Interview with Brian Alleyne, Sociologist Studying KDE

“As a sociologist I am very interested in the idea of community,
in how people come to understand themselves as belonging to some
community and how they determine who is in and who is out. I have
worked on questions of community for some years now. I was struck
by how often the term community came up in FLOSS discussions, and
in KDE more specifically.

Even as I was using KDE software on a regular basis, my
sociological half was wondering: What is the KDE community? Who is
in it? What are the kinds of activities that are characteristic of
FLOSS communities? Are there social structures as sociologists
understand these, e.g. class? Is there some distinctive culture
involved, e.g. use of language? What kind of knowledge is produced
and valued in the KDE community? How does one learn to operate in
the community? How is the community governed?

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