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My two cents.
by Walden on Tuesday 01/Aug/2006, @14:50
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I totally agree.
The thing that Eric doesn't seem to get is that self-supporting user communities only emerge when 90% of the desired feature-set is available.
For most non-real developers, this means a real visual editor that works reliably. As much as I hate to see it and say this, most people building web sites are not real developers.
They are the graphics artist at the company or at the non-profit who gets tasked with building the company's site. Or the "friend who is good with computers". And these people find Quanta unusable and overwhelming. Bring these users over and the amount of free community marketing and support you will get will make sure that you never have to pay any money out of your pocket to support a very worthwhile project.
Besides this, make sure that milestones are public and met. In the last fund-raiser, the VPL was just around the corner. Now it turns out that it will never really be implemented, because KDE 4 is the future where the fun's at.
Well, guess what, it will be 3 to 4 years before most companies get a KDE 4 desktop and you need to keep your community alive and motivated between now and then. This KDE 4 will be great, so we don't need to continue improving KDE 3 is a huge mistake as it leaves a big window of vulnerability for KDE, particularly if KDE 4 is a flop and most overdesigned and grandiose projects are (See vista for reference)
Akonadi, Solid, Plasma, New interfaces, Phonon, D-bus instead of DCop, porting all of that kde3 code, and it makes you wonder whether KDE 4 will not be KDE's vista.
I am and have always been a KDE user and advocate, but I am disillusioned by what I see as KDE's lack of leadership and inability to stick to a more coherent and doable roadmap. Remember, the old "release early, release often".
In the meantime, while KDE 4 happens, we can count Ubuntu, Red Hat, Novell and Sun as firmly in the Gnome camp, so much so that you have to install half of Gnome even if you choose KDE as your only desktop in SLED-10 as they have removed the green lizard for the updates with some crappy gtk piece of crapware.
So which distribution that matter are left on the KDE side? Kubuntu doesn't get the funding or resources of Ubuntu. Linspire is OK, but has a difficult relationship with the FOSS community. Mandriva is all but dead. I started as a Mandrake user and haven't come across a Mandrake user in the last two years. A real shame, but that's a different thread.
Debian ships KDE, but its Gnome is a bit more polished. The distributions are the vehicles through which KDE gets into users hands. Having a technically superior desktop will not do anything for users who having learned the Gnome-way of doing things will not want to switch.
Sorry for the rant, but KDE really needs to get its act together. |
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Re: My two cents.
by Eric Laffoon on Wednesday 02/Aug/2006, @09:57
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> The thing that Eric doesn't seem to get is that self-supporting user communities only emerge when 90% of the desired feature-set is available.
The thing that Walden doesn't seem to get is how reality works and what gets you better software. Seriously, who is this guy and what the hell has he done for the community lately? Our project has been self supporting for the last six years. Okay, I coughed up thousands of dollars of my own money, but what do you care. Quanta has a number of features that Dreamweaver doesn't, but we've been getting user support before that. As it happens we could use more, and your BS rant isn't helping. Thanks!
> For most non-real developers, this means a real visual editor that works reliably. As much as I hate to see it and say this, most people building web sites are not real developers.
You don't get my emails and you probably don't even know who the W3C is. If you have read anything you know we are only able to produce a visual editor by leveraging KHTML and we won't have a truly functional platform until KDE 4 with the 3rd generation rewrite comes out. It's complicated and it's very demanding work.
> Besides this, make sure that milestones are public and met. In the last fund-raiser, the VPL was just around the corner. Now it turns out that it will never really be implemented, because KDE 4 is the future where the fun's at.
Are you dense, or just a prick? VPL was released when we said, but it had problems. The developers working on it were sure they could fix them and told me they would. However it wasn't until they got deep into it that they realized there were problems that could not be resolved. Should we now punish everyone involved and cut off support because of this? Again, can't do jack without the new KHTML. Do we backport from Qt 4.2/KDE 4 and then call it KTHML2 and design around it. If you think we should then here's news... We need about 3 more developers sponsored full time.
> This KDE 4 will be great, so we don't need to continue improving KDE 3 is a huge mistake as it leaves a big window of vulnerability for KDE, particularly if KDE 4 is a flop and most overdesigned and grandiose projects are (See vista for reference)
There was a release today. See we are not Microsoft for reference. There aren't enough developers to run parallel tracks and merging them would mean we would have a disaster with different new features in different apps, like GNOME did with Bluefish recently.
> Sorry for the rant, but KDE really needs to get its act together.
I don't call many people ass****s but for you I'll make an exception. I wondered why after my appeal only a little more came in. Much less than usual/ Thanks ass****! Last year the best run poll in the Linux world, LinuxQuestions.org, came in with another decisive win for KDE as best desktop. this is while it has been in maintenance mode and GNOME has released new versions. You can argue which desktop where till you're blue in the face, but never underestimate users. I met a Linux user on the street the other day, he was using Kubuntu. In that same poll Quanta once again trounced all comers, though we did not get over 50% of the vote as we did in 2004 there was nobody remotely close.
KDE has it's act together and it looks to me like it's got you scared as hell! If you're not a GNOME troll you're a very miserable uninformed and misguided person and you should shut the hell up and stop trying to injure our project's finances. We have funding, and if I have personal revenue to buy notbooks I will. So climb back under your rock or get a freakin clue!
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Re: My two cents.
by Walden on Wednesday 02/Aug/2006, @10:19
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Lay off the caffeine a little, will you?
It's not good for your health.
I am not going to resort to calling you names in return because I appreciate what you have done for KDE and Quanta, but I wish you had argued my points and not falling into some senseless rage.
It may bother you that with all the wonderful things that Quanta already does, people are not appreciating the application to the extent that it deserves, but that is the nature of the beast in software development.
Most people will sadly prefer a tool with a functional working editor that churns out non-compliant code that one that they cannot use but does produce compliant code. The one's that actually care about W3C standards can probably code whatever they need with a good text editor that has syntax highlighting.
As far as who I am or what I have done, that's neither here nor there. Focus on the argument and not who is producing it. Would it make a difference if this were a well-known KDE developer posting under an alias? If so, why should it?
And just in case you are still confused, I firmly believe that KDE is the best Unix desktop around, period. I am just concerned as to whether KDE has the resources to pull KDE 4 through in a timely manner and keep new developers and users engaged while it happens.
In case you are still blaming me for how well or poorly your funding drive is going, let me say that I hope people provide what you need to make the project successful. Hell, if I can get over your attitude this year, I might even send a few bucks myself.
Later Eric.
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Re: My two cents.
by Paul Eggleton on Wednesday 02/Aug/2006, @13:52
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> It may bother you that with all the wonderful things that Quanta
> already does, people are not appreciating the application to the extent
> that it deserves, but that is the nature of the beast in software development.
I think it bothers Eric more that he and others have already worked really hard on Quanta and you're basically saying "it's not good enough, work harder". Try to imagine how that might make you feel if you were in his shoes.
> I am just concerned as to whether KDE has the resources to pull KDE 4
> through in a timely manner and keep new developers and users engaged
> while it happens.
KDE 2.0 worked, and that was a huge release. KDE 3.0 also succeeded. KDE 4 has some fairly lofty goals but considering how well the KDE devs have done in the past I can't see them having too much trouble pulling it off. If you're worried about it and you're committed to KDE, you might think about helping out - there are more ways to do that now than ever.
Eric - best of luck with the funding drive and don't let a few bad comments get you down. There are people out there who think you are doing a fantastic job. :)
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Re: My two cents.
by superstoned on Wednesday 02/Aug/2006, @15:24
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well, for me, Waldo's comments are the reason i'm going to donate to quanta. i feel really sorry for Eric, and all the work he has done, and Waldo was way out of line, imho. so i hope it helps Eric a little if some donations come in...
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