KDE and web developers

KDE contributors are typically not web application people. Most of us can create something resembling a web app when push comes to shove, and we have some shining exceptions to this in our community such as the stellar KDE Forums, the ever improving kde.org family of sites, identity.kde.org and the increasingly useful, but sadly still powered by a proprietary code base, OpenDesktop.org.

(The OpenDekstop.org situation is something I truly struggle with given my personal ethics with regards to Free software and what I feel KDE stands for. The people involved know this and have their reasons, which I don't agree with (for what it's worth), for the current state of things. This is not what I want to write about here, but I am not comfortable with appearing to be in tacit approval of the state of that.)

What I want to discuss is the open-ended question of: "Can the KDE community grow to also encompass a web development component?"

What do I mean by a "web development component"? Well, increasingly our applications use services, but not all services we'd probably find useful are available out there randomly on the web. For instance, I'd love a way to manage the queue of user contributed data addons (scripted Plasmoids for Plasma Desktop, widow manager scripts for KWin, puzzles for Palepeli, routes for Marble, etc.) before they are set to appear in the "Get Hot New Stuff" user interface.

Then there's the issue of "things that would make KDE function more efficiently", such as a development sprint manager. Right now we use a wiki and lots and lots of copy and pasting, manual editing and pestering of people to plan and run a developer sprint. My dream solution would be a simple bespoke web application that uses identity.kde.org for authentication and provides a set of forms for someone to start the process of setting up a developer sprint (KDE e.V. board could even get an automated email notifying them of this), allowing people to register their interest in attending (a single simple form plus their identity.kde.org account should suffice) and provide a simple web form to record the results of the sprint for use in Dot stories and KDE e.V. quarterly reports. Back when we did a handful of sprints a year, it wasn't a big deal to do all this "by hand", but now that were doing dozens every year it's getting to the point that some level of standardization and automation would be most welcome. The process is pretty well documented on commuity.kde.org these days, it "just" needs to be made into a web app.

Unfortunately for us, I don't see any external web application project whipping up such a thing on their own. We're one of the few F/OSS communities that drives so much development through such sprints month after month, so the audience for the app is fairly limited, though I do believe we're starting to see more F/OSS communities picking up a similar model that would also benefit from such software.

I also don't believe that it is reasonable to expect these works to spring up out of the web-developer-poor soil of the current KDE community. What web focused people we have are already amazingly busy doing really important things.

Then I look at communities in KDE like KDE Games or KDE Edu. These are tight knit bands of developers who work on very specific topics and who have their own home grown sets of expertise. Is it beyond imagination that one or more similar groups could form around the idea of creating web based applications that are written with KDE applications (on mobile, desktop, whatever) in mind and/or the needs of the KDE community itself? Is it possible that one day some intrepid individuals with the web developer spirit and skills would start Just Doing It and build up a whole new area of the KDE community, just as our artists did some years ago for visual design efforts?

I don't know the answers, nor am I in a place to attempt to explore them in full. I just know the needs exist and the questions are there to be asked. Discuss ... :)