KDE 4.0.0 is tagged, meaning that KDE 4 is released according to plan. KDE3 will be supported for years to come, is the message from Aaron J. Seigo, president of KDE e.V. Here are some highlights from Aarons blog[1]:
This year, as with most years since KDE3 emerged, there have been huge deployments of KDE 3 based software. These deployments will not shift for years to come, no matter what KDE4 is. This is because large institutional deployments (government, corporate, educational, etc) typically have 3-7 year cycles (sometimes even longer) between major changes. Patches and security fixes? Sure. Major revamps? No. This alone ensures that KDE3 will remain supported for years. Why? Because there are users. That is how the open source dev model works: where there are users, there are developers; as one declines so does the other. The developers tend to be a step ahead of the users for software that is progressive, but you'll also find that they have a foot in the here and now too (as well as the past, often). [...] The core KDE team will continue to concentrate it's work on KDE4 since that is the long term direction of things. It is fully expected that our partners (which include some KDE core team members as employees/members) will continue supporting and even developing on KDE3 issues. [...] Aaron continues. KDE 4.0 isn't yet "better than good enough"; so why don't we just release more betas? When one perpetually releases alphas/betas a few things happen: people don't test it aggressively enough, third party developers don't get involved, core developers continue doing blue sky development rather than focusing on release qualities. [...] KDE 4.0 rocks in a number of ways. Whether one looks at the new frameworks (solid, phonon, akonadi et al) or the revamped existing ones (kconfig getting multiple back end support, the UI-less kdecore), or examines the apps like okular or kdeedu or the games or dolphin or ksnapshot or konsole (ok, I won't list every app) or many of the new workspace features like composite and widgets or the new artwork or ... you get the picture. There's a lot that is just amazing. [...] What leaves people wondering about quality is that there is a disparity between our stated end goals and 4.0. This is, to be blunt, due to a lack of experience on their part: most people have never been involved in the creation of something great. We're involved in making something great that will end up spanning a decade of effort and be used for even longer than that. To be able to accomplish such a thing one requires the ability to see beyond today and into the uncertain future. They also need to be able to adjust and shift that vision as things evolve (ergo the shift from tenor to strigi/nepomuk, even though the end result is essentially the same ideas). It is simply not possible, without extreme luck similar to winning the lottery, to create something great without that vision. This is not my idea, this is the result of pretty much every bit of research and practical analysis from the business operations world. 1. The full blog post from Aaron: http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2008/01/talking-bluntly.html Best regards Knut Yrvin -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
