How to handle KDE not respecting YOUR distros requirements?

[Martin Steigerwald]

On Sonntag, 27. März 2016 21:20:54 CEST Martin Graesslin wrote:
> On Saturday, March 26, 2016 1:49:05 PM CEST Martin Steigerwald wrote:
> > Also what amount of adaption work do you want to put to downstream users
> > of
> > Plasma? When is a downstream user important enough to support it out of
> > the
> > box.
> > 
> > I bet you do not intend to request having logind API available on Windows
> > or on Mac OS X for example? And you neither ask Microsoft nor Apple to
> > implement it for you? There you support other ways out of the box, there
> > upstream adapts to the platform and not the other way around.
> 
> Plasma is neither available for OSX nor for Windows. The Plasma team does
> not have any plans to support these platforms. They are considered outside
> the scope, Plasma only targets platforms not already having a dedicated
> desktop shell.
> 
> Given that I have problems understanding your example as it just does not
> apply to Plasma.

Yep, I have been too fast on that one. That came to my mind afterwards as 
well.

[…]
> > I just wanted to point out that "you downstream have to adapt" can send a
> > message of arrogance like "you are not important enough for us to adapt to
> > you" that is not very well received and basically finger points the
> > responsibility to someone else. I´d carefully take care of sending a
> > different message than that which can be "we would like to support you,
> > but
> > we don´t have any people using your distro who like to work with us
> > upstream to develop and test what is needed". So it would start with
> > actually listening to the needs of the downstream and taking them as
> > given,
> > as having good reasons, taking them serious and then work from there.
> 
> Honestly I think we always sent out the message exactly like that.

Thats good, I like that.

> Unfortunately especially on the topic of systemd there is a lot of
> misunderstanding going on. People fear we depend on systemd when we start to
> optionally add a runtime dependency to logind. It's very difficult to argue
> on a sane ground when it comes to anything related to systemd. The users
> are angry, the packagers are angry, there is a lot of heat there. Bug
> reports go to slashdot, things like that.

That makes it especially important to double check any wording related to it.

(I still think systemd received the heat for a reason that goes beyond 
technical aspects and that involved a communication style that had quite some 
arrogance in it.)

> > So
> > are there any slackware people on this list?

I am happy that slackware people responded to the thread. I also invited 
Debian Qt/KDE team people to this list. Lets see.

To me it sometimes appears they prefer work over talk. Which is fine, but I 
have seen them deal with challenges that could benefit from some communication 
here and there.

> > Also an official decision on what platforms you support out of the box can
> > at least give some clarification about what to expect. Like:
> > 
> > If its an unix we expect to have systemd like logind API available, unless
> > you help us to implement support for something else.
> 
> you mean like for example: https://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2014/10/
> libinput-integration-in-kwinwayland/ ;-)
> 
> Yes, that's certainly something which would make sense for Plasma. For all
> of KDE: we probably are not able to come up with it or it would be
> confusing.

Well I think it would be beneficial if each KDE/Plasma project clearly states 
expectations in a standard location. Maybe README or INSTALL or wherever.

What will it require to compile and use this – together with suggestions on 
what provides it, like for example systemd or ConsoleKit2.

Or is it documented somewhere and I just missed it? Maybe I can even help here 
with a non coding task like this.

Thanks,
-- 
Martin