Tech Over Tea - Bridging The Gap Between KDE & GNOME | Pietro & Mauro

Episode Date: October 17, 2025

A few weeks back the idea of a mixed Linux conference for both KDE and GNOME taking the events GUADEC and Akademy and merging them together was proposed and today we have the 2 others of that proposal to talk about it.==========Support The Channel==========► Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/brodierobertson► Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/BrodieRobertsonVideo► Amazon USA: https://amzn.to/3d5gykF► Other Methods: https://cointr.ee/brodierobertson==========Guest Links==========KDE Discuss: https://discuss.kde.org/t/an-open-letter-a-proposal-for-a-unified-linux-app-summit-las-2026/39198GNOME Discuss: https://discourse.gnome.org/t/an-open-letter-a-proposal-for-a-unified-linux-app-summit-las-2026/31124Open Letter: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EujoBu7HMMUUPDOw-IZDbYYPEzZVdMEtN4-6YLDpXY0/edit?tab=t.0==========Support The Show==========► Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/brodierobertson► Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/BrodieRobertsonVideo► Amazon USA: https://amzn.to/3d5gykF► Other Methods: https://cointr.ee/brodierobertson=========Video Platforms==========🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBq5p-xOla8xhnrbhu8AIAg=========Audio Release=========🎵 RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/149fd51c/podcast/rss🎵 Apple Podcast:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tech-over-tea/id1501727953🎵 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3IfFpfzlLo7OPsEnl4gbdM🎵 Google Podcast: https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy8xNDlmZDUxYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw==🎵 Anchor: https://anchor.fm/tech-over-tea==========Social Media==========🎤 Discord:https://discord.gg/PkMRVn9🐦 Twitter: https://twitter.com/TechOverTeaShow📷 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/techovertea/🌐 Mastodon:https://mastodon.social/web/accounts/1093345==========Credits==========🎨 Channel Art:All my art has was created by Supercozmanhttps://twitter.com/Supercozmanhttps://www.instagram.com/supercozman_draws/DISCLOSURE: Wherever possible I use referral links, which means if you click one of the links in this video or description and make a purchase we may receive a small commission or other compensation.

Good morning, good day and good evening. I'm as always your host, Brodie Robertson. Today, we're actually back for another Linux episode. We don't usually do those, at least for the past couple of weeks. We had a bunch of game devs on, but we're back for them. Now, I don't know how many of you guys would have seen this, because it hasn't really had much in the way of tech-ish sort of coverage, but there was recently a proposal to take the existing Linux events like WADEC and Academy, and sort of merge them together. And today we have the people on who proposed this idea and here to talk about it and why it happened

and just all around why this is a thing that exists. Welcome both you. I don't, whoever wants to go first, pick someone. I'll introduce you. I let Mauro go first. Okay, I'll go first. Thank you. Thank you for having us.

My name is Mauro. I'm Italian. I live in Switzerland. I work for Canonical, but today I'm here to talk as a random guy from the internet. This is our idea as to individuals. And yeah, thanks for having us. Absolutely pleasure. I'm Pietro, Gnone Foundation member and owner of a software development company.

But as Mauro, I'm not here representing any. of my memberships. I'm here as Pietro, a community member and enthusiast of this Linux ecosystem. So, since a lot of people probably haven't seen the proposal, I'm considering that Foronix seems to cover every single thing that happens. I'm surprised that there wasn't a Foronix article. I'm surprised no one's really even mentioned that this was a thing that was being proposed, just what is being proposed for anyone who's completely out of the loop? Well, I'll take this, Mauro, if you want. Given that me and Mauro participate to this kind of events, multiple events, not only those

who are more near to our daily world, I mean. i don't participate only to guadec as a gnom member and maurot doesn't participate only to the buntu conferences as a canonical member we like these conferences we've been to many of these conferences and we um our minds like to study what we see and what we do uh so um we have been just chatting together, talking together while looking people around and we said

what's happening is very nice, but what if? And this what if took in the discussion brought in the discussion how the communities

share ideas and goals and still be so spread and separated. So there are many communities with the same goal, everyone working on their own to reach that goal without really working together to make it easier to reach these goals. So we started imagining a more uniform,

yearly conference that brings together multiple desktop communities, starting from Gnome and KDE with the Guada conference and the Academy Conference, because are the two projects and ecosystems we know better. The general idea, and this is stated in the document you mentioned, is not only to take these two communities more together, is to take all the Desco communities more together, to help everyone and to reach these goals in an easier way. So we already have the Guadec conference,

that is the yearly Gnome Foundation conference. We have Academy, that is the yearly KDE Foundation, conference and we have Linux App Summit LAS that is already a merged conference between Gnome and KDE. So we have three yearly conferences where the common one is more focused on applications on development and local communities rather than on the general project discussion, but is also the smaller one of the tree. While in the idea we had, we could push more on this kind of unified conference and make it bigger and available to more people spreading more these projects. more users in it.

So as it currently stands, there is a unified conference, but it's a small conference, and the larger conferences, they're kind of these, I guess, siloed ecosystems where you're not going to have a lot of Gnone people going to academy, you're not going to have a lot of academy. I'm sure there is some crossover. Don't get me wrong. I'm sure people

go to both. But if you're a Gnome person and you're going to one conference that year, you're probably going to Gwadec, If you're a KD person, you're probably going to Academy. Correct. And I know people who travels at least two, but also three times, a year, to participate to all the conferences. And, yeah, like Mauro.

For example, Mao from Switzerland is maybe, let me say, less problematic because as these conferences are happening in Europe, is not that hard. I'm over in Australia. You're from Australia. We have participants from the United States, from South America. I lived in Taiwan.

I lived in Taiwan for 18 years. I just recently moved to Switzerland. So I know very well how tiring, expensive, and actually draining overall is to just go there. It's maybe not as bad as for Brody, but used to take me 22, 23 hours from my home in Taiwan to get to the hotel near the conference in Europe,

right? And then you need a day to kind of recover, adjust, right? Then you do the conference, which is usually very exciting and very tiring. And then you, the worst part is then you also have to go back and then recover and then go back to work, which is basically, at the very least one week, if not 10 days of not, like, you know, being out and tired, then I'm not even talking about the airfare, right, prices, which probably must be absolutely something that people cannot ignore. Let's say that. Yeah, let's find out.

Where did the latest Guadec happen, for example? Look for a flight to Milan. Adelaide to Milan. Guadek was in Brescia, that is 100 kilometers from Milan, and Academy was in Berlin. So you can check that. The cheapest is

$1,400 Australian dollars. It's a 25-hour flight. Yeah, so a little bit of a distance. If you have to choose to which conferences to go... maybe if you can afford it probably you do one anyway not even two probably yeah or you are part of the staff and you have a different interest in participating but as an attendee that is just there for the fun of being there what are the chances you go to more than one conference in Europe or as an Australian anywhere because even in Asia for you is

different but it's not that much different. When I was in Taiwan one of my I was working there not for Canonical one of my colleagues say hey we should go to Australia it's very close and I'm in Taiwan right it's very close and it's like 10 hours I'm like wow like wow these people I you know very very close it's 10 hours so wow yeah the other problem that we have here is even even local flights are kind of expensive depending on where you go just because there's no one lives here right so there's just not the same sort of economy of scale okay okay makes sense but yes this was part of this if you want pietro i can continue a little bit and and we were

we're just riffing and chatting and we had this idea and we thought okay let's keep going this ideas are easy and

implementations are difficult and we thought let's let's see if we can take this a step beyond just an idea otherwise it's an idea here in 20 years from now we will still have this idea in our minds and it never goes anywhere

so that's what we did. We wanted to show that okay, we have an idea we'll turn it into a plan I have a concrete plan and start a discussion with something written down which is less vague and more

precise and and show that we are not here to be opinionated and let you do all the work. Instead, we are here to, yes, maybe a little bit opinionated, but we are absolutely here to contribute, which is the spirit of open source. We say, okay, this is our idea, we'll transform it into a plan

and we'll offer our help. Like, if you would like to explore this idea or make it into a reality, we're going to help two of us, but perhaps if it becomes something, perhaps we can inspire other people to, you know, jump on this and help out. This is like the core messages that we want to send and it's not a critique of what these groups are doing today.

These are our idea and plan to, from our point of view, improve things and show the spirit of collaboration in open source and show that these communities are actually part of the larger free open source and Linux community. And there's a lot of extremely good people here and we can perhaps help bring things together and different point of views,

different experiences, different, like technical ideas, different skill sets. So perhaps something can come out of this when you put it, you know, not the... same usual group and you put some external people, sometimes good things can happen. And that's one aspect.

And the other aspect, as Peter already mentioned, is about we, I think we are both big fans of efficiency. For the reasons that Pietro already mentioned, right? If you can travel once, why not to travel once and potentially get a lot more bang for your buck as an attendee and for an organizer potentially if there's more people attending maybe if somebody came because you know it looks like a good event it looks like a fun event maybe they don't care about Gnome but now they come and they say oh these people are actually

pretty cool oh let's have a look right so those were the more a few of the motivations from us Pietro do you want to add something? Yeah, sorry, about the efficiency

I would like also to add all those communities, all those projects care a lot and I agree, care a lot about the environment. There are documents about

at least in gnom there is a document about what to care when preparing a conference so for example we talk about using buildings with renewable energy or use disposable compostable stuff for the food and the drinks but then we don't talk about the environment impact of having three flights a year. Right. So it's not only matter of the conference efficiency itself. It's not only matter of having people spend less time in flights. It's also a matter of environmental impact. Every year, the conference has to buy stuff, and this is mentioned in the document, have to buy staff that is thrown away just because they are not good for the next conference. Right. So you might buy extra resources that I would go bad, but you can keep cups and

stuff around, but if you had bought food for the conference, then very likely that's going to be gone by the time, you know, next one rolls around. Yeah, but for example, I have here in my office three roll up, three banners for this year's conference. Okay, the thing itself, the vinyl film is printed, okay, but the structure, the aluminum structure, is designated to the garbage, because next year, as the conference is not anymore in Brescia, is somewhere else where someone is proposing, in that place, the full structure is going to be both again, because I'm not going to be there with my structure, with the structure we already both, let's say, in time or in a cost,

efficient way because we would need to ship them to use them so what is more cheap to the cheapest option to rep to produce them again here in brescia and ship to the next city and then who is there ship to the next city and then ship to or buy them from scratch at the local place and this is waste every time. This is waste. And this is part of the, let's say, other side of the proposal of stop moving the conference, but establish it in a single place. We proposed Brescia for a single reason. Well, two reasons. One, the feedback of this year's Guadec has been very positive about the venue, the town, the transport, generally had a very positive feedback. What event call was it hosted at, just so I can show a picture of it?

Where was the event actually hosted? Was in the University of Brescia, the public university of Brescia. Okay, awesome. Thank you. Yeah, sorry, keep going. No worry. If you need any link, reference or whatever later, just ask, no worries. Easy. And so there has been a positive feedback, meaning if we repeated there, everything should be okay for everyone. And secondly, not least important, but maybe more important, as all these events are organized by volunteers, in Brescia, I can. guarantee I can help personally and I'm willing to help personally. If we change a town for

whatever reason, I personally cannot guarantee to be able to help because if it is in Milano, that is one hour from here, okay, I have some chance to help. Not in the same way, but I have some chance to help. If it is in Berlin, how can I help? So the next question is, who is going to help efficiently and with the effort that is required to organize something like that so don't take the proposal to host it in Brescia as a real personal thing I absolutely want it in Brescia is linked to these two reasons and only to these two reasons I'm happy with whatever location is chosen, I cannot help if it is not near me. That's the only point. So publishing a proposal, we proposed, we used references and proposed things that we are sure, and I mean

me and Mauro, are sure we can help with. We don't pretend it to be exactly like we proposed. this is where we are confident it's published openly to accept every kind of comment every kind of opinion every kind of suggestion feel free to suggest to propose to say whatever you want to say we are here to listen and to help so for anyone who hasn't been too wide i assume academy also uses the roaming model as well yes so for anyone who's not been to one of these events they don't have a set location like say uh i don't know packs if you like gaming conferences or most other like uh pick a conference most conferences have like a set location maybe they change event hole maybe they get bigger or smaller

they go between different like halls in that that area but it'll usually be in the same city but with Guadac and with Academy they most years I assume that maybe have been some years but it's been in the same country but most years it'll be a different location every single time which then also put you in a situation

where maybe the quality of the event is going to differ because the people who are running it may not have as much experience running events absolutely correct and that's not to say that they can't learn or it's going to be a bad event

but like changing event staff every single year is naturally going to cause issues. Absolutely. Very few people that are fixed. Yeah, sorry, there are very few people that are fixed stuff and are employed by the two foundations. But those are not organizing the event in their town.

They are helping the volunteers to organize, to manage the budget, to do all the, high-level organization thing to organize the schedule, to contact people. But for example, the volunteer, at least for Gwadek and LAS,

Maury is more expert than me in academy. The volunteer has to contact the sponsors too. Right. The volunteer is in charge of gathering sponsorship. Right. Sorry, Maurer. I just wanted to

reinforce what Brody just said about a roaming model and in a perfect world it makes complete sense if you think about it right we want to go around the world

we want to enable anyone who doesn't have perhaps the means to fly internationally for family work money right it makes sense we want to nurture the local communities of, you know,

their projects that are there and show them that we care about it. It's a beautiful concept in a perfect world. Sadly, I don't live in a perfect world. And when you put it into the real world, then it creates a lot of additional stress, time, and money needed to get it done at the level that you want and sometimes you can't and sometimes it's better, sometimes it's worse. So every time this happens, an event needs to file, open, right, bids for finding the venue.

And it takes time, it takes stress. You need to, you know, go around and, you know, ask volunteers, ask people, it's time, right? Time, maybe you don't find in a place that is good for your goals because you're trying to put together so many things that need to be just right at the same time while the clock is ticking because the next event, you know, you can't just start skipping, oh, well, this year and then next year and then next year. people don't care anymore, right? So there's a lot of additional stress and work required. And while I really agree with the fact that the local communities are enabled, you know, what are the main goals of the event, right? We can't win everything.

And if you take as a example, I will take it. two of the largest, most successful free and open source events that happen in the world, foster them in Europe and scale in the United States. What do they have in common? They never moved in like 20 plus years. You build... Most humans are creatures of habit. Adults have responsibilities, right? Most likely jobs. Some have families. It's very helpful if you say the first week of February, every year I go to Brussels for Fostdom. A wife, and you don't even need to ask, or husband or companion or employer.

Ah yes, you need to take the week off because you're going to, right? It's a thing that you can predict. It's not like last minute, say, oh, my God, where are we going this year? Is it here? Oh, well, how do I get there? Not everyone is a season traveler. Like, oh, which airline? Where do you go?

Do I need a train? Where is the hotel? What languages do they speak? Because, well, you know, especially in Europe. Visa. Visas. Yeah. And so by building a familiarity and a predictability together with all the efficiencies that we mentioned,

we think it can be good for the event itself. There's two more things like... Sorry, can I add just one little thing? Go ahead, go ahead. Currently in these events, we have many attendees that are working for companies that are already sponsoring these events. right so um when talking to these attendees uh they like the roman model because they don't face the issue of organizing the right the attendance based on uh work constraints or family constraints

indeed we lost almost all the users in these conferences the u of guadec means users and we don't see them that much anymore The model we are proposing, we believe, would help in gathering again users to these conferences. Because if they, maybe this year we announced that the conference is going to be, we proposed in June blah blah blah. It is not a fixed proposal again. Everyone could say something. Maybe they are not able to join next year because we are announcing it too late.

but once we state okay from this moment it's going to be every year in this location in this moment of the year they know as a users that they have to prepare for the year after for that moment of the year and they can prepare it they can check the flight cost hotel costs they can wait for offers they can ask to the employer They can do whatever they need to do because they know with more than one year in advance where they want to be at that point of the year. Right now, we don't have a date and location both for LAS and Gwadek. LAS should happen in spring.

But does Guadac move a lot as well with the time? I didn't know that. It's usually in July, but doesn't have a fixed moment. It could be in June, it could be in July, it could be in August. But you don't know the ex-ad dates. You don't know them, both for WADC and LAS. And now, mid-September, LAS should happen this spring in March, but we don't have dates and we don't have a location.

And we don't know when this is going to be published, because in this moment, there is no freaking idea. How long do you... So how many people... is going to join. I'm sorry? How long before the event do the dates

usually get published? Technically, the last day of the event, you announce the dates and location of the following year. This year did the downpad

for both Gwadek and LAS. I couldn't join Academy. Mauro should have joined it, but he was sick due to the previous conference travel

and wasn't able to go there. I did. didn't check, honestly, if anything has been published also because officially is still running the event. The main event is completed, but it's still running. Sure, sure. But usually you know it more or less one year in advance, but it's not guaranteed. Right. So two things I wanted to add that I didn't before. One is when you have a set location, you have a set location, you have the ability to build a much stronger volunteer community because you know that it's always

going to be there so every year you can advertise volunteers the volunteers from the prior year can come back they can bring new people in and you can build up you can slowly build up a bigger event with more people that are helping out because you're not just you know getting rid of that entire group every single time and then maybe five years from now it's back in that area Maybe by that time they've moved on with other things and they can't help out now. So it's like you're kind of resetting every time. You have that core volunteer that's always going to be able to do it. But maybe you have people that will just want to help out one year or, you know, they can't, they can't do it every single time.

So you lose out in that ability to really build that base that helps out. And the other thing is when you're trying to find sponsors, it's a lot harder to find sponsors when they don't know what the size. the event is going to be because it's going to be in a different location and if it's a local sponsor well you know you kind of need to build those relationships with them and if it's always going to be moving it's a lot harder to do that yeah and the press and the press yeah this year we have been able to have good press coverage we've been on different newspapers we have been on radio we've been on different social medias

but don't take this like I want to highlight myself please this happened because I wanted it right this happened because I hired a journalist to help me

to do the communication to contact the newspapers to do all this job I invested personally like a donation to the conference to do that

and is 100% volunteering in time and money in the specific case but it's 100% volunteering this is not going to happen in every edition and

indeed like you said also the volunteers to help during the conference it's hard to find a new team every year in a different location and about the sponsors they look to numbers 200% correct

they look to numbers and they also look to how many events they have to sponsor because if you go to canonical and say, Mauro do you want to sponsor Guadec the month after? Marro, do you want to sponsor LAS the month after?

Maura, do you want to sponsor Academy? Canonical has a budget. Redat has a budget. Egalia has a budget. Everyone has a budget. And it changes every year. Could be impositive, could be negative. So, and those companies are covering the sponsorship of the event itself

to have their logo, to have their booth, to have their whatever. Plus, they are covering the travel costs to all. the employees that are participating to the conference. So it's not only matter of sponsorship allowance to the conference. The expenses to check

are wider. So we believe that if we go to multiple sponsors to say, hey, we give you one bigger conference with all those perks and all those promises,

will you give us a bigger allowance knowing we are not going to come back to you asking to sponsor also this and that because those are merged altogether. We believe that the sponsors are going to see that we are maybe asking a bigger sponsorship amount for the package, but they have less travel, less time spent, less general expenses and a bigger result. And they are going to be happy about that. So, and this helps growing the conference that then helps grow in the communities and helps gathering new members, new users, new contributors, new coverage. This is the travel we did in our mind.

Yeah, it's the dream that is We didn't only dream about it We already made the travel to the goal Mentally, we are raided the goal When we wrote there yet We were there yet We published the proposal The next step is

About is on the communities To comment Some already did Both on Mastodon and the discourse instances of the two communities. And then we need feedback from the two boards, from the Gnom board and the KD board. We don't have it yet.

So mentally we are there. Physically, something still needs to be done. What many don't know, is that and I'm not talking only about this proposal. I'm talking about conferences in general. What many don't know is that

companies close the next year budget in September, October. So you can go to the sponsors in January saying hey, I'm preparing this conference. Will you sponsor me? I did this

I personally did this mistake this year because I did didn't use the correct window to ask sponsorships and I missed some because I asked them in January because when I asked them in August was too early in January was already too late December January was too late you have to ask them between September mid-September maximum mid-November you have to hit that window or you will have a no just because you are not in the correct time frame. So taking decisions too late in the year

makes you destroy the dream. Right. Whichever conference you prepare. So assuming that everyone just agreed to everything, you know, yesterday, best case scenario would be a 2027. But right now you haven't even got any feedback from the board. So, you know, you'd likely be a 2028, 20. 29 conference, if this does go ahead?

In this moment, we are in time for 2026. Okay. If we wait one month more, we may try. Hard, very hard, but we may try. But it's likely going to go to 2027. And here, another thing jumps in. 2026 is 30 years of KDE. Uh-huh.

2027 is 30 years of Gnome. Right. So if we skip 2026, we will have to skip 2027. Mm-hmm. And would... Because for sure, the communities will say KDE had their 30 birthday on their own, we want our, on our own. And it's not, and it's purely a community thing.

Yeah, there's nothing wrong with this. It's just they start so, the project started so close to each other. It's just a really awkward timing to be doing a change like this. Yeah. I don't want to say it's wrong. I just want to say it's purely a community thing. It's not about conference or foundations or whatever. It's a community thing.

So I understand that KDE maybe doesn't want to be the first making this change. But we took care of that and is stated in the document as a unified conference. We want to celebrate these kind of events. We want to provide a dedicated space, dedicated moment, dedicated allowance for the budget. But we want to give space to this kind of celebration. We don't want to say, hey, KDE next year, you will not have your space for your birthday because we want to do the Unified Conference.

No, we want to bring more people to the celebration. Because then it's not only KDE participating. It is everyone that wants to be there. So we see it positive. And I understand that as not members of a single community, we see things a bit different than who is only in one of those projects. But we are trying to share our view. And we're trying to help.

Absolutely. one thing that is worth noting that I think a lot of people probably don't even know is there actually was a joint conference at one point back in 2011 and 2013 they had the desktop summit which was yeah it wasn't a singular event it was both guardec and academy happening at the same time in the same location so they kind of just created this mega event based off the two of them and like correct so this is not just this is not like an idea that is completely alien that nobody has discussed before this is something that has happened it's just turning this into a consistent thing that happens every single year um i was not there the comments i had from an organization point of view of that event is negative because not because of the idea itself or the result itself is purely about organization because as Gnome was organizing the Gwadec part KDE was organizing the academy part but still sticking everything together but there was

no precise responsibility and there was no global governance was let's do something together again I was not there I'm saying this based on comments I've got so don't take this as a fact it didn't work and I wrote on the discourse of KD it failed because there was no governance of the idea. While we propose to not have Gnome and KDE work together to make it happen, is to define an entity, I don't know the kind of the entity, but define an entity that has a group of people with the only goal of making the conference successful.

Right, right, so rather than having... Every point of view. Right, so the desktop summit was Gwadec and Academy co-located, but it was just them in the same place doing their own separate thing, whereas this would be, I assume the governance would probably have KDE people and Gnome people, you probably assign seats or however the model ends up looking, where the goal is to make this shared summit rather than do these two separate things where they just happen to be together.

Yes, correct. Yeah, I can understand how the original model would have went badly. This goes back to what I said earlier about the community. It's not a bunch of people doing their own to reach the same goal without cooperating. Right, right, right. It is a bunch of people working together to reach the same goal, sharing the work, sharing the responsibility, and working together to make it easier.

It's in the end a little community, let me say. I just want to add one thing, if I can, Brody, for one second. I don't want this to be seen by anyone as negative. I want to say a few words. I mean, these groups, these communities, these people have been doing fantastic work forever, like, since the beginning of Linux and these groups are still there doing their best and working super hard.

This is not a critique. This is a, let's say, an opinion. You know, people in open source have opinions. Never. This is our... Right? What a new thing. People have opinions here.

This is our opinionated idea and plan to help both these communities and hopefully encourage other, perhaps even smaller desktop environment communities, which don't even actually have the means, the people, the money to even start thinking about doing an event. And perhaps we could encourage, I don't know, XFC has also been doing fantastic work. I'm like forever. There's so many, right? Cosmic, would you come out and play? I don't know.

Buggy, would you come out and play? Insert here, your desktop environment. And it could be, we already kind of defined broadly for now, ways where there's a clear. definition, okay, who is a founding member, which means share responsibilities and people who will actually get, if any money is made off of the conference that get to share the money versus attending entities who are, maybe I want to sponsor this. I don't have the people, I have the money, I can sponsor and I come and I get a booth, like maybe read that canonical shoes or

something like this. So we already put these things in our document to clarify, otherwise it gets very confusing and very messy. We don't want that. And Pietro, that's his idea, to say, perhaps if the event is successful, if it happens, and it's successful, some of the money can be used to actually sponsor some of these smaller innovation. right, a small project, a small distro, small desktop environment to say, listen, you're doing something cool, right? We like you. We would like to sponsor a couple of people from your project to also come here

so that we can enable them to be part of the broader discussion. Yeah, that's not, that's something we hadn't really, are you going to say something? Yeah, sorry, two little things about the, I want to add a note about the Maurer said we put in the document, the funding member and whatever. We mentioned in the public document a separated document, that is the financial document, that we shared only to the boards of the two foundations because it's a separated topic that is purely economic management for the two foundations. So I just want to add, if you look for it, you will not find it. Just note that.

And yes, about the sponsorship to the small projects, I've been a sponsored project in a bigger conference, and I really loved to be invited for a free booth in a big conference to show my project. Indeed, I want to invite. Also, maybe we are not going to have the budget for the first year to sponsor the travel but we want to give free booths to these projects i want to invite also simply lutris for example all this kind of project to say hey be there show your product to the to the people invite users to join and the users are going to be there and find out projects they don't know

just because they are walking there in the hole and there are booths around them. And I understand that projects like looters and similar can't afford to pay for a booth. No problem at all. You are a community project keeping up. You are doing something great. Why you don't have to join? Join. We cover you at least for what we can.

And in the future, maybe even more, I don't know. Yeah, this interest in bringing in smaller desktop, smaller projects is really nice because, you know, it, like, Gernome and KDE are kind of like the big poster desktops of the Linux desktop, but they're not the only ones that exist. And providing this environment where you can celebrate the work that other people are doing as well, that just would never have the ability, like, as much as XSE might be a good project, they're just not going to have the ability to run. any sort of reasonable size conference.

It's a fairly small desktop at this point, let alone, you know, smaller up-and-coming projects or even just older projects that are just relatively small, like your budgies and things like that. Giving them the ability to also be represented in this celebration of Linux

is a really cool thing. And this, I think, provides a lot more... You talked earlier about how Guidec and Academy kind of suffer from the fact that you don't really get users attending them. It's mainly just the developers go there to

talk about developery things and meet up and discuss issues once a year and work on the community building on that side. But the users aren't I'm sure some attend but it's mainly developers and building this thing where there is more

than just Gronome and KDE and they're in the same location there provides some reason for users to actually want to attend to want to see what's going on in this ecosystem And I don't know, I just generally think it creates a much stronger incentive for people to want to get involved, whether it's on the volunteer side, or just generally going to the event when there's more the event provides. Yeah, I was smiling because I was remembering something that actually, I think it was, was it Martin, at Guadik, who proposed a name for the company. I was giggling because he's like, we saw a moment where his eyes were like a spark and he's like, oh my God, I have an idea. I give you a name. And it's like, we should call it, for example, the year, right? You put the year 2025, 2026, 2007. So 2026 year of the Linux desktop conference. And then it's 2027. And it's 2028. I was like, oh my God, this is genius and hilarious.

not happen, but very funny. I would have, I know the name. So what's the current working name that we're going with? We kept Linux App Summit for two main reason. It's an already known conference, maybe not as known as the other two, but it's an already known conference, both from attendees and sponsors, and has already a good marketing, let me say,

a good branding from the website to the YouTube channel is kind of ready to keep it up with this upgrade. While using a new or even resuming desktop summit, it's like starting from scratch. I think desktop summits also, it... if it was Linux desktop somewhere I could see it just desktop summit kind of just it feels a bit too generic for people to what whatever are you selling furniture in here right right whatever nowadays it's not known so to start at least with the sharing the idea

we used something known something where the two main foundation we are talking to are already working together because it's already a shared conference. So we used it as a base point. We don't pretend it to be the LinuxUp Summit. We don't pretend it to be in this way. It's a base point. From here we can discuss. And people can discuss easily knowing what it is.

Because if you look for LinuxUp Summit, you will find a lot of information. you will find an updated website, you will find content on YouTube, you will find everything. But if you look for the Linux Desclubs Summit, what are you going to find? Something from 2013, maybe? So it was not working. Right, right. So would the idea here be to, I guess those other summits are just not, the other events, they're just not going to happen.

Everything would just be this singular event. So everyone would work together on this core event rather than doing their own separate ones. Yeah, correct. But they will have, there will be different ways. And this is a technical implementation. So perhaps we don't need to discuss it too much. But the core message is that it shouldn't be seen,

as a compromise where basically people mind or anything if it's a compromise I need to give up something right otherwise we don't call it this word it doesn't have to be because you find a venue I mean these venues especially the university that we were in Brescia they're big they're huge how much space do you want they give you the space that you need so if the idea is accepted

but we want to maintain our identity because XYZ and we have a lot of stuff that is, let's say, the Gnome track is not particularly my preference, but again, we are here to collaborate. If they say, yes, let's do it, but we want the KD track in the KD room and the Gnome track in the Gnome room, but of course it is the same venue.

and everyone is open to join any talk. Sure. Hopefully it evolves because as many projects join, we don't want 40 tracks. Like 40, it becomes a little bit crazy to manage. And I say that we'd like to see a mixed truck, so not this kind of separation. Not to remove the identity,

but really to mix the communities. Right. But the idea, for example, that could be a good acceptance, instead of calling it a track, which implies your kind of almost a collocated event-ish kind of thing, it could be a topic. Right?

And then we can put timetables and rooms in a way that makes sense for the success of the event, right? One person might come only for one day. We should try to make sure that if they come from one day, we are not forcing them to come for two days because half of the talks are today. and a half of tomorrow in a certain, you know, let's say foundational Linux more related to this. But it could be a topic, a tag in the timetable to say, hey, this is mostly GTC, this is mostly, right?

And if it's a KDE talk, it's very likely that anyone else who is doing, I don't know, LXQT, for example, comes to mind. or if it's a Gnome thing it's most likely that it's about GTK related therefore it can be interesting for XFC Cinnamon Baggie etc so if we tag things instead of

siloing them we maintain the identity at the same time we open the door and say hey right we want why why someone should not be interested on listening to

talks from a different community why someone should be stuck in a ex-dedicated track and not listen to the other community that for sure has interesting things to say why not have a room where it's mixed so you can get from everyone because I find absurd that are grown developer or KD developer is absolutely not interested in listening to something from other projects. Right, right. Maybe they find new ideas.

Maybe they say, oh, I could use that. Or I could help in that. Or we can discuss in making something together or similar or whatever. So as a developer, usually you're interested in finding more. This is why, okay, the KDE track, okay, but why not try to get more people in your truck, making it a topic. It happens in a room.

And by not having it be necessarily the KDE track or the Ghanome track, it also creates this sort of, I guess, encouragement for cross-desktop talks where you, might have some discussion where it's like, I don't know, integration of rust into the Linux desktop and you have a KDE and a Gnome person doing the talk together rather than just, hey, we're talking about, you know, rust in KDE, right? It gives you the ability to sort of foster these relationships across the desktops rather than just having them, again, be siloed into their own separate communities. Correct. I agree. And I think it's from perhaps the broadiest point of view or, you know, content create or press, I don't know, wouldn't it be more interesting to cover, right? It would like there's a potential of having more engagement, more like wow moment.

Wow, I need to cover this. It's not just, sorry, I don't say more, same old, same old they're doing their thing. these people are brainstorming here together and they're helping each other. So I think that there's a potential of creating a self-fitting mechanism for growth by just sparking the interest of the content creators. Yeah, this is a problem that I notice,

so this is a bit of a side change, I think it's actually kind of important. A problem I notice with a lot of the, it's not just an Academy thing or a Guadac thing I feel like all of the conferences do this where a lot of them don't separate, I think Academy started doing it now don't separate their talks out into separate talks

so you'll see like an eight hour track get uploaded to YouTube and it's just okay I don't know what happens in any of this without going and looking at the schedule and it's like a minor thing and be able to like cut those up it's little things like that do make like my life considerably easier because you know can easily point someone to like hey here's this interesting talk here's this uh i don't know carl's talking about the cosby desktop for example at some conference and that makes it a lot easier and then having these these topics where it's not just going to be about a singular desktop it i think makes those

all good all good makes those Is right quitting makes those individual talk considerably more

more interesting right because I've heard I've heard Gnome people talk about Gnome things a thousand times

or KDE people talk about KDE things but having some for you know Wayland is a

like good middle ground that everyone kind of meets on there's a lot of arguments that happen

in Wayland but it's something that everybody's involved in working in so being out of here

the different perspectives from the different desktops in a way where it's not arguing about the implementation, it's, hey, we've come together here and we're going to discuss, you know, how all of this fits together, why we're taking these different approaches and giving people sort of a, this is one of the reasons I like doing this show. I like showing that they're actually people working in Linux. It's not just usernames. It's not just profile pictures. there are actually people involved in this. And it's, I don't know, I think it really has helped to humanize these projects and give people more of an insight into the fact that, yeah,

there's people who are doing this and they're all doing really cool things. Even if you don't use their project, even you don't agree with all the choices they make, there are still people involved in doing this. I think they are doing a fantastic job and I also always like to do this. these people are wonderful people and sometimes somebody you know

from the internet you read a comment you don't you're busy you see a reply you take it you don't know who this is you might say how dare

this person say this while if you talk to these people in person you have more time to find out you'll find out that they all the people that I've met from both Gnome and KD and many other projects have a really good heart and good intent and it helps to know you know you can kind of build a rapport and and you know that they mean well and it's something that is very very hard to do from a text line right in a get comment or a discourse forum and I think do you got that's spot on.

Yeah, I think one of the things I would really hope the conference like this would be able to do is foster more of a collaborative relationship amongst the projects. Because I'm sure people don't necessarily hate each other, but you do see a lot of, I'm sure there's some people that hate each other. I'm not going to speak for everyone, but as like a general basis, most people, they're kind of just doing their own work and a lot of the interaction that if you're someone who

develops KDE all day every day and someone else is a condone developer all day every day, you don't can really have that many chances to interact with people from these other projects and providing this shared space where you can really

just, you know, get to know each other, have a beer or juice, I don't know, whatever you feel like drinking. Um, and really get to know each other from the other projects like you can already with your existing conferences I would hope that would be able to ease some of the tension

that does tend to arise in these cross-destop discussions like, you know, Wayland and places like that where it can kind of feel sometimes like people just don't see each other's point of view because they don't really have a chance to interact with that point of view I'm sold, when do we start? Oh, we're doing it in Australia now?

Yeah, make it suck for everybody. The five Australian devs, we're doing great. Everyone else, enjoy your 30-hour flights. Yep. Then we're going to stay there a month. Hey, maybe that's a good thing And it's going to be the month of the Linux desktop So right now

What is the proposed length You want to have the event go for I probably didn't get it The duration How long would you like the duration of the event to go for currently we proposed a week maybe a little more than a week like nine days in discussion also in the proposal we separated I'm reading right now it's 12 to 15 talks and keynotes 16th trip day 17 to 19th is B of S workshops and whatever this is how it is

almost how it is structured today. Guadac and LAS. Academy did a little bit different. But similar. There is usually like a couple of days where the conference happens. Usually it's a weekend so that people who are not paid to work,

they can go and attend. So the more traditional talks and booths and what you expect. and then most of the attendees leave because not many people can afford to stay like one week or 10 days and then it goes more into the training and let's get things done modality so that the event for this group is not only feel good I had a talk and achieve nothing but actually like doing stuff and training

their new volunteers and doing workshops and things like that. So it's mirroring, at least in spirit, what these groups are already doing. But we are thinking to a different model. Indeed, as not everyone can stay that long, we are thinking to finding a way to say, I don't know, 9 to 3 p.m. 9am to 3 p.m. is talks. 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. or whatever is workshops. So to mix it in a way that also who can't afford to stay that long can enjoy

the main workshops. So depending on the proposals, we may decide to put some workshop during the conference days, during the talks days to allow more attendance. It's one of the challenges we have to make this happen. We are discussing some model. We didn't define any because we need to get feedback. We need to get proposals. Again, the document is a starting point.

we needed to put a model and we use the one we are using with small differences like it's longer as we are merging events so we have more to discuss so it's longer and difference from Guadac and this has been copied from Academy I copied it from Academy the trip day is in the middle because for example this year for WADC who joined the trip day was only those who could afford to stay for the workshops because it was talk workshops trip day and is more or less always the same for WADC so this is one change I did because I didn't talk about it I saw it academy doing it and I said oh but it's a great idea so I copied it and I said we have to to put the trip day in the middle, because who can't afford to stay that long, maybe can

afford to stay one day more and enjoy a community event. So we are considering all these things, we are checking all these things, and we are studying it. So what has feedback been like at this point. And I guess what's the feedback being like maybe different from the Gnome and the KDE side? Absolutely different between the two sides and absolutely mixed feelings. Also a difference between the two communities between private communities. uh, feedbacks and public

feedbacks. Mm-hmm. Um, I don't have a balance. Um, I can't say on the two communities, uh, who is taking it more in a positive way and who is taking it more in a negative way.

Mm-hmm. I really can't say. Not that I don't want. But we knew it. Pietre. and I knew it when we had this idea and this discussion and this plan. We stopped there for a minute and we thought, ooh, like we're steering, like with, it's not intent, but it's going to steer some trouble.

Like, no, whenever you try to change something, you know that, you know, it's very unlikely that 100% of the people will go, ooh, let's go, right? So we knew. that it was not going to be easy, but I don't think that Peter and I are in open source for doing easy things. So we thought, let's go, let's do it, let's be kind, let's let's do it in a positive way.

And if it doesn't happen, hey, that's okay. Yeah. So I know there is the Ghanome discourse. Was the discussion with the KD side done in private, or is there a public discussion for that one as well? There is a cross-posting on the KDE discourse instance, so you will find exactly the same post there. You didn't link it under your discussion. If you happen to have the link on hand, I would love to see that. Yes, give me just a second.

It's going to be this one. Because I have your post pulled up right now on Macedon, and there is the link to the Gnome discourse there. So I wasn't sure if that was... Probably, yeah, probably I made a thought about that one and not about the KDE one that I published later because I thought, okay, I published it on the Gnome discourse. Could make sense to cross-post it. even if it is a cross-posting i thought could make sense to do it and indeed on the kd1 you see more interaction on their discourse you see a specific guy who uh commented a lot in an absolutely construct uh way i really really appreciate uh their comment because

no one is criticizing without making it in a constructive discussion to say, hey, did you think about that? Did you consider that? I really, really liked the interaction there and could be interesting for everyone to read that post. The one on the Gnome instance has some comment is not as active as the KDE one, still interesting, maybe. And on Mastodon, there has been some activity from community people. That's more hard interaction, let me say. What has been brought to...

It's social media. Yeah, exactly. personally i didn't have um like discussions on matrix with kd community i got some dm on discos uh so still on probably on kd side that platform is preferred and i like it um on gnom has been easier for me as a gnom member to get more in touch with Gnome members, so I've got the chance to talk with someone. I have to say, I spoke with people who reacted negatively to the general idea, saying, hey, why don't we merge it?

Based on the experience, based on the communities. then sitting and talking about the via more or less like we are doing they said oh in this way i like it so i believe it's really matter of wanting to know more and accepting to sit for a moment and try to read the document and get what we want to say without starting with the opinion I'm that community and I want to be that community period these guys want to destroy it

no try to sit read it think about it imagine what it means and then get back to us you still not agree totally fine

but don't start with an opinion try to elaborate it. Yeah, I initially read the proposal and I thought it was a good idea. I don't really get the idea of it being a... Like, this is what I... I kind of understand where people are coming from, and I think this is a lot of the tension

that's been allowed to grow between KDE and GANOM, where, again, a lot of the people who are in the GONO, ecosystem don't interact with KDE people. KDE people don't interact with Gnome people. So it's allowed people to sort of create these ideas in their head of what the other people are going to be like. You know, you can think of this for anything in the world. People are going to be tribal, whether it's a sports team, whether it's a desktop, a Linux distro. If you don't have this cross discussion, people are going to create their own ideas in the head of what these people are like.

Yes. There's one example that I have and I wasn't there, but I helped organize some of this. And actually, it happened at LAS, Linux App Summit a few years ago in Brnoe, I think. And there were discussions on, hey, this event is happening

when actually Ubuntu is releasing. And Ubuntu was there with the booth. we should do something around it, like, you know, have some fun. And then we thought, oh, actually, Fedora is releasing the same week. And there are going to be there. Let's reach out to the Fedora people

and see if they want to hang out together. It's the spirit of LAS to come together and talk about Linux as friends. Let's show the world that we don't hate each other and we're not fighting. It's a construct of the... socials and in the internet. And so if you'll find pictures on X for sure,

I don't remember Mastodon, but there was a cake, and half of the cake was orange with Ubuntu logo, half of the cake was blue with Fedora, and there were pictures of very happy people cutting the cake together and having fun together. So that's exactly the spirit that, that we would like to spotlight.

I wish it was a triangle with some suze or maybe becomes a very messy cake with too many colors, but hey, it's fine. No, I fully agree with this, and I understand where you guys are coming from with this idea. I hope, I do hope that this can happen, and I hope that,

I hope that the people who, do have issues with it can maybe get something of value at listening to this and hearing what you guys are proposing here. It's not again, it's not like you said, it's not trying to destroy what was done with Guadec and Academy. It's not trying to

compromise between the two events and make them both worse but have them happen together. It's about trying to it's about trying to you know, people say the Linux community but there's not really Linux community as it currently stands. There's a lot of individual sub-communities that all happen

to use Linux. And we all share that thing in common. We all share the fact that, okay, there's, there's some BSD people. Okay, fine. The BSD people get involved as well. But most of us are using Linux. And, you know, we care about free and open source software. There you go. There's our common point. We all care about free and open source software. And if you actually talk to people who are in these other projects, if you get involved with them, you realize that you share a lot of things in common, even if the method of getting to your goals are a little bit different. Absolutely agree. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for doing this. I appreciate it. Yeah. No, I really enjoyed this. I think we've covered most of what I wanted to cover anyway

if there's anything else you feel like we haven't really touched on that is kind of important I've still do up plenty of time so I'm happy to go into anything we might have missed I think from my point of view we covered everything that I had to say so thank you so much

yeah absolutely pleasure actually there is there's one thing I do I do want to talk about what I potentially worry about is one side feeling like they are

I guess more of the event than the other where like initially it's going to be a KD and Gnome thing and then you want to expand it out but I do have some concern there will be tension there with oh is the KD side footing more of the bill is the Gnome side footing more of the bill and I do worry there's going to be some

some at least initial growing pains trying to work out how to really properly manage an event like this that's why we created a specific document to ease you know, these groups because, of course, being financially stable for these entities is extremely important. So we can't just pretend that we do it for the cause and you lose money out of this because that's my point of view. If anything that you do is a cost,

when you need to tighten the belt well what do you do cut the cost if what you do brings money to your project it starts and it sets the scene with a complete different outlook right

that thing is bringing us money so making some money out of an event is not a sin we need to we are here for free and open source software yes I don't know. Do you need to eat and have a roof? Yes, everyone does. Yes, projects like this, engineering time is expensive. Do we want them to succeed yes or no? If the answer is yes, we need to enable them to be profitable in a sustainable way that, you know, right, it will not become an extreme money-making machine, but that makes these groups comfortable enough. that they want to do it.

It's not like, oh, my gosh, you know, you need to spend again, but it's like motivational. I don't know if theater has anything to add. Yeah, yeah. Keep in mind that the main structure is, okay, we define these management entity that takes care of the conference from the organizational and economical point of view.

The money goes through this entity. Once all the expenses are covered to make it a success, the extra money is shared to fund the projects with rules that are not defined in this moment. Don't ask, don't go in detail. But the idea is make it such a success to be able to fund the project that are participating to the conference.

So, yes, there is going to be some friction, but with the proper structure, we can help everyone. Well, I hope that discussions go well. I hope that this can happen, because this genuinely sounds like it would be a really exciting event to go to and really exciting event to cover. and it, you know, it could actually justify me spending the $2,000 to get there.

I'm not, you know what, how much is it to get there? I have a question for you. I have a question for you, but I want to use these space to raise this question to all the creators that are going to watch these, and you may know, will you as a creator join this event if it happens? will you come and enjoy it and do some media coverage, some content?

Would you like to be there? Let us know somewhere in Brody's comment section on Mastodon, on discourse, wherever you prefer. But we would really like to know and to hear from you about that. So if you want to answer live, feel free. If you want to answer later, feel free to do so. But we will really like to know. Yeah, I would, I've wanted to go to some of these conferences,

but it's just so hard for me to justify spending $1,500,000 to go to one of these events for just a singular desktop. And like, it's, for me especially, because I'm in Australia, it's just so hard to get anywhere. Like, I'm sure it's a lot easier if you're, I don't know, you're in France, right? Going to Italy from France, I'm sure, how much is that? Let's find out. France to Italy. Depends where you could go by car, for example. That's true. You could go by car.

Right. A flies are home from, from Netherlands or Sweden. We got some guy from Sweden this year, for example. He's a Gnomefellow. But yeah, for sure it's easier. From East Europe, from from North Africa, it's for sure easier. Somebody took a bus, right? I remember somebody took a Flix box. Flix bus and it was, right, it's doable. Maybe not, don't take a flix back from Australia to Italy.

We had people that don't fly because they are scared to fly and they took a train from Germany. For example, yeah, it's easier for sure. yeah it's not impossible even for some creator from australia or such kind of very far countries yeah and indeed it would be one instead of three in these specific case um yeah i think that i would definitely love to do it i don't know if i don't know about other people uh hopefully they would as well and um yeah i again i hope this proposal goes well i hope any tensions that are happening in private can be ironed out and this can happen i know of course there are the 30 years of both

projects coming up so it's it's rough right now um i hope it happens the next couple of years but if i'm being completely honest i don't really think it has any hope until after the 30 year anniversaries for both. Just, like, I would like it to, but I don't think it's going to. But I see what he's doing. He's teasing them to say, we'll show him, you know, that we can do it. Thanks, Brody. Well, I can officially put Brody in the list of the content creators that are going to be there next year. You're going to write me down on the list. I'm definitely going to be there. This is going to be to happen next year. So you are in list. Correct. For sure.

If you, look, if you can manage to make it happen next year, I would be genuinely impressed. But I'll leave a link to the document in the description down below. I'll leave a link to both the discourse discussions as well. If anyone from the KDEV Organome Foundation wants to reach out to you directly, I'm sure they are able to do so. I'm sure you have some private discussions open with their. organizations as well, though. Some ways we are connected to everyone.

Me or Mauro, we are connected to everyone. So, yeah. Awesome. Is there anything else you would like to direct people to? I believe we covered everything.

I mean, I would like people to go and check those posts and share their opinions. I'm sure there will be many opinions. and we welcome constructing the criticism and yeah, that's it. Yeah, let me

add a little thing. I got comments on Mastodon about people saying, oh, I'm only a user, I'm only an attendee, I'm not a maintainer or member of the foundation of the projects.

Doesn't matter if you are not. it matters if you commend as an user, as a simple participant. It really matters. It is important. So everyone should feel free to comment, whichever is their idea.

Feel free to comment, help us to build a general idea and to get feedback. Even if you are not a developer, maybe is better if you're not a developer. Awesome. So, yeah. Thank you, Brody. Thank you to whoever stayed with us till this point.

For me, it's been a pleasure. Yeah, same. Thank you so much. Yeah, no, I love having birth you on. I guess I'll do my outro and then we'll sign off. If that's good for you? Yep, perfect. Awesome.

Um, my main channel is Brodie Robertson. I do Linux videos there six-ish days a week. I sometimes stream there as well. I might do something for the cosmic beta. Probably do something for cosmic beta. Check that out. I've got the gaming channel, Brody on games. Uh, right now I'll be playing through Hollow Knight's Silk Song and Yakuza 6. The podcast, if you're watching it on YouTube, you can find it on every podcast platform. Search Tech over T. If you'd like to find it on YouTube, tech of it again. Uh, tech over T once again. You'd think by this point, I'd know how to do my out. I've done it enough times at this point. So I'll give you guys the final word. How do you want to sign us off? What do you want to say? What do you want to say, Mauro? I want to say thank. Thank you, Brody, and thank you everyone for having us.

I hope we can speak soon. Can you say by doing a step back showing better the t-shirt? Thank you, Maura. Thank you. Awesome.