App duplication again (Re: new project in kdemultimedia)

[Thomas Diehl]

Am Montag, 6. Mai 2002 13:27 schrieb Neil Stevens:

> 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 would appreciate it if you stop putting words in my mouth. I explicitely 
said that I wouldn't want to discourage rewrites, experimenting, having 
"maybe" 2 apps with overlapping functionality and so on. But, yes, I'm 
against "an unlimited number of apps with almost the same functionality". 
Is really somebody _for_ this?

There seems to be one breaking point, however. Waldo put his view this way:

---
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. 
---

This is noble. But it is the point where I have to disagree. For my part, I 
would want to know why people don't work together in CVS as soon as they 
are _massively_ starting to duplicate functionality without any clear 
technical reason (such as a necessary rewrite). And _if_ it comes down to 
just people who cannot play along then I would not be prepared to just 
leave it at that forever, saying "whatever reasons they have, let them have 
it their way, no matter if we end up with 5 almost identical apps". I would 
start looking for a way to solve this. And also I would not import 2,3, or 
more almost identical apps to CVS _before_ people made it clear that they 
were at least willing to cooperate with each other.

There will always be problems to play along with certain people for almost 
everybody and there might not always be a way out. But if I'm not willing 
to cooperate at all even on the same functionality what am I doing here? 
Why make this a problem to 50 translation teams, documenters, and a lot of 
other people? The biggest surprise to me is that we really have an argument 
about this. After all, this is a team effort, isn't it?

> I've proposed
> that the translators simply skip the apps they don't want to translate.

Yes. And about everybody who replied told you that this is not an option. 
This won't change just by repeating it over and over.

> 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.

As also repeatedly stated, I'm perfectly happy about the agreement of the 
CDRW authors. I'm not talking about a few redundancies (which are 
inevitable anyway) or about this whole CDRW thing anymore. This is 
hopefully over. I'm just looking for ways to avoid problems like this in 
the future.

But I tend to agree to one thing you said: This is starting to become an 
empty thread, at least with replies like yours and mine here. Which is why 
I'd suggest we stop this nice exchange now.

> What portion of the KDE decision making process isn't transparent? 

I'm not under the impression that the import of K3b into CVS happened after 
any thorough discussion as proposed in the posting I referred to. But maybe 
I missed something.

Thomas



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