App duplication again (Re: new project in kdemultimedia)

[Thomas Zander]

On Sat, May 04, 2002 at 12:24:53PM +0200, Thomas Diehl wrote:
> Am Samstag, 4. Mai 2002 08:18 schrieb Thomas Diehl:
> 
> > Am Freitag, 3. Mai 2002 21:49 schrieb Sebastian Trueg:
> > > my cd writing program k3b is in kdemultimedia now
> >
> > Well, after KOnCD, KreateCD, and CD Bake Oven this would be the 4th one.
> > The existing ones already gave us something like 1200 strings to
> > translate. How many strings is yours?
> >
> > I really start to wonder whether we are not overdoing here quite a bit
> 
> OK, meanwhile I was told that this new CD burner (k3b) in kdemultimedia 
> adds another 700+ strings which means that we now have something like 
> 2000 strings for CD burning apps alone for each and every of our 50+ 
> translation teams. Even if we can re-use a lot of these strings I think the 
> situation is getting absurd. And I'm not only talking CD burners here.
> 
> We now have 4 of these apps in core CVS (+ kaudiocreator somewhere). If 
> we go on like this we will shortly have half a dozen. And if we have half a 
> dozen CD burners why not have half a dozen bitmap editors, vector programs, 
> and 5 vocabulary trainers for every single KDE language? There are 
> currently something like 30,000 GUI strings and maybe the same amount 
> of doc strings in kde-i18n (give or take a few thousand) -- how many are 
> we going to have after this kind of app inflation? 50,000? 80,000? 
> And _for_what_?
> 
> Don't get me wrong. I wouldn't mind if it was a 100,000 strings for solid, 
> unique programs with a real perspective. But I'm not going to waste my 
> time, bandwidth, disk space, and every other resource on the ego 
> gratification of a few developers who are not willing to cooperate and to 
> either merge or re-write their projects until we get one real good solution 
> instead of 5 average ones.
> 
> If we are not going to find a clear and transparent decision process which 
> apps go into KDE core and which do not, which ones are to drop and which 
> ones need just a re-write we are going to drown in a sea of mediocre code, 
> untranslated programs, and overburdened infrastructure instead of getting 
> the first class desktop environment everybody is after.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Thomas
> 

This has come up quite some times allready and I have read a lot of emails
against this and also a non-negligible amount of arguments for the rights
of everyone to participate in KDE.

Bottom line is that we are now practicing all the things in CVS what most
companies are complaining about in OSS. We are duplicating efforts; we are
ignorning each others programs and we are hurting the translators and everyone 
in the KDE effort because we don't want to hurt developers that might mean 
something to us.

While the setting seems nobel enough I for one think this is the start of 
the end for KDE.

I want to propose that this is a one time experiment and that one cdrw project 
and one project only stays in KDE CVS after the 3.1 release.  I don't even want
to think about how we are going to decide which one that is. So I expect the
cdrw authors to make it easiest on us by _really_ joining efforts and showing
the KDE people that admittance to CVS means the entry into a community. And
that everyone in that community is there for each other; not up against each
other.

Please; stop this 'I made one too!' attitude since that is NOT what OSS is
build upon.

ps. I am only subscribed to kde-core
-- 
Thomas Zander                                            zander at earthling.net
The only thing worse than failure is the fear of trying something new
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