far as the product goes, all decisions are made by people, maintainers, the groups, anybody can join in. Everybody has the same way to their opinion. Of course, if they know they could better, they're likely to say some opinion that's more valuable, but you can join in, read the code and say your opinion. And it could be, it might be very well, be the best opinion in the discussion. We can never know. So if you want to join the discussion, please do. Otherwise we would have, if nobody like ever joined, then KDEV wouldn't exist because we solidarily rely on people joining in and seeing their opinions. But of course, as soon as it comes to management, money, and the part of things that usually don't call like KDEV, usually think KDEV as the product, but it's actually all of the people and you need management. And that side as rules at working groups, the board, both councils and so on. And I'm also forgetting some, ah yes, money. I also want to clarify another thing. You might say, okay, but is the board something like the Linux board where companies can pay you to be inside of the board. And you can see if you go to KDEV's website at the end of the page that you have like patterns to KDEV that give KDEV either money or some products. And well, those things actually in no way correlate to neither side of KDEV. So the development side of things is in no way impacted by donation from other companies. Like no way. Never has it happened that a company comes in saying, hey, I've got money to you. Can you implement this? And of course are like, okay, let's do it especially if it's like Google and stuff. That doesn't happen. It might happen that a third party company says, hey, I want to use KDEV Plasma as a desktop. I would like to use this feature. And there might be like discussion on whether to actually implement that feature or not. And if it's worth it, then it's implemented. But it's never because of donations. Like we don't sell our development process. Management, of course, the money is like managed by board financial group. But it never as far as I know, and it's not like I'm ignorant of these things in theory, happens that a company comes in and asks to do something because they donate to KDEV. That really never happens. And that's why KDEV is like community driven. It's community driven because we don't do things because we receive money. We do things for the users who are nonprofit, community driven. And I think that's the cool part of KDEV really. And that's all, unless I'm forgetting anything, but this video has already been 20 minutes. So that's all. Thank you for staying with me for so long. Thank you for all the patterns that are giving me donation. And of course, differently from KDE, all of the donations to me like influence how I make because the more donation I get. Okay, that went out really weird. But I do really appreciate all of the donations from you. I was just kidding. And that should be about that. I think I talked about everything. So happy holidays. See you.