App duplication again (Re: new project in kdemultimedia)

[Neil Stevens]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Monday May 06, 2002 02:18, Thomas Diehl wrote:
> Am Sonntag, 5. Mai 2002 23:36 schrieb Waldo Bastian:
> > > 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.
>
> Hmm, depends on what you call a problem. But I could imagine that many
> people won't be too enthusiastic when translators and documenters go on
> strike and produce 60+ messages threads every time something like this
> happens again. And from what you are saying we may be in for that any
> day. If it's not about CDRW then maybe media players or graphic apps.

My intuition is that this is an empty threat.  But if it's not, so be it.  
It's a big world.  If KDE is important enough to people that  60+ message 
threads get written, then KDE is important enough to draw others to 
replace the retired volunteers.

KDE started with nothing but a Qt that was a pale shadow of today's Qt, yet 
it grew into this today.  Even if half of KDE people quit, KDE would end 
up fine.

> Question is: Do we want really that? And if we don't: Can't we really
> find a way to prevent it from happening? I'm not talking about maybe 2
> apps with some overlapping functionality where there is no decision yet
> on how to bring them together. I wouldn't want to discourage rewrites,
> either. (Most truly great programs are rewrites.) But an unlimited
> number of apps with almost the same functionality just because people
> don't work together "for whatever reason"? No, sorry.

Well, if it's all or nothing from the translators, as you are portraying 
their view, then there really isn't a way to avoid it.  I've proposed that 
the translators simply skip the apps they don't want to translate.  Some 
app authors have offered to try to merge.  But if some translators will 
quit unless the redundancy is completely removed, then those translators 
are obviously going to quit.

> I think we are going to need a transparent decision mechanism on what
> goes into CVS and what doesn't in a not too distant future. Yes, I know
> this is a horrible thing to even think about and I hate this whole
> discussion just like anybody else. We don't want a bureaucracy, we don't
> want dictatorship, and we don't want to keep people from experimenting,
> even if it means a lot of wasted time and code. Anyway, I still think we
> should at least _consider_ something like that piece of "thinking aloud"
> in
> http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-i18n-doc&m=102051450931639&w=2

What portion of the KDE decision making process isn't transparent?  Except 
for the isolated incidents when people have abused CVS_SILENT, every 
decision has been visible to all on kde-devel, kde-core-devel, and kde-cvs 
mailing lists.

- -- 
Neil Stevens - neil at qualityassistant.com
"I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding
because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they
have not a single political argument left." - Margaret Thatcher
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org

iD8DBQE81mimf7mnligQOmERAoWYAJ420ufoTwgm7ndJ2J5W+weuptydxwCeIKWF
TEtNyXrkXm+J2hxmX2S28iI=
=3hs0
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----