KDE Projects

KDE Projects
Developer(s) KDE
Operating system Entire DE: Unix-like with X11 or Wayland and also Windows XP–7.[1]
Applications only: Mac OS X 10.4–10.6
Type Free software
License GPL, LGPL, BSD License, MIT License, CC[2]
Website cgit.kde.org

KDE Projects are projects hosted on KDE's own git servers and developed by the KDE community, for example KDE Plasma, KDE Frameworks or applications such as Amarok, Krita or Digikam. There is also non-coding work like the Breeze desktop theme or the Oxygen iconset, which are coordinated by KDE's VisualDesignGroup. Also non-Qt applications like GCompris, which started as a GTK-based application, or pure web-based projects like WikiToLearn are now part of the growing list of KDE Projects.

Overview

It all started with the idea of developing a free desktop environment. That project quickly grew into a set of desktop components, libraries and applications sharing a unified philosophy and underlying base technology of Qt and C++. As of today there are many KDE projects that are either stand-alone or grouped into larger sub-projects:

KDE technological core projects

KDE Applications

The Kontact personal information manager and Konqueror file manager/web browser running on KDE Plasma 5.2

Major applications developed by KDE include:

Other projects

Development

Source code

The source code of every KDE project is stored in a source code repository using Git.[5] Stable versions are released to the KDE FTP server[6] in the form of source code with configure scripts, ready to be compiled by operating system vendors and to be integrated with the rest of their systems before distribution. Most vendors use only stable and tested versions of KDE programs or applications, providing it in the form of easily installable, pre-compiled packages.

Implementation

Most KDE projects are using the Qt framework, which runs on most Unix and Unix-like systems (including Mac OS X), and Microsoft Windows. As of 2011 CMake serves as the build tool. This allows KDE to support a wider range of platforms, including Windows.[7] GNU gettext is used for translation. Doxygen is used to generate api documentation.[8]

Licensing

KDE software projects must be released under free licensing terms. In November 1998, the Qt framework was dual-licensed under the free and open source Q Public License (QPL) and a commercial license for proprietary software developers. The same year, the KDE Free Qt foundation was created which guarantees that Qt would fall under a variant of the very liberal BSD license should Trolltech cease to exist or no free version of Qt be released during 12 months.[9]

Debate continued about compatibility with the GNU General Public License (GPL), hence in September 2000 Trolltech made the Unix version of the Qt libraries available under the GPL in addition to the QPL which eliminated the concerns of the Free Software Foundation.[10] Trolltech continued to require licenses for developing proprietary software with Qt. The core libraries of KDE are collectively licensed under the GNU LGPL but the only way for proprietary software to make use of them was to be developed under the terms of the Qt proprietary license.

Starting with Qt 4.5, Qt was also made available under the LGPL version 2.1,[11] now allowing proprietary applications to legally use the open source Qt version.

See also

References

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