No one is better qualified to talk about the state of the KDE desktop than Aaron Seigo. A former member of the board of KDE e.V, the German non-profit that oversees the project, Seigo is a lead developer on the desktop. Last weekend, I interviewed him at the Calgary Open Source Systems Festival, COSSFest, in front of an audience, on where KDE is today and where it is heading.

With the recent release of version 4.0, the KDE open source project has garnered a lot of international attention. One of KDE's lead developers, and best known personality, Aaron J Seigo is in Australia to speak at this year's Linux.conf.au on his vision for better desktop computing. Computerworld spoke with Seigo, a native of Calgary, Canada, about his view of the world and how a little bit of innovation will permanently change how people interact with software.

Aaron Seigo is one of the most public faces of the KDE desktop. Not only is he a long-time developer, but, for the past three years, he has been president of KDE e.V., the German non-profit that handles the project's financial and legal affairs.

After years of focusing on further improving KDE4 two weeks ago the developers of the free desktop announced the next big step for their project: KDE Frameworks 5.0. But as long-time developer — and Plasma team leader — Aaron Seigo points out the source-incompatible changes shall be held to a minimum.

In about 6 weeks the biggest yearly gathering of the KDE community starts in Tampere. To give you all a little taste of Akademy 2010, Guillermo Amaral interviewed Aaron Seigo and asked him about his keynote.

On Friday, January 18th, Aaron Seigo, President of the KDE e.V. gave the keynote at the KDE 4.0 Release Event in Mountain View, California about KDE 4, presenting KDE to the world and the world to KDE. Aaron started with an introduction to KDE 4, beginning with the history of the project and expressing how far KDE has come in the last 11 years. Then, Aaron explored what KDE is, and what the community is based on - freedom and openness. Freedom to do work, have fun, and connect with others. Further, Aaron moved on to KDE 4, and discussed the near-future plans and ideas. The vision of KDE 4 is based upon three principles: beauty, accessibility, and functionality. He ventured into the many areas that KDE has improved upon, and pointed to the roadmap for the KDE 4 cycle.

Aaron Seigo is one of the most public faces of the KDE desktop. Not only is he a long-time developer, but, for the past three years, he has been president of KDE e.V.. Now nearing the end of his time as president, he talked about KDE's recent past and near future, and his role in both.

KDE is currently moving in three directions: adding functionality, extending the concept of the social desktop, and the introduction of KDE on to every possible hardware platform. Bruce Byfield learns where KDE is going from lead KDE developer Aaron Seigo.

Not a lot happened in the KDE world in the last few days since it's been all just bowing to the Master Nokia for finally making their toolkit a free one but there popped something funny up yesterday by Aaron Seigo titled "i will not drink the koolaide".