[Appeal] new member

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Friday 01 April 2005 12:20, Eva Brucherseifer wrote:
> > having Ettrich aboard could be cool. what would he be looking to bring to
> > the table to help move the Appeal project forward?
>
> He can help creating a vision and moving it forward. And he can also help
> with the organisatorial issues KDE has. To me his input is very important.

ok, i'll play devil's advocate here ...

just where has his vision been the last few years? 

yes, he started KDE. yes, he came to aKademy last year and was able to 
pinpoint all sorts of problems and issues. but what will his value-add to 
Appeal be? for me, it's not enough to "hire" on status alone. he's not 
contributed code in a long while to KDE that i've seen; he's not contributed 
vision or direction; he's not even publicly visible as he used to be.

now, if Matthias was looking for a platform from which to operate, and Appeal 
can be that platform, great. if it's simply yet another place to have his 
input but not his commitment and day-to-day efforts, why bother?

that is the most cynical attitude i can muster about this ;) but i think it's 
not completely innacurate.

if Appeal is going to have impact, it can't be shoved full of people who will 
not further that impact.

so... there's the devil's advocate position. what is the answer?

> > to be honest, i'd sooner see Zack as a TT employee in Appeal  (meaning TT
> > gives their OK for him to work with Appeal as part of his day work)
> > because at least i know exactly what sort of progress i'd see from Zack.
>
> Well, Matthias and I agreed that Zack is an important member - and I guess
> all the others agree. If TT supports his work within Appeal - even better.

well, for me it's not "even better", it's pretty much required. if Zack's 
energies will be focussed on Qt issues peripheral to KDE, or if Zack's 
involvement with Appeal will be a sideline after-work-hours deal i just don't 
see KDE getting the sort of graphics development support we need from someone 
such as Zack.

for TT, allowing Zack to concentrate on the needs of KDE and delivering on 
these things through Qt, X11 and KDE will help TT in the long run so i don't 
think this is asking something of them that is outside of their best 
interests.

> > and this brings up the interesting an unanswered question:
> >
> > 	what sort of people do we want/need in this group?
> >
> > certainly more developers. especially ones that can create, follow,
> > express and help realize a vision. Scott and i came up with a few names
> > of such people currently involved in the KDE project, and i'm sure
> > Cornelius, Daniel and Stephan B. could do the same.
>
> Well, I see a focus on developers in this paragraph, is that intended? Do
> you think a vision can only be created by developers? (this is intended to
> be provocative)

i think that vision can only be tempered and implemented by developers. 
moreover, writing the software to implement the ideas is the most effort 
intensive part of these things. the couple of usability people we have can 
create enough work for a dozen developers. ditto with the artists. ditto with 
the more "visionary" developers already on board.

> And to be honest - in Berlin I didn't really see a vision.

there wasn't a unified vision, no. that's because "a vision" requires someone 
to step up and speak it. this is the first break with common KDE culture that 
will have to occur.

to be honest, there was a vision there as far as i'm concerned:

	take the engines that drive KDE and tie it to a new set of interfaces
	that are set upon the dual pillars of breathtaking beauty and interface
	clarity.

we all know that simple isn't possible (the original mac). we have no choice 
but to create powerful, featurful, robust software. we've proven we can do 
this, but the result has been cacophonous: an explosion of colours, of menus, 
of configuration dialogs, of different ways to do things that are all pretty 
manual and full of jargon.

this is what we move away from.

what we move towards is a jaw-dropingly gorgeous desktop that doesn't smack 
you in the fact.

what we move towards is a set of interfaces that are workflow oriented and 
approachable by the common computer user.

software for humanity.

like a tree.

> - does a new type of desktop interface need new widgets, how much animation
> do we need?

that's something for the artists to experiment with and answer. and for the 
developers to help implement. this is why i said we need more developers: no 
long can we simply let the artists make pretty static pictures. they need to 
work with and guide developers to create these answers.

> - how can we break up or I-can-do-everything-applications into something
> that is useful (the more I think about konqueror, the more I can see how
> lost beginners are, even I am sometimes), how can those parts visually
> interact
> - how can GUIs be made more flexible than they are right now.
> Mozilla extensions are far more flexible by having an underlying functions
> engine (the heart of the application) and an easily adaptable, skinable,
> scriptable GUI. Don't we need something similar?

these two points are almost contradictory. =)

and to be honest, konqueror's problem is not its inclusivity it's the 
clumsiness with which it presents it. the idea is brilliant. the 
implementation is lacking.

> - what is the relation between webapplications and desktop applications?
> Will the desktop be only a shell to run firefox in or is there more? And
> what do we want to be the value KDE adds to the picture?

if web applications truly come of age, then they will look and behave more and 
more like desktop apps (look at gmail). i think this is very telling. 

what KDE could offer here more than anything else is a way to easily author 
web applications. a "MS Access" for LAMP, if you will. 

beyond that, i don't think there's much here for KDE to deal with, other than 
to use web applications from our desktop apps where they are available. RSS, 
online weather information, Google, MusicBrainz and AudioScrobbler are all 
good examples of this.

> beyond it. To sum it up: we need visionaries.

we also need people willing to work with visionaries. most people in KDE 
aren't.

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/appeal/attachments/20050401/36ce5680/attachment.pgp