Feature Creep (in a nutshell)

[Seb Ruiz]

On 9 February 2010 23:16, Milot Shala <milot.shala at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi there,
> I would like to add something to this topic.
> Amarok has great features inside I don't think that they should be removed,
> but I suggest that the developers should be more concentrated on stabilizing
> the code, fixing bugs and/or refactoring the code rather than adding new
> features to it.
> I am new to the community but long time Amarok user, from my software
> engineering expertise for several years Amarok can be a feature-bloated
> software that users will not know what's inside anymore and several of them
> will even not bother using it anymore because with more features users will
> pay the cost during the usage of Amarok.
> Before adding a feature I think it is a good idea to think hard about a
> specific feature and making some surveys.
> Again, I am new to the community and I don't know how you guys handled this
> part until now, but this is my opinion, if I am wrong feel free to correct
> me.
> Sincerely,
> Milot


Hi Milot,
In these situations it is not always a case of who is right and who is
wrong :) Each development team assesses possible features differently
to the next (some more than others of course). In Amarok, core
developers are usually left to their discretion when implementing
features, but will often be subject to discussions or criticism if
there are thoughts of inappropriate features or potentially better
implementation methods (as you might have seen around here). Of course
stablising the code base is an important and noble goal for any
software project, but it is also worth noting that as a volunteer
project, it is hard to force someone to do the dirty ugly work.

The only thing we know for certain is that top quoting emails is poor form :)

Seb

> On Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 12:28 PM, Nikolaj Hald Nielsen
> <nhnfreespirit at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Personally, I agree that here are quite a few features that could be
>> removed from Amarok.
>>
>> BUT, the thing is, my list of features that are "bloat" are likely
>> different from everyones elses. So if we removed all that parts of
>> Amarok that someone does not use, there likely would be very little
>> left at all ;-)
>>
>> This is not an argument for blindly adding everything that someone
>> wants, but since the perfect music player is different for anyone,
>> some common ground has to be found.
>>
>> - Nikolaj
>>
>> On Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 12:13 PM, Nathan Sala <sala.nathan at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> > In my user opinion, Amarok doesn't currently embed "useless" or "out of
>> > the
>> > pool" features. But I must admit I probably don't know everything.
>> >
>> > Could you please let us know what are these features you consider to be
>> > overweight?
>> > It could be interesting to know it for next moves.
>> >
>> >
>> > 2010/2/9 Mark Kretschmann <kretschmann at kde.org>
>> >>
>> >> On Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 11:39 AM, Nathan Sala <sala.nathan at gmail.com>
>> >> wrote:
>> >> > Do you mean you would like to delete some features form Amarok? :=)
>> >>
>> >> Not necessarily. Although, to be really honest: Yes.
>> >>
>> >> What I find more important though: Watching out that we don't add even
>> >> more obscure features to it. Once you have added them, it's difficult
>> >> to remove them, due to user outrage (we've had that happen many
>> >> times).
>> >>
>> >> --
>> >> Mark Kretschmann
>> >> Amarok Developer, Software Engineer at Collabora Ltd
>> >> Fellow of the Free Software Foundation Europe
>> >> http://amarok.kde.org - http://www.fsfe.org - http://collabora.co.uk
>> >> _______________________________________________
>> >> Amarok-devel mailing list
>> >> Amarok-devel at kde.org
>> >> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/amarok-devel
>> >
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
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>> >
>> >
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>
>
>
> --
> Milot Shala, Software Engineer
> www.spartansoft.org | m.shala at spartansoft.org
>
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>
>



-- 
Seb Ruiz

http://www.sebruiz.net/
http://amarok.kde.org/