KDE Again Operated At A Loss During 2023

[phoronix]

Phoronix: KDE Again Operated At A Loss During 2023

KDE e.V. announced the availability today of their annual report for covering 2023. While they made a lot of accomplishments and worked a lot on KDE Plasma 6 development, it was another year they unfortunately operated in the red funding wise...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/KDE-2023-Report

[mirmirmir]

I think it's better of for them to make online conferences, I don't I think it's necessary to hold those events offline. Because we already have great software and community to connect people around the world.

[sophisticles]

Can someone explain to me 2 things:

1) How do they spend more money than they take in? Where is the extra 118k coming from? There must be more to the story.

2) How do they have a tax liability? Are they not registered as a charity? If not they need to get the NFL's lawyers, the NFL up until 2015 was a 501(c)(6) organization, meaning it was designated as a charity and paid zero taxes.

Look into it Nate, I'm sure there are some legal shenanigans you can use to avoid taxes.

[gfunk]

M$ should become a patron since they get a lot of ideas from KDE

[JMB9]

I think it's better of for them to make online conferences, I don't I think it's necessary to hold those events offline. Because we already have great software and community to connect people around the world.

Is this for real? I don't think that people who really work together don't see the necessaty to meet personally.
This was in a lot of occasions expressed by Linux kernel hackers - which are not known to have extremely
social needs to meet other people ...

For conferences one needs much more than 4k (really the resolution of DIN A4 paper with LASER printers
of 1990 having 300 dpi). So with 16k+ one may make conferences or even digital instruction.
One lesson from Covid was that there is nearly a gap of 2 years with no learning effect in schools.

But maybe I live in a cage - and people outside are no longer using small resolutions like 4k (which I am using
since nearly 10 years) and pretend to work with small devices with 'smart' in front to hide the stupid idea to
use these toy devices ...

Online conferences would not be reasonable in research (when never met personally, of cause) - definetely not
when working together - and especially if the subject is not trivial.

If there are other experience please describe - I would like to come to modern age as analogue is still superior
in resolution and colour space (when not too rich, of cause - research has quite different resolutions).
Especially if someone knows cheap devices of 8k+ non-glare, current DisplayPort with at least 50" to
really make digital conferences doable ...

By the way - 8k prototype screens were shown in 2015 when 4k got below 300 EUR ... I have not
seen a single 8k screen for prefessional work (at 31.5" with 4k there are no pixel matrix visible,
so part of the resolution is wasted with such tiny screens - and glare displays are not suitable
to work with for 10+ hours in front of them).

But maybe I can learn somthing now ...

[gripped]

1) How do they spend more money than they take in? Where is the extra 118k coming from? There must be more to the story.

From the report

Both outcomes demonstrate our ability to make accurate forecasts — an important ability given our 2023 operational goal of outspending our annual income for the second year in a row, which we have achieved, in order to reduce our financial reserve (which remains high from large one-time donations in earlier years) in accordance with our non-profit organizational form.

So it seems they have too much money and need to get rid of some.

[mppix]

2) How do they have a tax liability? Are they not registered as a charity? If not they need to get the NFL's lawyers, the NFL up until 2015 was a 501(c)(6) organization, meaning it was designated as a charity and paid zero taxes.

Look into it Nate, I'm sure there are some legal shenanigans you can use to avoid taxes.

Curious if NFL lawyers work pro-bono for open source software foundations or know german tax law.

[Party0445]

I think it's better of for them to make online conferences, I don't I think it's necessary to hold those events offline. Because we already have great software and community to connect people around the world.

In person events like workshops and conferences should be very profitable. At least that’s been my experience in another a different industry. If events aren’t making healthy profits they need to find someone to redo their events offering.

[You-]

With the gnome version of this there would already be posts "serves them right, GNOME ARE GOING BANKRUPT!"

Maybe it is because of those posts we all know that that is not the case with KDE.

[abiswas]

As someone who started his Linux journey with KDE plasma, this is sad. Then, I loved KDE plasma alot(the UI was my favorite Oxygen theme), now I dislike it to the core.

But unlike some fanatic KDE plasma fans who like to comment "This deserves it" on negative posts of projects they don't like, I will not do that.