Project Management

6 months into the development of KDE, things exploded. The project started increasing in size and began to attract a lot of "passionate" vocal interest. Seemingly endless discussions and constant conflict began to stifle development. An effort to maintain a healthy decision-making process, it became apparent was a necessity. The core group of developers thus decided to open internal communication channels , with limits to write access for kde-core-devel, the core developers mailing list. "Opinionated Spectators" were thus left at bay. Read access to kde-core-devel is open to anyone.

Membership to the core group, 'The KDE Core Team', is purely merit based. Anyone can become a member of the core group, the particular applicant must however have distinguished him/herself through outstanding contributions and dedication towards the KDE project, over a considerable period of time. The KDE Core group decides on the overall direction of the KDE Project and manages the release schedule. Contrary to the development of other free software projects, most notably the Linux Kernel, KDE does not have a single 'benevolent dictator' who vetoes important decisions. Instead, the KDE core group of about 20 developers takes decisions on the basis of outcomes of democaratic voting procedures.