KDE eco and Software Sustainability

2023-03-05

Last month KDE eco released their Handbook "Applying The Blue Angel Criteria To Free Software". In it they go over the criteria for "Resources and Energy-Efficient Software Products"Blue Angel - KDE Okular as laid out by the official German ecolabel Blauer Engel (Blue Angel) and how they managed to get their pdf reader Okular certified.

The handbook is divided into three main chapters:

The first chapter isn't that surprising, really. Computing consumes power, as does networking. With the internet we rarely get to see the amounts of power consumed. And then of course there is the devices, which need to be manufactured, shipped and disposed of.

The third chapter goes over the practical details of getting Okular certified, certainly interesting if you are trying to do something similar, but we will pass on that for now.

Certification Criteria

What we are interested in is the second chapter, going over the criteria set out by Blue Angel. These KDE groups into three main blocks: "Resource & Energy Efficiency", "Potential Hardware Operating Live" and "User Autonomy".

Resource and Energy Efficiency is pretty straight forward, only consume the power that is required for the intended task. This already includes gives applications that do not spy on their users an advantage.

Potential Hardware Operating Live refers to software supporting older hardware, to keep perfectly good devices out of the landfill. Here one has to focus on making sure the software still performs well and also still receives free security updates. Looking at you, mobile phone manufacturers.

Finally User Autonomy. This is the interesting stuff! Who wouldn't be excited for Support for Open file formats, no required internet connection, a lack of ads, the ability to properly uninstall a piece of software and more? Exactly, people from the FOSS community. We are taking these things for granted. KDE eco identifies this as a likely reason for Okular, free and open source, being the first (and so far only) piece of software bearing the blue angel badge.

So FOSS everywhere then?

With the Blue Angel being well respected this will certainly spark some thoughts in some places, like a city trying be be more sustainable considering Okular and related FOSS. But are we going to see major commercial actors in the field working to meet the criteria? I don't think so.

Where Blue Angel is successful is things like recycled paper or cardboard. Things, where meeting the criteria can be done without completely changing the business model, but by swapping suppliers, materials or formulas. So much of the current IT industry is pretty much built on the opposite of what Blue Angel proposes: Planned obsolescence, forced updates, advertisements, outragious amounts of "telemetry" and walled gardens. This is why Blue Angels initiative is great, but also why it will probably go mostly unnoticed.


Regardless, I really recommend taking a look at the Handbook. It makes for an interesting read and does provoke some thoughts.

KDE eco and Software Sustainability © 2023 by Andreas Hurka is licensed under CC BY 4.0