Re: [kde] Yet another failed KDE release?

[Ross Boylan]

On Tuesday, May 07, 2013 04:21:21 PM Duncan wrote:
> > P.S. Composed in kmail 1.13.7, which mysteriously hangs from time to
> > time, can't autocomplete from the address book, and sometimes show blank
> > messages with any way I can see to get it show html.
> 
> Kmail-1 is an effectively abandoned product.  While it continued to work 
> with newer kde for awhile, and my distro, gentoo, continued to offer both 
> the pre-akonadified kdepim-4.4.x and the newer version in parallel for 
> awhile (so the admins of individual installations could choose which they 
> wanted), without anyone officially adopting and continuing to maintain 
> the pre-akonadi version, that's getting tough to maintain as mainline kde 
> progresses farther away, leaving kdepim-4.4 (with kmail-1) further and 
> further behind and stale.
I'm using Debian Wheezy, which was released about 2 days ago.  It's a little 
odd: help | about shows KMail Version 1.13.7 use KDE dev Platform 4.8.4.  The 
Debian package version number is 4.4.11, which I suppose is a reference to the 
kde pim version.

I'm guessing the Debian packagers thought KMail 2 was too unreliable, at least 
when they made the packaging decision, which would have been quite a biit 
before the release.

Maybe some of the problems like the address book non-lookup are from mixing 
KMail one with a later general KDE release.

Ross
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Re: [kde] Yet another failed KDE release?

[Duncan]

Ross Boylan posted on Tue, 07 May 2013 14:40:50 -0700 as excerpted:

> On Tuesday, May 07, 2013 02:54:19 AM James Tyrer wrote:
> 
>> The KDE development team appears to be interested in something other
>> than producing a stable release.  It really is that simple.

As Kevin keeps hammering hammering on, KDE isn't a single product.  There 
are many that would (wrongly) say the same about Linux, which clearly 
isn't the case, or about Adobe (his example, very good one BTW), or even 
about "Windows" or MS, when the bug's actually in MS Office (not MS 
Windows) or even in Adobe's PDF reader or something else only related to 
MS Windows in that it runs on the platform.

>> I find very useful the dystopian novel: "The Rise of the Meritocracy"
>> which is a critique of the idea of "the meritocracy".  A meritocracy is
>> defined by the search for merit -- but that is dependent on the
>> definition of merit.  I find that I have no merit in the KDE project
>> despite the fact that I went to college and studied EE and computer
>> science.  In the KDE project, you obtain merit be designing a new
>> application.  So, that is the nail that everyone is hitting with their
>> hammer.

[Paragraph immediately below moved from elsewhere to address along with 
the next one in reply to the above.]

> I too am finding the reliability of KDE and its apps not what I would
> like, but one thing puzzles me about this complaint, the statement that
> bug fixing is not welcomed...

> Where do you get the idea that you have "no merit in the KDE project",
> or that someone fixing bugs would be greeted with anything other than
> enthusiasm? Well, it's free software and so there's bound to be some
> static, but apart from that :)

Without trying to get too personal in my reply (which I should say 
explicitly is simply personal opinion), there's a bit of interpersonal 
history here that you evidently aren't aware of.  He came across rather 
strongly on a few bugs, with the devs in charge of those products 
reacting defensively to what they saw as demands he had no right to make 
as a result.  Regardless of the merits of the individual bugs and 
proposed fixes (which I'm staying neutral on), the unfortunate result is 
that now certain devs prefer to stay as far away from involvement with 
him and anything he proposes as possible.

But of course that doesn't and shouldn't prevent contributions to other 
kde-based projects, or indeed, /starting/ other independent but kde-based 
projects, if so desired.

> P.S. Composed in kmail 1.13.7, which mysteriously hangs from time to
> time, can't autocomplete from the address book, and sometimes show blank
> messages with any way I can see to get it show html.

Kmail-1 is an effectively abandoned product.  While it continued to work 
with newer kde for awhile, and my distro, gentoo, continued to offer both 
the pre-akonadified kdepim-4.4.x and the newer version in parallel for 
awhile (so the admins of individual installations could choose which they 
wanted), without anyone officially adopting and continuing to maintain 
the pre-akonadi version, that's getting tough to maintain as mainline kde 
progresses farther away, leaving kdepim-4.4 (with kmail-1) further and 
further behind and stale.

I believe gentoo/kde finally dropped kdepim-4.4 support recently, or if 
not, will be doing so shortly, citing as reasons the very bugs you 
mention above.  It's simply getting too far behind to maintain 
compatibility with current kde any longer.

Other distros who stuck with pre-akonadi kmail-1/kdepim-4.4 for awhile 
either have or will eventually need to make similar decisions... unless 
someone steps up to adopt the abandoned code and bring it forward as a 
new, independent project.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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Re: [kde] Yet another failed KDE release?

[Ross Boylan]

I too am finding the reliability of KDE and its apps not what I would like, but 
one thing puzzles me about this complaint, the statement that bug fixing is not 
welcomed...
On Tuesday, May 07, 2013 02:54:19 AM James Tyrer wrote:

> The KDE development team appears to be interested in something other
> than producing a stable release.  It really is that simple.  As a
> result, the release process is not oriented towards producing a stable
> release.
I'm not sure if the developers would agree, though most developers would 
rather make new things than fix old ones.  They are supposedly fixing lots of 
bugs with each release; it's just there are so many.
..
> 
> I find very useful the dystopian novel: "The Rise of the Meritocracy"
> which is a critique of the idea of "the meritocracy".  A meritocracy is
> defined by the search for merit -- but that is dependent on the
> definition of merit.  I find that I have no merit in the KDE project
> despite the fact that I went to college and studied EE and computer
> science.  In the KDE project, you obtain merit be designing a new
> application.  So, that is the nail that everyone is hitting with their
> hammer.
Where do you get the idea that you have "no merit in the KDE project", or that 
someone fixing bugs would be greeted with anything other than enthusiasm?  
Well, it's free software and so there's bound to be some static, but apart 
from that :)
> 
> I don't want to do that.  I want to improve applications.  That is what
> engineers do; we find the faults with things and fix them -- we improve
> things.
> 
> Unfortunately, everyone designing new applications from square one is
> not conducive to building a stable and bug free desktop environment.
> You can see how this has contributed to the failure of KDE 4.  Much of
> KDE 3 was thrown away rather than being improved and some of what was
> kept was either not improved (e.g. Konqueror) or the internals were
> replaced to the point that they became new apps with the old names.
> 
> It takes time to build a code base.  Plasma is getting nowhere.  It is
> new, but it is still unstable at the pre-Beta state.  The DeskTop can't
> even remember a configuration.
> 
> Contrast this with the Japanese system of product development which is
> one of constant improvement.  Apple has has some success with it.
> 
> There is nothing wrong with KDE that a few committed software engineers
> -- committed to quality -- couldn't fix.  But, I don't think that the
> hackers would like it.

Continuous improvement will not immediately yield a stable product if there 
are a lot of problems, as there seem to be.  I'm sure even one person could 
make a difference. I'm not sure even a small group could get things under 
control reasonably quickly.

Ross Boylan

P.S. Composed in kmail 1.13.7, which mysteriously hangs from time to time, 
can't autocomplete from the address book, and sometimes show blank messages 
with any way I can see to get it show html.
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Re: [kde] Yet another failed KDE release?

[Jerry]

On Tue, 7 May 2013 14:55:08 -0400
Renaud (Ron) Olgiati articulated:

> With the profound difference that when you install Photoshop,
> frinstance, that is it; while if you want to install KMail, you are
> obliged to install as well a shitload of useless bug-ridden crap like
> Akonadi

Akonadi won't even start on my system.

-- 
Jerry ♔

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Re: [kde] Yet another failed KDE release?

[Renaud (Ron) Olgiati]

On Tuesday 07 May 2013 12:50 my mailbox was graced by a message from Kevin 
Krammer who wrote:
> As I mentioned in a different message to this thread, this is usually
> easily  understood when comparing with vendors with a range of products of
> their own.
> 
> Good example, as mention earlier, being Adobe.
> Adobe being the name of the vendor, often also used as a prefix on product 
> names, e.g. Adobe Photoshop.
> Adobe's product range has dozens of items, one for example being
> Photoshop.  That product is also available as part of a product bundle
> called Creative Suite.
> 
> So
> 
> Adobe -> vendor
> Adobe Creative Suite -> bundle of products by vendor
> Adobe Photoshop -> one product by vendor, also available as part of a
> bundle
> 
> KDE -> vendor
> KDE Software Compiliation -> bundle of products by vendor
> KDE Digikam -> one product by vendor, also available as part of a bundle

With the profound difference that when you install Photoshop, frinstance, that 
is it; while if you want to install KMail, you are obliged to install as well 
a shitload of useless bug-ridden crap like Akonadi.

Talk about bloatware...
 
Cheers,
 
Ron.
-- 
  Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist
   ought to have his head examined.
  -- Samuel Goldwyn

   -- http://www.olgiati-in-paraguay.org --
 

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Re: [kde] Yet another failed KDE release?

[John Woodhouse]

I'm surprised this post keeps coming up. I've been using KDE 4.6.0 since it was 
a stable release for some years now, I use Kmail too. Problems - virtually 
zero, some mouse gestures which don't seem to want to be disabled occasionally 
cause mild annoyance and that terrible indexing utility that logged everything 
I did and seemed bent on wearing out my hard drives just had to be disabled as 
much as it can be. It also slowed everything down. I run a fairly heavily 
loaded desktop and fairly recently started having disc thrashing problems. 
Added more memory and that has more or less gone away. The fact that it hasn't 
gone completely is down to me and my use and the memory capability of the 
motherboard. When I upgraded from KDE 3 I also had to fit a new graphics card 
to keep the effects running. It's nothing really special just a mid range cheap 
part from Nvidia - also most importantly had to add there driver.

I might reboot/turn off my machine every 6 months or so. One gremlin. Some how 
closing an app on the task bar just offered me remove from taskbar - it did and 
the icon just wouldn't come back. In the end I deleted the task bar and added 
it again and all was ok.

I suspect the answer to the complaints in these posts is to get real. Linux 
plus what ever has never ever been completely stable if people run the latest 
and greatest. Even less so if they compile something like KDE themselves or 
worse still build up everything from scratch. Distro's are intended to get 
round these problems according to the level people want. They always have been. 
Some people don't mind the bugs, others like me just want to use my machine and 
bug report on stable releases but not to KDE. There wouldn't be any point. I 
post to the distro. I suppose I have been using KDE plus linux for near 20 
years now.

If someone wants a truly upfront distro where others usually sort out problems 
quickly I would suggest they try Arch - if they have the ability but in that 
case they may be able to sort it out themselves..

Me well I will be upgrading shortly to another stable distro release - new 
machine too. I've been using this one for 10+ years

John
-





>
> From: dE 
>To: kde@mail.kde.org 
>Sent: Tuesday, 7 May 2013, 16:32
>Subject: Re: [kde] Yet another failed KDE release?
> 
>
>
>On 05/07/13 20:03, Kevin Krammer wrote:
>
>On Tuesday, 2013-05-07, James Tyrer wrote: 
>>On 03/19/2013 09:58 AM, dE . wrote: 
>>The KDE development team appears to be interested in something other
than producing a stable release.  It really is that simple. 
>>Well, simple and false :)
Mostly because the conclusion is based on a misconception regarding KDE to be 
a single product.
KDE is a software vendor with several dozend products, each developed by 
different people. Sometimes single developers, sometimes teams.
Hence no such thing as a "KDE development team" exists as an entity by itself. 
>>As a
result, the release process is not oriented towards producing a stable
release. 
>>As a result obviously also false, i.e. a non-existing entity doesn't have 
goals.
Unless we employ thinking similar religious faith and assume an unobservable 
entity exists by people believing in it ;-) 
>>I find very useful the dystopian novel: "The Rise of the Meritocracy"
which is a critique of the idea of "the meritocracy".  A meritocracy is
defined by the search for merit -- but that is dependent on the
definition of merit.  I find that I have no merit in the KDE project
despite the fact that I went to college and studied EE and computer
science.  In the KDE project, you obtain merit be designing a new
application.  So, that is the nail that everyone is hitting with their
hammer. 
>>Also not true.
Most contributors at KDE are neither the designers nor maintainers of 
applications.
A lot of contributors are not even coders or not contributing other things 
than writing code. Merit is gauged by the quality, reliability and dedication 
to the contribution 
area. In other words merit and recognition is earned through actual 
contribution, but that contribution can be a lof ot things other than code. 
This applies to the work on KDE activities and products but also to the 
foundation managing KDE's legal assets, KDE e.V.
As a sample, the e.V.'s board of directories has currently one member out of 
five who's active contribution at the moment is code. 
>>I don't want to do that.  I want to improve applications.  That is what
engineers do; we find the faults with things and fix them -- we improve
things. 
>>Sounds like a great opportunity then :) 
>>Unfortunately, everyone designing new applications from square one is
not conducive to building a stable and bug free desktop environment. 
>>While only a fraction of developer work on applications of the desktop 
environment product, I'd say that even this is a over generalisation even for 
those.
The only two applications in that category that I can come up with from the 
top of my 

Re: [kde] Yet another failed KDE release?

[Kevin Krammer]

On Tuesday, 2013-05-07, Mirosław Zalewski wrote:
> On 07/05/2013 at 18:06, Doug  wrote:
> > I thought KDE was short for "K Desktop Environment," a replacement for a
> > Unix CDE--Common Desktop Environment?
> 
> It is not for over a three years now. KDE is simply KDE and the meaning is
> "entire community". Software is called KDE SC, which means KDE *Software
> Compilation* - emphasis is put on fact that there are many programs, not
> just one.

Not quite.
The distinction is far older than the initiative to enhance the accuracy in 
communications.

Also the software is not called KDE SC, that name refers to the bundle 
containing all of KDE's software products. It was added as a compromise for 
occasions when even a list of product categories was deemed to long.
Usage of that term will probably be discontinued though, it has created 
misconceptions on its own.

As I mentioned in a different message to this thread, this is usually easily 
understood when comparing with vendors with a range of products of their own.

Good example, as mention earlier, being Adobe.
Adobe being the name of the vendor, often also used as a prefix on product 
names, e.g. Adobe Photoshop.
Adobe's product range has dozens of items, one for example being Photoshop. 
That product is also available as part of a product bundle called Creative 
Suite.

So

Adobe -> vendor
Adobe Creative Suite -> bundle of products by vendor
Adobe Photoshop -> one product by vendor, also available as part of a bundle

KDE -> vendor
KDE Software Compiliation -> bundle of products by vendor
KDE Digikam -> one product by vendor, also available as part of a bundle

Cheers,
Kevin
-- 
Kevin Krammer, KDE developer, xdg-utils developer
KDE user support, developer mentoring


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Re: [kde] Yet another failed KDE release?

[Mirosław Zalewski]

On 07/05/2013 at 18:06, Doug  wrote:

> I thought KDE was short for "K Desktop Environment," a replacement for a 
> Unix CDE--Common Desktop Environment?

It is not for over a three years now. KDE is simply KDE and the meaning is 
"entire community". Software is called KDE SC, which means KDE *Software 
Compilation* - emphasis is put on fact that there are many programs, not just 
one.

You can read more about it on: 


But yes, KDE (community) has failed to bring this distinction to wider 
audience. Hell, I bet that even among long-term KDE community members there 
are many people not aware of "official" meaning of KDE and KDE SC.

Of course there are much bigger problems in both KDE and KDE SC, so not 
wasting time on trying to teach people differences between two terms is not 
necessarily a bad thing.
-- 
Best regards
Mirosław Zalewski
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Re: [kde] Yet another failed KDE release?

[Kevin Krammer]

On Tuesday, 2013-05-07, Doug wrote:
> On 05/07/2013 11:49 AM, Kevin Krammer wrote:
> > On Tuesday, 2013-05-07, dE wrote:
> >> There is no misconception.
> > 
> > Yes, there is. Sometimes people don't know that KDE is the name of the
> > software vendor, not of a product and that this vendor has in fact dozens
> > of products.
> > 
> > S
> 
> /snip/
> 
> I thought KDE was short for "K Desktop Environment," a replacement for a
> Unix CDE--Common Desktop Environment?

Yes, initially.

That initiative then attracted a lot of talented people from all kinds of 
interest areas, experts and enthusiasts from a wide range of problem domains, 
who all started contributing to their software needs as part of a larger 
community.

Nowadays the desktop environment product, often also referred to as the 
desktop workspace product, is one of many, produced by dedicated group of 
individuals who find themselves intrigued by the graphical shell domain :)

> If KDE is a software vendor, what else do they make?

The product range is quite wide, see http://kde.org/applications/
Productivity and Creativity applications, teaching and learning, 
entertainment, etc.

Used by users of KDE's workspace products, other vendor's workspaces, free and 
proprietary operating systems, some even available on mobile devices (e.g. I 
have Kanagram, KHangman and Marble on my Nokia N9 smartphone).

Cheers,
Kevin

-- 
Kevin Krammer, KDE developer, xdg-utils developer
KDE user support, developer mentoring


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Re: [kde] Yet another failed KDE release?

[Doug]

On 05/07/2013 11:49 AM, Kevin Krammer wrote:

On Tuesday, 2013-05-07, dE wrote:


There is no misconception.

Yes, there is. Sometimes people don't know that KDE is the name of the
software vendor, not of a product and that this vendor has in fact dozens of
products.

S

/snip/

I thought KDE was short for "K Desktop Environment," a replacement for a 
Unix CDE--Common Desktop Environment?


If KDE is a software vendor, what else do they make?

--doug
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Re: [kde] Yet another failed KDE release?

[Doug]

On 05/07/2013 11:32 AM, dE wrote:
/snip/

There is no misconception. KDE is always giving problems. Look at the 
bugzilla crawling with stale bugs.



/snip/

I've been using KDE for at least 3 years, and I find very little in it 
to complain about. Only thing I can think of is the unfortunate interaction
of some programs (guvcview, most recently) with the operation of 
KSnapshot. Prior to that it was some other program, and prior to _that_,
KSnapshot worked OK, so I don't know what or why they're doing things 
that louse it up.


Oh, one other thing: some of the options set up in "Configure Your 
Desktop" do not survive reboot. I wish they'd fix that.


The attitude that KDE is always giving problems could result in it being 
dropped by some distros in favor of some Ubuntuism, at which
point I would just go back to Windows. I really dislike the way Windows 
operates, but i do like the Win (prior to Win8) screen paradigm,

which KDE imitates rather well.

--doug
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Re: [kde] Yet another failed KDE release?

[Kevin Krammer]

On Tuesday, 2013-05-07, dE wrote:

> There is no misconception.

Yes, there is. Sometimes people don't know that KDE is the name of the 
software vendor, not of a product and that this vendor has in fact dozens of 
products.

Sometimes people find these threads through search engines and might not yet 
know, so it is important to make sure they information is as accurate as 
possible.

Most people don't have difficulties grasping the difference between a vendor 
and its multiple products, but they need to be aware of it first.
A person who is not aware of Adobe having multiple products, ranging from 
Flash and Reader to Photoshop, InDesign, etc. might use the vendor name 
unknowingly while speaking about a specific product, making it hard for anyone 
else who knows more than one product to follow.

Like when saying "I found a bug in Adobe" would not make a lot of sense for 
anyone knowing more than one Adobe product because the received information is 
so vague that it doesn't carry any value at all.

> KDE is always giving problems.

Who? A single person or a group of individuals?

Cheers,
Kevin
-- 
Kevin Krammer, KDE developer, xdg-utils developer
KDE user support, developer mentoring


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Re: [kde] Yet another failed KDE release?

[dE]

On 05/07/13 20:03, Kevin Krammer wrote:

On Tuesday, 2013-05-07, James Tyrer wrote:

On 03/19/2013 09:58 AM, dE . wrote:
The KDE development team appears to be interested in something other
than producing a stable release.  It really is that simple.

Well, simple and false :)
Mostly because the conclusion is based on a misconception regarding KDE to be
a single product.
KDE is a software vendor with several dozend products, each developed by
different people. Sometimes single developers, sometimes teams.
Hence no such thing as a "KDE development team" exists as an entity by itself.


As a
result, the release process is not oriented towards producing a stable
release.

As a result obviously also false, i.e. a non-existing entity doesn't have
goals.
Unless we employ thinking similar religious faith and assume an unobservable
entity exists by people believing in it ;-)


I find very useful the dystopian novel: "The Rise of the Meritocracy"
which is a critique of the idea of "the meritocracy".  A meritocracy is
defined by the search for merit -- but that is dependent on the
definition of merit.  I find that I have no merit in the KDE project
despite the fact that I went to college and studied EE and computer
science.  In the KDE project, you obtain merit be designing a new
application.  So, that is the nail that everyone is hitting with their
hammer.

Also not true.
Most contributors at KDE are neither the designers nor maintainers of
applications.
A lot of contributors are not even coders or not contributing other things
than writing code.

Merit is gauged by the quality, reliability and dedication to the contribution
area. In other words merit and recognition is earned through actual
contribution, but that contribution can be a lof ot things other than code.

This applies to the work on KDE activities and products but also to the
foundation managing KDE's legal assets, KDE e.V.
As a sample, the e.V.'s board of directories has currently one member out of
five who's active contribution at the moment is code.


I don't want to do that.  I want to improve applications.  That is what
engineers do; we find the faults with things and fix them -- we improve
things.

Sounds like a great opportunity then :)


Unfortunately, everyone designing new applications from square one is
not conducive to building a stable and bug free desktop environment.

While only a fraction of developer work on applications of the desktop
environment product, I'd say that even this is a over generalisation even for
those.
The only two applications in that category that I can come up with from the
top of my head which have been "newly" introduced are Plasma Desktop and
Dolphin. Most others, e.g. KWin, Klipper, KMix, have existed for ages.

And while some developers on some of these applications might be more
adventurous than others or developers on non desktop environment applications,
I hadn't had an issue with any of those in quite some time.


There is nothing wrong with KDE that a few committed software engineers
-- committed to quality -- couldn't fix.  But, I don't think that the
hackers would like it.

Well, being a conclusion based on a faulty analysis makes its content
impossible to evaluate, but assuming for a moment that the analysis had not
been wrong, then the only conclusion we could draw would be that there are
either not software engineers committed to quality or that they have so far
abstained from contributing their skills.

Cheers,
Kevin



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There is no misconception. KDE is always giving problems. Look at the 
bugzilla crawling with stale bugs.


I thought this thread was dead.
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Re: [kde] Yet another failed KDE release?

[Kevin Krammer]

On Tuesday, 2013-05-07, James Tyrer wrote:
> On 03/19/2013 09:58 AM, dE . wrote:

> The KDE development team appears to be interested in something other
> than producing a stable release.  It really is that simple.

Well, simple and false :)
Mostly because the conclusion is based on a misconception regarding KDE to be 
a single product.
KDE is a software vendor with several dozend products, each developed by 
different people. Sometimes single developers, sometimes teams.
Hence no such thing as a "KDE development team" exists as an entity by itself.

> As a
> result, the release process is not oriented towards producing a stable
> release.

As a result obviously also false, i.e. a non-existing entity doesn't have 
goals.
Unless we employ thinking similar religious faith and assume an unobservable 
entity exists by people believing in it ;-)

> I find very useful the dystopian novel: "The Rise of the Meritocracy"
> which is a critique of the idea of "the meritocracy".  A meritocracy is
> defined by the search for merit -- but that is dependent on the
> definition of merit.  I find that I have no merit in the KDE project
> despite the fact that I went to college and studied EE and computer
> science.  In the KDE project, you obtain merit be designing a new
> application.  So, that is the nail that everyone is hitting with their
> hammer.

Also not true.
Most contributors at KDE are neither the designers nor maintainers of 
applications.
A lot of contributors are not even coders or not contributing other things 
than writing code.

Merit is gauged by the quality, reliability and dedication to the contribution 
area. In other words merit and recognition is earned through actual 
contribution, but that contribution can be a lof ot things other than code.

This applies to the work on KDE activities and products but also to the 
foundation managing KDE's legal assets, KDE e.V.
As a sample, the e.V.'s board of directories has currently one member out of 
five who's active contribution at the moment is code.

> I don't want to do that.  I want to improve applications.  That is what
> engineers do; we find the faults with things and fix them -- we improve
> things.

Sounds like a great opportunity then :)

> Unfortunately, everyone designing new applications from square one is
> not conducive to building a stable and bug free desktop environment.

While only a fraction of developer work on applications of the desktop 
environment product, I'd say that even this is a over generalisation even for 
those.
The only two applications in that category that I can come up with from the 
top of my head which have been "newly" introduced are Plasma Desktop and 
Dolphin. Most others, e.g. KWin, Klipper, KMix, have existed for ages.

And while some developers on some of these applications might be more 
adventurous than others or developers on non desktop environment applications, 
I hadn't had an issue with any of those in quite some time.

> There is nothing wrong with KDE that a few committed software engineers
> -- committed to quality -- couldn't fix.  But, I don't think that the
> hackers would like it.

Well, being a conclusion based on a faulty analysis makes its content 
impossible to evaluate, but assuming for a moment that the analysis had not 
been wrong, then the only conclusion we could draw would be that there are 
either not software engineers committed to quality or that they have so far 
abstained from contributing their skills.

Cheers,
Kevin

-- 
Kevin Krammer, KDE developer, xdg-utils developer
KDE user support, developer mentoring


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Re: [kde] Yet another failed KDE release?

[James Tyrer]

On 03/19/2013 09:58 AM, dE . wrote:

This release of KDE (4.10.1), is till date the buggiest I've seen.

I switched to KDE when it was at 4.4.

I personally, don't really mind the bugs, it reminds me how ignorant KDE
release team is; KDE was, is and never will be suited for the enterprise
if it continues these 6 months feature focused release cycles.

This mailing list is full of rants and complains and the KDE teams
doesnt give a damn.

Again --

We DON'T want features pouring@speed of light, we need STABILITY so KDE
can be _used_ by *common* people.

Increase the release cycles to 2 years, or don't have ANY such time
limiting goals; i.e. wait for the new release to become stable enough,
and provide bug backports for the current stable release.

Is Novel listening? I wonder how they manage with KDE.

This mail is for sake of the project, not for MY personal frustrations
with KDE. I deploy Xfce anyway.


The KDE development team appears to be interested in something other 
than producing a stable release.  It really is that simple.  As a 
result, the release process is not oriented towards producing a stable 
release.


I would prefer the two track process of a development release and a 
stable release.  If you apply that to KDE, I guess that you would say 
that the current releases are the development release.  But, then I 
don't know where Trunk would fit in except that work needs be done 
somewhere for the next development release.


Part of the problem can be found in the parable of the hammer and the 
nail.  The hammer being the tool.  KDE selects a certain type of tool so 
those that use it automatically select a certain type of nail.


I find very useful the dystopian novel: "The Rise of the Meritocracy" 
which is a critique of the idea of "the meritocracy".  A meritocracy is 
defined by the search for merit -- but that is dependent on the 
definition of merit.  I find that I have no merit in the KDE project 
despite the fact that I went to college and studied EE and computer 
science.  In the KDE project, you obtain merit be designing a new 
application.  So, that is the nail that everyone is hitting with their 
hammer.


I don't want to do that.  I want to improve applications.  That is what 
engineers do; we find the faults with things and fix them -- we improve 
things.


Unfortunately, everyone designing new applications from square one is 
not conducive to building a stable and bug free desktop environment. 
You can see how this has contributed to the failure of KDE 4.  Much of 
KDE 3 was thrown away rather than being improved and some of what was 
kept was either not improved (e.g. Konqueror) or the internals were 
replaced to the point that they became new apps with the old names.


It takes time to build a code base.  Plasma is getting nowhere.  It is 
new, but it is still unstable at the pre-Beta state.  The DeskTop can't 
even remember a configuration.


Contrast this with the Japanese system of product development which is 
one of constant improvement.  Apple has has some success with it.


There is nothing wrong with KDE that a few committed software engineers 
-- committed to quality -- couldn't fix.  But, I don't think that the 
hackers would like it.


--
James Tyrer

Linux (mostly) From Scratch
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