[Feedback] What did you do with Amarok?

[Nicolas Will]

On Tue, 2009-07-28 at 19:16 +0200, Nikolaj Hald Nielsen wrote:
> > The way I see it, purely as a user, the main problem here is the
> lack of
> > transition.
> >
> > One day Amarok 1.4 was supported and 2.0 in development, the next
> day
> > 1.4 was not supported anymore and 2.0 was the de facto thing to use
> if
> > you wanted any support.
> >
> 
> I agree fully with this! For many users, the transition from 1.4.x to
> 2.0
> was very abrupt. I really don't want to point any fingers here as that
> is
> not going to accomplish anything but I feel that we did what we could
> to
> make it very clear what Amarok 2.0 was and especially, what it was
> not. Let
> me quote a section from the 2.0.0 release announcement:
> 
> "It is important to note that Amarok 2.0 is a beginning, not an end.
> Because
> of the major changes required, not all features from the 1.4 are in
> Amarok
> 2. Many of these missing features, like queueing and filtering in the
> playlist, will return within a few releases. Other features, such as
> visualizations and support for portable media players, require
> improvements
> in the underlying KDE infrastructure. They will return as KDE4's
> support
> improves. Some features, such as the player window or support for
> databases
> other than MySQL, have been removed because either they posed
> insurmountable
> programming problems, or they didn't fit our design decisions about
> how to
> distinguish Amarok in a saturated market of music players."
> 
> I feel that we made it very clear that Amarok 2.0 was not a drop in
> replacement for Amarok 1.4.x yet. I think we had more faith that the
> distros, especially on top of the KDE 4.0 backlash, would be very
> mindful of
> how best to serve their particular user base. Some distros could
> easilly
> have included Amarok 2.0 as an optional install, but likely, most
> should
> have kept Amarok 1.4.x around a bit longer. But really, our job as
> Amarok
> developers is to do whatever we thing is best for the project overall,
> and
> the distros exists to filter our efforts so one the best parts ever
> reach
> the users! :-)

We then agree to agree...

But the main issue is still the distros' choice.

Should they offer 1.4? Yes, it is the full-featured stable version. 

Should they avoid 1.4? Yes, it is not supported anymore in a bug-release
manner officially, so if there is any problem their only choice is to
maintain their own codebase, by fear of using the word "fork", which is
too strong IMO.

Should they offer 2.x? Yes, it is the future and it is supported.

Should they avoid 2.x? Yes, it is the beginning, and not all that the
users are expecting is in there.

No wonder distros chose to go with 2.x.

But the common users are not too happy and the more handy types go back
to 1.4 using shady backports that will never evolve.

Nico