The Linux operating system currently relies upon many graphic interfacing options, but KDE might be the option with the longest history among all the interfaces that have been a part of the 20 years of Linux and, before it, Unix. Who still remembers the CDE interface?
  
Sandro Andrade, responsible for the KDE trail at Latinoware, remembers, and he also recalls other graphic interfaces like that of MSX architecture, which was rather popular in Brazil and other countries during the 80s. History and a vision of the future are part of both the KDE story and that of Sandro’s life.
  

1. Sandro, you are a guy that was born plugged in. From MSX to KDE, it seems like information technology diverged and converged many times, and proceeds in a cyclical movement, in terms of it being accessible to everybody. MSX was a computer for “the rest of us”, the non-nerds. What about KDE?
   

 Ah, MSX (... with an air of nostalgia...). Despite having been one of the first computers in Brazil to be marketed to “non-nerds,” only the hackers knew that by holding down the CONTROL key while the machine turned on, the quantity of RAM memory available for use in one’s applications rose from 28Kb to a fantastic 29Kb :). But I’m not going to talk about MSX, otherwise the interview will end without my having spoken about KDE :)
   

We are immensely happy about the commemoration of 15 years of KDE on October 14, and are preparing a very special participation for Latinoware. Along the years KDE has gone from the initial community of 20 collaborators to a large group of more than 3 thousand friends worldwide. We could see the completeness and stability of KDE 3, the audacity of KDE 4, and KDE 5’s pathway to ubiquity.
   

“We can make it better!” – a recurrent phrase in the KDE sprints – denounces the bold character of the community; at the same time, we always seek to deliver both a modern workspace to the final user and a comfortable, intuitive platform to the developer. The wide range of devices in which KDE is present today – from mobile platforms, to tablets, netbooks, desktops, and even immense touch-screen panels – is the clearest evidence that KDE is for “the rest of us”. For us (the nerds), KDE is the place where you identify with people, technically evaluate, exercise your generosity and feel immensely honored to help trace the technological pathways that we will tread.
   

2. KDE navigated the seas of proprietary libraries, differences with purists and a broad, general and unrestricted openness that permitted your foundation, Qt library, to surf from the desktop to the cellular. However, the competition in each of these niches is quite substantial. What is the secret of the longevity of KDE and Qt?
    

The secret is: openness + people + passion. The KDE ecosystem is extremely rich, involving volunteers, companies, universities and research centers, all sharing the idea of free software as a better model for technical and economic evolution. The KDE/Qt symbiosis is truly useful for both projects. In the past years we witnessed Qt adopting LGPL, rendering its repositories and public roadmaps as well as implanting Open Governance. Qt is not more than a company. Qt is of the community and KDE has contributed much to this end, through the Free Qt Foundation and other agreements and alliances that leverage the total openness of technologies. The second component of our “secret” –people –is the reason that, for example, KDE stopped being an acronym and began to denote the community. It is our most valuable component: “unscrewed” people :) that have the audacity to propose things that are, in the beginning, absurd, but that later begin to make a little sense :)
    

People that discuss, defend their points of view, assist the less experienced, and reprimand beginners, but who are nevertheless united by an extreme passion for what they do. This passion, insofar as it is a driving mechanism and generator of such a beneficent irrationality, can certainly be found in each of the project’s nearly 3 thousand collaborators.
    

Surely the entire project of free software is formed by these three factors. The longevity of KDE and of Qt, however, arises from the profiles of the involved persons; from a domain of application that is always challenging and highly conducive to innovation; and from a strong ecosystem for the maintenance of demands.
    

3. What role does KDE play in the cloud?
   

OwnCloud is an open platform for services in the cloud that compliment the KDE technologies Social Desktop and Get Hot New Stuff, both responsible for the obtainment and integration of social and collaborative data. The objective is to make an alternative to the lock-ins of proprietary platforms available through a standardized interface, supporting the mash up of information from different providers such as Last.fm, Pandora, Facebook, Google and Flickr.
   

OwnCloud tries to combine the best aspects of the desktop and web worlds via rich desktop applications (instead of web applications), intensive use of features for social integration, easy implantation/installation by means of Get Hot New Stuff, and the possibility for the user to control data while keeping it accessible from any device.
    

4. If you had to sell KDE on the shelf in Carrefour, Ponto Frio, or another big chain, what slogan would you use? (This question will also be asked of the Gnome personnel!)
    

Difficult question, but I would choose the slogan “Join the Game!” utilized in the campaign of the supporting membership of KDE because it reflects the climate experienced in the project.