The genesis of our Linux App Summit started is that it was originally a GNOME only event (LAS GNOME, Linux App Summit, hosted by GNOME) with the idea that we would use this to find new sources of income/sponsors by focusing on apps and the app ecosystem since around that time flatpak just got started.
We did that for two years and then I heard wind that KDE was upset that we had this conference. I went to their board and outlined what this conference was about and invited them to come to our second LAS in Denver. They did attend although there was definitely a gap of trust. But the next one was joint in Barcelona and that I felt was a big success. It felt like a uniform event and with great interactions.
I definitely feel like we can continue to leverage LAS in this way, but if we were to make it all one conference I think that would be beneficial especially from a sponsorship perspective. But also, I think we can also use this to get desktop adjacent folks like kernel, graphics (XDC), and the freedesktop people together and start making this as a uniform userspace industry level conference.
I’ve always strongly felt that we are stronger when we all work together especially given how much investment has dropped off.