KDE Eco: Achievements, Impact, and To-Do's
Given Free and Open Source Software's core values of transparency and user autonomy, FOSS has an edge to become the most resource and energy efficient software. In fact, the connection between sustainability and transparency/user autonomy is reflected in the award criteria for Blue Angel eco-certification, the environmental label awarded by the German government; and it has been the motivation behind the KDE Eco initiative since its beginning in 2021. The KDE Eco initiative aims to quantify and drive down the energy consumption of KDE/Free Software as well as to foster a culture of sustainability within the FOSS community, including the Qt community and Qt-based applications. In this talk KDE will present the (i) achievements, (ii) impact, and (iii) to-do's of the KDE Eco initiative. It will address the following: - What are the achievements of KDE Eco so far? These include Okular receiving the Blue Angel eco-label and research by KDE community members into methods of energy consumption measurements, setting up a community lab at KDAB Berlin, and developing tools for measuring software, among others. - What has been the impact of the KDE Eco initiative? From the developer side, this includes discussion of efficiency-related bug reports/MR requests and efficiency changes in software design. From the user side, this includes information related to community responses in (social) media as well as quantifying engagement and other data-driven metrics. - What are the to-dos going forward? Here KDE will present their goals for the future and the steps bring taken to achieve them. The talk will open up opportunities for broader collaboration between Qt and KDE Eco, and provide practical examples for sustainability initiatives going forward. Learn more about Qt: https://qt.io
