Pattern

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Pattern
by Gato on Monday 30/Oct/2006, @03:00

KHTML - Unity, KMail - Mailody, Okular - KViewShell, there seems to be a very strong pattern here. Some users would like all developers to work on the same project, some developers don't agree upon the path to take and write different apps. This is why there is Krita and not just the Gimp, this is why there is Amarok and not just XMMS ( for heaven's sake ;-) ). This is probably a good thing. The people who prefer to work on old KHTML don't want to work on Unity, I presume. The people who still develop KViewShell have some reason (it doesn't matter whether it's a good one) to not work on Okular. So they wouldn't work on Okular anyway.

Sure it's bad to split efforts when there's no serious reason, but on the other hand it's good (very good) to have two or three different apps with different philosophies for (approximately) the same job. KDE is just one development platform, but KDE apps are plenty, which is just a proof of the success of the platform.

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Re: Pattern
by Rick on Monday 30/Oct/2006, @04:21

For KViewShell/Okular see here:

http://dot.kde.org/1148838047/1148852615/1148890165/

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Re: Pattern
by illissius on Monday 30/Oct/2006, @05:33

"This is probably a good thing."

Not necessarily. It's both good and bad. Look at it as a solution to a problem. The problem is the developers don't agree about the proper way forward. This is not good; it would be better if there were consensus about the correct path to take, and everyone's efforts could be unified towards a single goal, which would then be attained faster. But they don't agree, so the solution is that each of them tries his or her preferred method separately. This is good: eventually, we will find out which of them was right. (Could be both).

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Re: Pattern
by Gato on Monday 30/Oct/2006, @06:16

> it would be better if there were consensus about the correct path to take

Right, as long as the path is really the correct one. But some paths have subtle flaws that will only be revealed by experience. And sometimes none of the paths is the correct one, because the competing solutions are not really solutions to the same problem, they are solutions to similar problems.

Sometimes the developers are not compatible themselves, and they can't form a single team, so they do the next best thing and form two teams.

It's not really a reason to get alarmed. However if none of the alternatives ends up really good, then you do have a real problem - and then it might be time to sacrifice diversity and emphasize sameness.

What's important is letting things evolve instead of getting dogmatic.

Oh and it's also important to ship just one of the alternatives with stock KDE, and perhaps make it easy for distributions to replace it with their choice. And icecream. And an end to bugs ;-)

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Re: Pattern
by Corbin on Monday 30/Oct/2006, @05:58

KDE vs GNOME is another example!

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Re: Pattern
by Louis on Monday 30/Oct/2006, @19:50

I'm sure there's also some pain when a competing app becomes dominant, thereby sending a developers years of hard work and nurturing to the second-class-citizen realm. I can definitely sympathize with a developer not wanting to "give up" and "work for the other guys." Competition is a good thing; it keeps the level of innovation high. Look at some of the great ideas that have become mainstream because a developer had the balls to start a new project.

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