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Re: Hypocrisy?
by not me on Tuesday 10/Apr/2001, @22:10
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It isn't that the KDE project doesn't want to release binaries, it's that it's impractical. If KDE had to support every single distro out there (Red Hat, Caldera, Mandrake, Slackware, SuSE, Debian, and of course lots more) not to mention the several different OSes that KDE will run on (*BSD, Solaris, etc) with binary packages, there would be no time for coding! Besides, they would need access to a free machine that ran each of these, so they could compile.
Why should KDE do that when a small army of independent packagers can do it better, faster, cheaper? If there were no packagers working to provide binaries, then the KDE project would have an obligation to release their own binaries. But since all these nice people already do it for them, there's no point. Yes, sometimes the volunteer packagers make mistakes, but would the KDE project really be able to guarantee that their own volunteer packagers would be that much better? I don't see the benefit from the KDE project taking on that enormous burden. |
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Re: Hypocrisy?
by underthumb on Tuesday 10/Apr/2001, @22:48
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"It isn't that the KDE project doesn't want to release binaries, it's that it's impractical."
Is it more impractical to end users or developers? Are we forgetting the goals of the KDE project?
What's really impractical is hoping that the KDE source code will somehow be cobbled together by users or individuals not associated with KDE into something consistently workable.
"Why should KDE do that when a small army of independent packagers can do it better, faster, cheaper?"
If the "small army" could actually do it better, faster, or cheaper then this news item would not exist. Outsourcing the package creation and then simply not caring/not supporting it is what makes this problematic. It also assures that some distributions get packages first, and that some (such as Red Hat) may not get them at all.
The point I'm trying to make is that spending time on the binaries should be an official part of the project. KDE developers should _collaborate_ to make sure that binaries are of the highest quality, and not simply hope that they will be "good enough" in the hands of one busy individual.
The biggest argument against this seems to break down to "it's hard," and "we don't want to do this." Well, I'm sorry to sound like a grump, but I just don't have a whole lot of sympathy. This sort of argument could be made against almost any developer-unfriendly activity, such as writing documentation or bug fixing. Unfortunately, both activities are absolutely essential to creating a positive and affirming user experience.
Similarly, creating packages that work well, and that have the KDE stamp of approval is part of being a desktop provider.
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Re: Hypocrisy?
by richie123 on Tuesday 10/Apr/2001, @23:35
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It's the job of linux distributions to support KDE packages made for their distro.
How could you possibly expect the kde project to know all the various quirks and library differences between every linux distribution??
If you want to blame someone, blame RedHat not putting up the resources to hire a packager to do the job. Do you really want to use a distro that only half-ass supports the best desktop software for linux anyway?
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Re: Hypocrisy?
by Bernd Gehrmann on Wednesday 11/Apr/2001, @00:55
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So, what exactly are *you* doing to create to
'positive and affirming user experience'?
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Re: Hypocrisy?
by Craig Black on Wednesday 11/Apr/2001, @03:54
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I guess you of course will volunteer for kde to create all of those packages. Of course you won't sense your probably a Xamian employee spreading hate.
Craig
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Re: Hypocrisy?
by aleXXX on Wednesday 11/Apr/2001, @05:15
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> "It isn't that the KDE project doesn't want to > release binaries, it's that it's impractical."
>
> Is it more impractical to end users or
> developers? Are we forgetting the goals of the > KDE project?
In which way did _you_ help KDE to be able to say "_we_ are forgetting" ?
IMO the goals of KDE are to deliver a high quality DE to the user and to have fun developping, most of us do it in their spare time.
It is simply impossible for us developers to create binary packages for each and every distribution/OS.
Bye
Alex
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