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KDE turns 30, and someone's come up with AI-native desktop proposal (thelemmy.club)
submitted 13 hours ago by to c/fuck_ai@lemmy.world
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this weekend, KDE's annual conference will take place at Graz University of Technology in Austria with an AI-native desktop proposal is likely to divide attendees.

https://circumstances.run/@davidgerard/117274692915294058

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[–] 132 points 13 hours ago (17 children)

The response from the KDE's social media team to Gerard:

Please note that a random talk in Akademy does not in any way mean an endorsement from the community. Neither speaker have contributed to the project in many, many years, and it is ridiculous and even deceitful to imply that this is in any way an official strategy that KDE is going to pursue.

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  • [–] 13 points 7 hours ago

    David Gerard's response to that response:

    bro it's out there with your name on it, it's not "deceitful" to notice the URL and logos.

    if you go straight to claiming commenting about the contents of your own damn website - and you're responding literally to me linking it - is "deceitful", a hit dog is hollering.

    instead, please describe the process by which such an AI slop proposal - clearly chatbot spam - even gets this far.

    In which KDE didn't bother to answer and proceeded to block David Gerard.

    https://circumstances.run/@davidgerard/117276666726477078

    Not a good look.

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  • [–] 51 points 12 hours ago (6 children)

    They make a fair point, but who platforms the speakers? If I proposed a talk about adding pornographic wallpapers to KDE, you know, just for the people who want to use it, would they platform me too?

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  • [–] 30 points 12 hours ago (4 children)

    Maybe if they were AI-generated you’d get some traction?

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  • [–] 2 points 8 hours ago (3 children)

    I think Child Porn is illegal there so you'd probably have to answer some questions from authorities after it was scheduled.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

    I heard that the courts ruled it's legal now as long as you generate it with AI first. I wish I was joking.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 hours ago

    If it was new or may have interest, then yes.

    There is a call for participation, a program committee for that year reviews submissions, and then score in categories like framework, plasma, applications, etc. The event producer role makes final calls.

    A presentation on an idea is in no way to be considered a path forward for KDE. There have been tooling languages presented at akademy that will never be part of KDE, companies like Valve talked about how they've used KDE, and public sector groups have talked about KDE as part of migration efforts.

    A talk is just a talk, meant to highlight unique topics. Akademy is not a planning conference.

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  • [–] 17 points 12 hours ago* (2 children)

    In that same Mastodon thread:

    what is the official strategy of KDE regaring "AI"?

    Response from KDE account:

    There isn't one... yet.

    There is an ongoing discussion started here

    https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/plasma-devel/2026-September/124095.html

    David Gerard said "KDE Conf just wants to talk about going full AI slop desktop".

    So... where's the inaccuracy (let alone "deceit") in anything David Gerard said?

    (Question not necessarily directed at squirrel. More rhetorical and directed at whoever wrote those comments on that official(?) KDE mastodon account.)

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  • [–] 1 point 7 hours ago (1 child)

    Well, there is a big difference between "someone submitted a talk about going full AI to the KDE conference" and "the KDE conference wants to have a talk about going full AI and this is probably what the leadership wants and is just looking to get rubber stamped".

    Imagine if someone made a post called "I think the lemmy.world admins should sell out to Meta and make big money" and this was reported as "lemmy.world is debating selling out to Meta; this is probably what the admins wanted to do all along".

    The core of the matter may be true but the way it's talked about is anything but accurate.

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  • [–] 14 points 12 hours ago* (2 children)

    Yeah that shit doesn't fly when they locked the topic discussing a possible future AI policy. I think they already made up their mind and are manufacturing consent for a fully slopified KDE future.

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  • [–] 18 points 12 hours ago (1 child)

    That's a very uncharitable view of a mod locking down a heated discussion because they don't want to deal with it anymore. There's also KDE devs in that thread who are anti-AI, so I don't know why you're concluding they've 'made up their mind'.

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  • [–] 7 points 8 hours ago

    With the way things are going right now in FOSS circles, KDE both allowing this talk at akademy, and locking down discussion critical of AI, I don't really have much capacity left for charitable interpretations of their actions. The discussion in the mailing list linked above also doesn't make me hopeful.

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  • [–] 9 points 12 hours ago*

    That's what's great with projects like KDE. They're run by programmers who can tell what this charlatan is pushing for is bullshit, not businessmen who would gobble all of those shiny empty promises up and drive their organization into the ground with it.

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