KDE Traffic #69 is here, chock full of news and waiting for you. Topics include usability issues, Kafka progress, KDE apps in ECMAScript, importing KDevelop projects into KDE CVS and more.
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KDE Traffic #69 is here, chock full of news and waiting for you. Topics include usability issues, Kafka progress, KDE apps in ECMAScript, importing KDevelop projects into KDE CVS and more.
Comments
There must be people who really do not want KDE to succeed, for various reasons.
Everybody knows to be nice when they get something for free.
I was surprised we are now in KDE traffic. Now I will have to be nice on the Quanta developer list. Darn. ;-)
I did not find the first kmail message offensive and I was surprised by Ingo's reply. Sure that Simon guy made a mistake but I did not think his message was really critical, misguided yes, but not critical. The poster did not say Outlook was better than Kmail.
Ok Simon should not have posted this message on the mailing list and I am pretty sure that Ingo is pretty tired of having tons of poeple bugging him with such and such features. Ingo had every right to reply in a "freezingly polite way" has the author puts it....
but calling that person a "fuckhead" ?
That was a bit harsh in my opinion.
Don't get me wrong I fully support the dedication of the KDE team and I am very thankful for KDE, but maybe Ingo was a bit cranky when he wrote that email.
It's the user that called Ingo a "fuckhead". No need for your rant!
Ah sorry if I have mistaken the posters I tought that Ingo posted his reply and then the "fuckhead" remark off the list on top of that.
Sorry to Ingo and everyone then....
That Simon guy is really dumb then.
> Don't get me wrong I fully support the dedication of the KDE team and I am very thankful for KDE, but maybe Ingo was a bit cranky when he wrote that email.
heh.. David Hyatt had a very good piece on this a few days ago on his blog.
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/hyatt/archives/2003_11.html#004358
I take back everything I said, I had not properly understood the text in question. I feel sorry for my post.
you don't need to feel sorry. The KDE traffic article is at fault. I first understood the same, i.e. that Ingo had sent 3 messages as answers to the original poster, each message being worse.
I think you mixed the persons involved...
Yes I did, sorry for my mis-interpretation, that changes everything I sympathise with Ingo and feel disgusted by this Simon guy.
Yeap he did :)
Still I don't think the answers on the mailing list were the best. I do find the answers fair, but not a good choice. Why? Just see what happened... I bet he even liked appearing on KDE Traffic, that's not good.
IMO a better choice would have been either:
- just one short, almost automatic sounding, message saying it's off topic go to bugs.kde.org
or
- completely ignore him.
What has happened to appsy? Or should I not ask?
It's been down and up recently. Too bad dre has been quite busy lately to work on KDE stuff recently =(
All his domains seem to be down so presumably there are server problems or ISP issues. That last downtime was due to the ISP moving their datacenter. Dunno about this one.
I asked Dre about updates to apps.kde.com recently and he said that he might have to shut down the site.
Since there isn't even an entry anymore for apps in the kde.com DNS, I suppose that's exactly what happened.
ouch.. hopefully if Dre has to stop running it, it can become a community-run server or something. A lot of other sites and users relied on apps.kde.com.
http://kde.ground.cz/tiki-index.php?page=Adding+KDevelop+Projects+to+the... is now called http://kde.ground.cz/tiki-index.php?page=How+To+Use+KDevelop+with+KDE+CVS *shrugs*
Thanks for an excellent and very interesting KDE Traffic. It's the perfect complement to the CVS Digest!
"When will KMail come with native HTML writing support? I'd really love to be able to write the same kind of emails in KMail that I do with Outlook for Windows."
changed to->
"Hey Fuckhead,
How long has this been the most requested feature? Get off your ass and get it done. And please refrain from sending ME your trifling criticisms."
This Simon person never intended his first e-mail as a question, rather as a criticism of KDE and tried to make KDE's PIM facilities seem behind the times.
He not only posted it in the wrong place, instead of bugs.kde.org of which this is obviously the most requested feature for Kmail, but he also knew the answer himself. He knew that this was the most requested feature, so he must of looked at the bug report, and from the responses to the bug report it is clear that the earliest it will make it in KDE is 3.3. If the bug report wasn't enough he could look at the KDE 3.2 and 3.3 feature plan to get his question answered.
The only point of his message was to demoralize developers, discourage work on KDE's PIM in general and just outright insult the KDE community of developers.
He not only used intense profanity but threw out all kinds of insults as if Ingo worked for him or had any obligation whatsoever to him.
From this behaviour I can only come to two conclusions:
A. He was pretending to want KDE to become better but his true intentions were to destroy it. After all you should always keep your enemies closest. Perhaps he is hired by Microsoft.
B. He is socially inept and was on heavy drugs.
I greately appreciate the work done by KDE developers and their committment to the community. This is why every time there is a new KDE release I will donate at least $25 but I think if I were to buy something comparable to it I would have to pay at least $50.
EVERYONE who uses KDE should donate as much as they can afford or think it will cost in the commercial world. KDE developers give you KDE for free, but THAT DOES NOT MEAN DEVELOPING IT IS FREE!!! Think of open source as the first place where you are trusted enough to pick the right price for something.
> it is clear that the earliest it will make it in KDE is 3.3.
I think the current plan is to have another release of kontact between 3.2 and 3.3, with things like HTML editing, disconnected IMAP fixes, exchange and kolab support, etc.. Probably a few months after 3.2 is released.
For anybody actually working on said apps, correct me if I'm wrong.
I think disconnected IMAP is already fixed on CVS. We'll probably see code for HTML editing on KMail very soon, as KHTML caret mode and Quanta VPL editor is in the BE branch. I just love KDE, I update it every week with CVS. With this KDE 3.2 release and the next KMail release with Kolab, exchange and HTML edit support, the only part of KDE won't be (almost) perfect is KOffice. I hope more developers join the KOffice team so we can see more progress on it.
While maybe he shouldn't have said "fuckhead", I completely support Mr Jim Simon and no I am not him. I have been frustrated just like him many times with other OSS/FS developers who think they (and other OSS/FS bizzaro-world citizens) feel the developers are somehow being forced to do the work they do. Hey you can always leave if someone's comments hurt you feelings too much.
I think this Ingo fellow, you, and others like you have some serious issues. Let me ask you this. How many times has "red tape" bitten you in the ass? How many times have you thought some government policies or large organization's policies are rediculous? Well here is one case right here. So this Mr Simon fellow didn't know its "against the rules" to post feature requests to the list. If he did, maybe he's never heard a response and decided that the only way he'd have a chance at hearing why his requested feature hasn't been implemented was to contact a list the developers read directly.
This Ingo fellow over-reacted plain and simple. So the hell what if you have one legit message on the list. My god, what's going to happen next -- will KDE fall? My god, what are you people computers? This is absolutely pathetic that this is the type of response he gets. I mean, not only was Ingo semi-rude to him once, he has the gaul to write back to him and escentially yell at him. I say piss off to you Ingo. Grow the hell up, if thats the type of developers that are KDE who the hell needs you.
Going back to Comdex, what if some CTO for some large coroporation is very interested in KDE and wants to find out more -- after seeing it at Comdex. So they stumble upon dot.kde.org and reads this article. What do you think their response would be after seeing this article. If he has questions regarding KDE and accidently emails the wrong place, someone will yell at him? Is that what you want to portray to the business community that I will agree, is maybe overly sensitive to some extent?
Your last line is a complete joke and goes back to what I said originally about people thinking they're forced into developing OSS/FS.
You're right, developers are not forced to work on KDE, and while working at it they aren't forced to work on a specific feature or bug. They'll work on what they feel like working. And that's a good thing, a happy coder codes better. But this would lead to developing just the features (and fixing just the bugs) the developers think are important. That's the reason for bugs.kde.org, users can post their bug reports and feature requests.
Now, every KDE developer knows peolple want HTML editing. The feature request for it on bugs.kde.org is full of comments like "Me too, I want it!". And developers receive an e-mail everytime one of this comments is made on b.k.o. So it's *really* annoying when, after receiving one or two e-mails about it every day, to see an message on a developers mailing list, where people are supposed to send patches and discuss techininal issues, request this feature. KMail developers already know people want this and when they'll implement it. This is true for every feature request on b.k.o. So, if you want to tell them you really want it, just vote for it! Stop wasting people's time.
If we want better software, let's be better users: fill bugs reports with as much information as you can. Make feature requests on bugs.kde.org. Vote for the bugs that annoys you and the features you want the most.
BTW, developing free software is not politics. If Mr Simon was offended, let him go use Gnome or Windows or whatever. The users needs the developers much more than the other way around, as most of them are just producing code just for their own use and simply contributing it to the comunity. It's just a good deed, that's what free software is all about. While it's good to see people using your work, they don't care about world domination. Just leave it to the average Slashdot reader.
I think as more and more people use KDE, more and more people will want to post bugs or be involved in the 'bug process'. So the current bug report system works, but perhaps this system itself is not ready for the masses yet. Clearly not everyone can know the rules of 'bug reporting' beforehand, so perhaps bug reporting for very large projects needs to be better fine tuned?
You and I might know current developing status of a feature, but a more or less static bug report page with a looong list of comments is NOT user friendly in the sense that for some people it provides confusing or too much information. Yes there are other places to find a project status on, but not everyone has thats knowledge.
If you say you want not to lower the barrier for bug reporting too low, you basically shut peoples mouth - therefor this whole bug reporting is working for a certain level of user at this moment. This does not have to mean MORE bug reports, but better access and more ability of user base to express wanting/needing features/fixes.
Not all bug reporters are developers and when the great masses start bug reporting, will the current bugs.kde.org suffice?
But this is all theory, ain't theory easy?
Creating bug reports is by far the easiest way to contact developers nowadays, there is a "Report Bug..." in every KDE app's "Help" menu, guiding the user through the whole procedure. Any other way of contacting developers makes it a necessity for the user to find the KDE website, find the respective contact information etc. all on his own. At this point (with the implied proficiency about the different actions) it should be easy to assume that the user would have had much less work simply using the guide reporting the bug.
This is actually all off topic since it's pretty clear that both Simon as well as SuperPET Troll are trolling, even though the latter gets bonus points for asking seemingly "good" questions (questions which are completely irrelevant due to the above reasons and the fact that Simon knew about the bug report and thus knew about the rules).
This isn't a sales organisation.
The KMail developers have gradually made a very good application. If someone thinks that, well, I can snap my fingers and HTML editing will appear, everybody will jump for me, well they can go stuff it.
Ingo has been a very good maintainer for KMail. He has harnessed the disparate and cranky developers, the progress over the last year has been remarkable. There are things that need to be done, and progress is being made. If you don't think he is doing a good job, then start a fork.
Otherwise, just wait and be patient. You have an opportunity of learning how things are done, and how complicated some 'simple' features can be. Watch and learn.
Derek
Fine I agree, he's done a good job with KMail but this isn't the issue at all. You and the other people who have responded to me are missing the point, it isn't that he's doing a bad job as a maintainer and developer of KMail -- far from it.
See here's the thing. In my opinion, and probably the opinion of most others here, KDE has grown out of the small community where the developers are users. I think most people here would really like KDE to be used by "regular" people at home and at work. Hence my point about some CTO from comdex stumbling upon this tift here. The developer community shouldn't go around publically attacking users who don't follow their trivial rules, its bad PR. The thing is, no matter if they are working for free or not, the developers are the representatives for KDE. Yelling at users will only hurt you in the end, unless of cource you dont care if anyone actually uses your "product". Some of the KDE developers have to grow up if the project is going to grow up. Case in point, Neil Stevens who removed his applications from cvs because he couldn't put in his pro-US slogan into an About box. See that just wont fly with the public. Even if people agree with it a lot wouldn't want to see it in a piece of software, they'd find it inappropriate which is why it was removed.
> Otherwise, just wait and be patient. You have an opportunity of learning how
> things are done, and how complicated some 'simple' features can be. Watch and > learn
See thats what I mean, there you go being condenscending which is completely uncalled for. Before you say you're not being condenscending, you are -- go look it up in the dictionary. You have NO idea who I am or what I have done. Firstly I have never sent feature requests to the email lists. Secondly, I am a developer myself so I understand how complicated 'simple' features are. Not ONCE did I EVER state that HTML editing should be easy and should already be in KMail. Its nice for those who need it, but I dont and can live with out it.
So why dont you just keep your mouth shut you ass.
Well, I will condescend to respond.
One of the largest problems in software development, all software development is how to handle expectations. Marketing people promise the world. IT higher ups promise the world. ERP vendors promise that the moon.
The reality is that the majority of projects fail. What if the developers had the freedom and gumption to say 'F*** YOU'? Is it possible that they know what is going on best, what is possible to deliver, when and how many resources? Ever heard the response 'where is the patch' when someone demands a feature? What that means is someone actually having the guts to say 'we need more resources'. If Ingo says rather curtly 'No', or even more strongly, 'go away', maybe he knows best. He is giving a realistic and true expectation of the situation. If someone doesn't like it, so what. If someone wants a feature without any contribution, why is anyone surprised that they get a curt response? The developers have a limited amount of time to work on the projects. I would rather Ingo spend time sorting through patches or fixing bugs. If you feel the responses should be different, maybe you could watch the lists for newbies and respond the way you want.
I repeat. The kmail development lists are not a PR department. What part of that don't you get?
If some CEO is so, umm, disconnected from reality, that he doesn't recognize the sometimes rough to and fro in real non-filtered conversations, I for one wouldn't want him as a customer anyways. Let them believe the lies from someone else.
Derek
> Well, I will condescend to respond
Oooh I can feel just the wit.
You still fail to realize my point. I have been saying all along that Ingo as a developer is NOT the problem. I never once criticized him for not doing anything or doing a poor job. I criticized him for being unnecessarily rude. Let me rephrase that incase you still dont understand. INGO IS DOING A FINE JOB AS A DEVELOPER BUT I THINK HE WAS OVERLY RUDE TO A USER SIMPLY BECAUSE A USER DID NOT KNOW THE EXACT RULES FOR SUBMITTING FEATURE REQUESTES.
I understand the KMail development lists are not a PR department and I never said they were. What I was saying was the devlopers turn into representatives for their projects, even if they aren't being paid or paid to be the reps. So for the sake of the developers and the KDE project itself, maybe tone down the harsh attitude with outsiders because you dont know who they are. If you think its perfectly fine to be belligerent to random strangers then fine, but dont be suprised how outsiders view you and KDE.
Look -- if I hated KDE or wanted it to fail, would I even be arguing this point. No I'd probably laugh and say cool they kde developers are at it again. But the fact is that I'm not, so realize who your allies are because you have no idea who I am (and not saying I'm some big imporant person).
Ingo was called a "fuckhead", but ingo is the rude one?
No wonder you call yourself Troll.
Maybe you suffer from the Slashdot Syndrome, where you don't read what people say, I don't know. So let me re-iterate, for you, what I had said in my previous post. Not once did I say that 'fuckhead' was an appropriate response to what Ingo had said. However I did say I shared in the frustration of the person who said it.
Yes, Ingo was rude to the fellow -- he was. Do you know what makes me execessively rude? The fact that he wrote another email back to him the next day even though Jim Simon only wrote him the original email. Jim Simon's email wasn't even a demand, it was a request/question.
Here is what he said:
> "When will KMail come with native HTML writing support? I'd really love to be > able to write the same kind of emails in KMail that I do with Outlook for
> Windows."
First sentence is a simple question, no demands. Second sentence, he states that he'd like to have the feature in KMail that he has in Outlook. He doesn't say "you better have it or else". No demands nor threats their either.
Here is Ingo's first response:
> "When it's ready. Not in KDE 3.2. And please refrain from sending such
> annoying messages to our mailing list in the future. Thanks for
> understanding."
I'm not sure how this is annoying, but then everyone has their own pet peeves.
Then Ingo sends a second message the next day without a response from Mr Simon:
> "Dear Jim, you are not in the position to demand anything from us. If KMail
> doesn't serve your needs then please consider using another email client."
I don't know what crawled up Ingo here. Maybe he had a hangover from the previous night and had roosters wake him up at the crack of dawn -- who knows. All I do know is this is a completely rude email and deserves one in response. I might not have said 'fuckhead' but I wouldn't not have been too nice myself. Firstly, Jim Simon never once demanded anything, he asked a question. Secondly, he didn't do the "threat" tactic. Like "I wont use KMail anymore unless you add HTML-editing support." No he simply asked when it would be done because he uses Outlook, its in there, and he likes it.
I don't know why you can't accept the fact that Ingo was rude to the Jim Simon guy? I simply don't get it. I'm not saying he's less than human, he should be repremanded, or anything like that. I'm just saying that Ingo was overly rude to this person, and shouldn't be suprised at the email he received. Go show the emails between Ingo and Jim to some outsiders not in the OSS/FS community. I bet you will find that other people would find Ingo's response overly rude and Jim's response somewhat acceptable.
Dude. Now I *know* you're a troll or a fool.
Ingo wrote "Dear Jim, you are not in the position to demand anything from us."
IN RESPONSE TO the "Fuckhead" comment.
Stop displaying your own "Slashdot syndrome" here...
Someone beat me to it - replying that you seem to have things mixed up.
Given your nick, I do wonder if I have just been 'had' by a troll, or whether you were honestly mixed up.
Oh well
Well after re-reading it again, I see that the kde-traffic worded that a bit funny. Usually, one would order the events in chronological order not mixing the two. So yes I was wrong, I thought that Ingo was being a jerk and emailing Jim Simon twice. So then, I'd think Ingo would have deserved the email he got. Seeing as Mr Simon sent a completely off-the-wall email first, then yea it was completely uncalled for.
However had the order of events I had thought took place actually took place, would everyone still feel the same way they do now?
Of course not.
> developers who think they (and other OSS/FS bizzaro-world citizens) feel the developers are somehow being forced to do the work they do
No, you don't understand. They are doing the work they do because they want to. What they *aren't* doing is the work *you* want them to do.
Ingo's answer was, if you don't like KMail, use another email client. GNOME has *paid* developers to work on their desktop. You can actually go insult them, if you want to and they will likely do what you say because you are ultimately their master.
> Hey you can always leave if someone's comments hurt you feelings too much.
It would be much better if the *user* left instead of the *developer*.
> I think this Ingo fellow, you, and others like you have some serious issues
Here and elsewhere in your message, you are just being condescending and showing your complete lack of understanding of how an OSS project works. Not only that, you are being insulting.
> Going back to Comdex, what if some CTO for some large coroporation is very
> interested in KDE and wants to find out more -- after seeing it at Comdex. So they
> stumble upon dot.kde.org and reads this article. What do you think their response
> would be after seeing this article. If he has questions regarding KDE and accidently
> emails the wrong place, someone will yell at him? Is that what you want to portray to
> the business community that I will agree, is maybe overly sensitive to some extent?
I agree. This is a good point for KDE as a project to consider.
Hey folks
any news on the beta-2 release ? Coming anytime soon ?
Thanks !
I would love to test beta2 as I really want 3.2 to rock and want to see how its going, however I do not have the space to install another distribution and don't want to upgrade my stable one to a beta.
Furthermore I don't want the hassle or wasted time, what would be GREAT and I think should be available for every major KDE release is a KNOPPIX release bundled with the latest KDE development milestone so all of us can lok for bugs in the latest KDE and make sure it is well tested and rock solid. Of course, this shouldn't be done for alphas, just betas and release candidates.
This would not only be useful for finding bugs, but also for marketing and community involvement. We would be able to show off the latest and greatest KDE goodies and play with the new technology without any hassle. Interested KDE users will surely be pleased to see the next beauty =)
I wouldn't ask for this if KDE has a shorter release cycle, but with KDE 3.2 having a full year cycle you tend to get a little impatient and a KNOPPIX release would definitely ease people up and keep them informed on the state of KDE and enable them to help the project by closing bugs that are no longer valid and reporting new bugs.
I really hope to see something like this!
BTW:
#1 I have no clue about programming yet.
#2 I have little time. I do donate to KDE when a new version is released.
#3 I really hope KDE 3.3 will have a release cycle that is no longer than 6 months, Qt 4 looks awesome and KDE 4 even better =)
Release candidates have a supposed lifetime of a few days, creating/test a CD would not be practicable. Nobody knows if the next major KDE version will be 3.3. And you surely had no look at Qt 4 yet.
Beta2 on the other hand, will have a life span of a couple of months.
AFAIK unless there is a sudden change of plans 3.3 will be the next major version: http://developer.kde.org/development-versions/kde-3.3-features.html
Read the release plan on developer.kde.org, if there are no delays Beta 2 will be released on Thursday.
Thanks, but that _IS_ my questions, if there are any delays on the horizon. Maybe someone was on the know. No big deal of course ...
The directory for the packagers appeared one day later than in the plan on the ftp server. If you find that it's something to worry about...
Maybe nothing to worry.
But poeople (like me) are curious.
So, no ranting intended, but
a) Why must we wait untill the packages are finished?
There are people whi will compile from scratch, or just emerge...
b) Why ist there no information, that there is a delay, and when to expect the Beta2.
It should be out thursday, now it's saturday.
A little Info on the dot would not be too much trouble, but really good PR.
Micha
You do PR when it's released, not that it's behind a plan. Don't expect releases on weekends because that would be PR-wise bad.
> You do PR when it's released, not that it's behind a plan.
But why not tell the people "Hey, forget about that schedule".
I'm checking ftp.kde.org regulary since thursday, ftp.de.kde.org already has a 3.1.94 directory, but it's not executeable. That's bad. So close, but still so far away.
> Don't expect releases on weekends because that would be PR-wise bad.
Why? On the weekend one has time to compile.
OK, if I can forget about a code-release on the weekend (I don't care about packages), why won't somebody tell us that there's a delay?
greets,
Micha
The schedule has not changed. And the KDE schedules were IIRC never accurate to a day.
> OK, if I can forget about a code-release on the weekend (I don't care about packages)
You don't care about packages? So why the excitement above?
Compile the snapshots or use CVS (there exist even CVS ebuilds) and enjoy a more current version than Beta 2.
>You don't care about packages? So why the excitement above?
Because I want to have to Beta 2, not just _any_ CVS snapshot.
I've got some issues with beta 1, if they still exist in Beta 2, I could file a bug report.
But I won't file a bug report against a cvs version, as it will be outdated when it's compiled on my machine.
> But I won't file a bug report against a cvs version, as it will be outdated when it's compiled on my machine.
The same is true, and even more, for Beta 2 which is already one week old code when the source packages are released. The nice thing about incremental CVS update and incremental compilation is that you can stay more current.
Yes, but if there is a _defined_ base, I can crosscheck with others, if the issues I've got relate to my system, or to kde.