Kraft out of KDE
Following my last blog about Krafts upcoming release 0.80 I got a lot of positive reactions.
There was one reaction however, that puzzles me a bit and I want to share my thoughts here. It is about a comment about my announcement that I prefer to continue to develop Kraft on Github. The commenter reminded my friendly that there is still Kraft code on KDE infrastructure, and that switching to a different repository might waste peoples time when they work with the KDE repo.
That is a fair statement, of course I don’t want to waste peoples time. What sounds a bit strange to me is the second paragraph, that says that if I decide to stay with Github, I should let KDE people know that I wish Kraft to not be a KDE project anymore.
But … I never felt that Kraft should not be a KDE project any more.
A little History
Kraft has come a long way together with KDE. I started Kraft in (probably) 2004, gave a talk about Kraft at the Akademy Dublin 2006, maintained it with the best effort I could contribute until today. There is a small but loyal community around Kraft.
During all the time I got little substancial contribution to the code directly, with the exception of one cool developer who got interested for some time and made some very interesting contributions.
When I asked a for the subdomain http://kraft.kde.org long time ago I got the reply that it is not in the interest of KDE to give every little project a subdomain. As a result I reserved http://volle-kraft-voraus.de and run it since then, happily showing a “Part of the KDE family” logo on it.
Beside the indirect contributions to libraries that Kraft uses, I shipped Kraft with the translations made by the KDE i18n team, for which I always was very grateful. Otherwise I got no other services from KDE.
Why Github?
Githubs workflow serves me well in my day job, and since I have only little time for Kraft, I like to use the tools that I know best and give me the most efficiency.
I know that Github is not free software and I am sceptical about that. But Github also does not lock in, as we still are on git. We all know the arguments that usually come on the table at this point, so I am not elaborating here. One thing I want to mention though is that since I moved to Github publically I already got two little pull requests with code contributions. That is a lot compared to what came in the last twelfe years when living on KDE infrastructure only.
Summary
Kraft is a small project, driven by me alone. My development turnaround is good with Github as I am used to it. Even if no KDE developer would ever look at Github (which I know is not true) I have to say with heavy heart that Kraft would not take big harm by leaving KDEs infra, based on the experience of the last 12 years.
If the KDE translation teams do not want to work with Github, I am fine to accept that, and wonder if there could be a solution rather than switching to Transifex.
One point however I like to make very clear: I did not wish to leave KDE, nor aimed to move Kraft out.
I still have friends in the KDE community, I am still very interested in free software on desktop and elsewhere, and my opinion is still that KDE is the best around.
If the KDE community feels that Kraft must not be a KDE project any longer because it is on Github, ok. I asked KDE Sysadmins to remove Kraft from the KDE git, and it is already done.
Dragotin's Blog (archived) 
I don’t think it’s realistic that translation teams will follow you.
I don’t know if Weblate does a better job than Transifex…
I’ve used both…
Maybe it’s a viable alternative
Congrats on sticking to your guns about using a sane effective workflow on Github.
> I did not wish to leave KDE, nor aimed to move Kraft out.
So why did you leave?
I did not leave. I decided to move my project Kraft to github, which caused some interesting consequences. I was hoping this blog explained my thoughts.
Please also understand that I see a difference between me as person being a community member and where my project is hosted.
Apologies, when i wrote “you” i meant “kraft”, not you as a person.
Moving Kraft to github is Kraft leaving KDE. Was that not clearly obvious?
I’m also really surprised you think you got more contributions because you have kraft in github, since kraft was already on github under the readonly http://github.com/kde/
I’d say the reason you got more contributions is because you made a blog and people remembered kraft existed instead of being dead.
seems to me a reasonable decision for a small project.
Most people are on github. You’ll probably get more pullrequests there since your project isn’t one of the core kde applications.
It’s only a good decision if you don’t care about translations. Translators in communities like KDE usually care less about the application itself. They see untranslated strings pop up in their repository and simply translate them. Only in rare occasions the specific context of a string is needed when applications stick to KDE conventions of how menus and windows are structured. For projects on Github, people must care about the application first and then decide to translate it.
> Otherwise I got no other services from KDE.
You’re on planet kde, i’m pretty sure if anyone read your blog about 0.80 release is because it’s on planet kde.
A power user (python beginner) and small business owner here. Kraft is a great software for small businesses that I was looking for. On the other hand Kde is most modern/efficient desktop to date. Many great software written with Qt and Kde frameworks. After migration will we users be able to install Kraft easily on Kde Desktops like kubuntu / manjaro etc?
Yes, absolutely. The underlying great technology Qt and KDE is not changed at all. Kraft will continue to be integrated with the KDE Adressbook for example. No worries 🙂
To be part of KDE a project must comply with the KDE manifesto https://manifesto.kde.org/ which says ‘All source materials are hosted on infrastructure available to and writable by all KDE contributor accounts’. The hope is that this will build a community who support each other. Seems that didn’t happen much in Kraft which is a shame.
I think the issue of not getting a website domain is historic, back in the day planet.kde.org wasn’t allowed to be under kde.org because community was scary but that’s long since changed.
Yes, I understand. And yes, the website topic is indeed historic and I am not worried at all.