App duplication again (Re: new project in kdemultimedia)

[Waldo Bastian]

On Sunday 05 May 2002 12:48 am, Thomas Diehl wrote:
> Which seems to leave the question what we offer the software vendors
> to create their distributions from? If I understand you correctly, there
> would be no "real KDE" at all, as far as apps are concerned. It would be
> just SuSE, RH, Mandrake and so on who decide _solely_ what KDE really is
> and what it looks like. 

They would decide how much of KDE you get. They also tend to modify the look 
of KDE but I think that's a different discussion.

> The apps part of KDE would be nothing but a
> repository like apps.kde.com with some additional benefits like more
> up-to-date code, better compliance to the style guide etc. But there would
> be no problem to have eg 5 cdrw programs, a hundred vocabulary trainers, or
> 10 vector drawing apps in it -- right?

Yes. Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating that everyone should start making 
his own vector drawing app, I rather see people working together on one 
truely great app. However, if that, for whatever reason, doesn't happen, then 
I see no problem in having multiple apps with overlapping functionality in 
CVS. 

> Well, while we are stating our opinions here, I'd like to add: This is
> surely not the KDE I want. I have absolutely no problem with SuSE, RH etc.
> creating their distros and make KDE look like they want. At least not as a
> matter of principle. In reality, I absolutely hate the way some of those
> distros slap their "Corporate Identity" logo crap on each and everything
> our artist group created. Just as I hate what many of them are doing to our
> localizations and well designed translations. 

Yes, I hear you, the GPL offers people the rights to make improvements but 
unfortunately also the right to fuck it up. The only way to counter that IMO 
is to start a "KDE certified" program to certificate distributions that meet 
some sort of KDE standard. I do not think that KDE has the organisational 
capacity to implement that though.

> I want to be able to go to
> KDE CVS and get "the real thing". And if somebody around me gets fed up
> with what distros are giving to him or her, too, I would still like to show
> him or her this "real thing" we created here: well picked apps, sensible
> defaults, and a good overall design while saying: Forget RH, SuSE,
> whatever. _This_ is KDE, and if you want to you can help to make it even
> better.

I am with you apart from the "well picked apps" aspect. The apps that we have 
today in KDE aren't "well picked" they are here because we happened to have 
developers who wanted to work on them.

Cheers,
Waldo
-- 
bastian at kde.org  |   SuSE Labs KDE Developer  |  bastian at suse.com