[Feedback] What did you do with Amarok?

[Colin Guthrie]

'Twas brillig, and Alejandro Wainzinger at 29/07/09 07:56 did gyre and 
gimble:
> That's funny, I'm pretty sure we were _quite clear_ as to what 2.0
> would be and what it wouldn't be, but I suppose blogging and release
> announcements aren't clear enough for users, we need to put a pop up
> that says "If you are looking for a finished product, please go
> elsewhere, this is in heavy development," but that just looks tacky,
> doesn't it?

I think this is party a product of a changing eco-system in the linux world.

In the old days, users were hackers, developers or at least interested 
participants in the development and evolution of <insert chosen app 
here>. Now-a-days things seems to be more detached. Sure there are a 
core bunch of people who still behave like this and know what to expect, 
but others (probably the people that will never know *what* a mailing 
list is, let alone how to post on one - the comments system on the 
website being probably their only portal!) will not really be expecting 
this kind of development.

So should the development cycle adapt because of this shift in 
expectations? IMO, no. This is a project developed for the love and 
passion of music. Working on exciting new things is much more likely to 
keep the passion alive than plodding on with boring old releases. That 
said, perhaps expectations can be managed better? With hindsight it's 
easy to suggest such things, but perhaps the first version shouldn't 
have been 2.0, perhaps a 1.99.x series should have been the main 
developer version for a lot longer and distros should have been 
encouraged to not ship it as the default version. In Mandriva we did 
ship 2.0 but also provided the 1.x series. This meant we covered the 
bases as best we could and still please the bleeding edge addicts.

In the end, whenever you call some version x.0 people want it, whether 
they appreciate the actual *need* or *consequences* of having it.


So in the end, I don't think anything should have changed in the 
development timeline, perhaps just slightly better expectation 
management, probably involving different version numbers.

Of course this is a finely balanced equation - without getting things 
out there early, often and as previews etc, it's hard to drum up the 
excitement and motivation for the developers.

Every now and then a step change comes along. In this case it was KDE4 
and that prompted a bug change in Amarok too. When this happens (and it 
doesn't happen often) there will be fallout. I expect this, I've seen it 
before, but others don't. In these scenarios users should be encouraged 
to stick with the distros they have and not to upgrade without fully 
appreciating the consequences. But developers need distros too, so the 
distros have to move on to satisfy that community.

In a way it's just like Windows... if you are happily using XP, why 
upgrade to Vista... it's not ready yet and buggy, so wait. Perhaps 
you'll take the plunge when Windows 7 comes along? Same goes here for 
linux distros.... the problem is making people realise that the latest 
isn't always the greatest for them.

Col

-- 

Colin Guthrie
gmane(at)colin.guthr.ie
http://colin.guthr.ie/

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