Companies and Technical Working Group

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Companies and Technical Working Group
by Charles de Miramon on Friday 13/Jan/2006, @15:50

I think the Technical Working Group will be a great addition to the KDE decision making progress.

Nevertheless, I would have liked to have a provision in the charter similar to what Gnome has. No more than 2 members of the TWG can be working for the same company. The more KDE commercial success grows, the more companies working with KDE will want to control it.

It is great that Trolltech hires all these KDE hackers. The more professional programmers we have, the more professional and polished our desktop will become. The TWG will rightfully be staffed by these full-time KDE hackers that are the only ones who have a deep enough knowledge of the project to be able to make sensible and complex technical decisions. But these hackers have a double fealty for KDE and for their employer and we must protect ourselves of any hijacking of the project.

Another point that is not clear in the charter is the position of the release manager. Can the release manager(s) be (a) member(s) of the TWG ? What is the situation if a conflict arise between the release manager and the TWG. Release managers have today a lot of power in KDE and their power is generally well accepted. The charter strips most of the power of the release manager. I guess that ex-release managers are happy with that and did not like making decision based on a mixed and unconclusive e-mail threads but it worked quite well.

Cheers,
Charles

Related Links

·   Articles on KDE Official News
·   Also by Charles de Miramon
·   Contact author

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Re: Companies and Technical Working Group
by yawn on Friday 13/Jan/2006, @18:51

You said...
No more than 2 members of the TWG can be working for the same company. The more KDE commercial success grows, the more companies working with KDE will want to control it.

Maybe I don't get it, but if some company seeks to control KDE by hiring good developers to hack on KDE color me unconcerned.

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Re: Companies and Technical Working Group
by superstoned on Saturday 14/Jan/2006, @02:37

na, it wouldn't be good. look at gnome, they had (and have) some problems with this. if red hat wants something, but novell wants the other direction, what do you get? decisions aren't made on technical merit alone, but on buzzwords and marketing value. that's bad, as one of the strengths of kde is the fact it generally makes TECHNICAL sound decisions, without 'political/corporate' influence.

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Re: Companies and Technical Working Group
by Reply on Sunday 15/Jan/2006, @07:08

I can't remember when Red Hat wanted something, Novell wanted something else, and GNOME went with the less technically sound decision. Could you please provide any examples?

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Re: Companies and Technical Working Group
by ac on Sunday 15/Jan/2006, @17:15

Well, if you followed the gnome archieves, you couldn't have missed it :o)

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Re: Companies and Technical Working Group
by Reply on Monday 16/Jan/2006, @11:28

Ah... the good old "i'm making stuff up".

ok then. ;)

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Re: Companies and Technical Working Group
by ac on Friday 13/Jan/2006, @18:58

I think the TWG is the releasing managing group, no more single release manager for the whole huge project.

As for members working for a single company: I don't really see this as an issue since the charter defines the TWG's job being mainly communication and coordination with much importance put onto preserving the current community culture. Furthermore the TWG members are elected for only one year, and the time can be even shortened if at least seven eV members demand an earlier election.

Reading the whole charter makes me assume that only selfless people will actually bother to run for that position which isn't bad, and I'm sure that will even work in KDE.

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