kdenetwork/kmail

[Neil Stevens]

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On Wednesday September 18, 2002 07:09, Zack Rusin wrote:
> The problems we're struggling right now include:
> - who's the maintainer bs,

Then quit struggling!  It takes two sides to struggle, so if one side just 
drops it, there's no problem anymore.  There is a branch for each would-be 
maintainer, and the threat of ping-pong commits has been eliminated, so 
all that's left is unimportant.

> - what form of development we want to have -
> o conservative with less bugs, trying to resolve all problems
> incrementally without breaking anything in the process.
> o rapid where we jump onto fixing architectural problems and work on
> them as long as necessary and start fixing bugs when the architecture
> is in place,
> And to be honest, I just don't think these two are such a good basis to
> fork and split the team. Of course when the fork becomes reality, I'll
> make my choice, so will others and hopefully we can all do it in a
> somehow more mature manner then we lead this discussion in right now.

I think that development process is a critical issue that is absolutely 
worth a fork.  It's nice to sit and talk all day about what plan you agree 
on, but the fact is KMail has always lagged behind the rest of KDE and 
behind user expectations:

* It lagged in the use of kio, to the detriment of users who needed SMTP 
auth.
* It lagged behind in the use of kaddressbook, hindering users who needed a 
common address book.
* It long lagged behind in IMAP support, I'm told.
* It now lags behind in the use of KParts and interfaces like KTextEditor, 
hindering developers who want to reuse code and users who want to 
customize their desktop.

It's this lag, and the resulting frustration from people who tried to 
alleviate that lag only to see their patches dismissed, that I think Aaron 
was referring to.

But now, finally, we have a maintainer willing to break that pattern, and 
as a KMail user and once would-be contributor, I'm glad to see it.  Now 
I'm disappointed that both he and the HEAD maintainer seem so much more 
interested in politics than code, but I'm hopeful that in the end that 
we'll have two productively developed KMails.

As for "maturity," you need to take the first step.  Just because you might 
disagree with them, there is no reason to belittle them or dismiss their 
concerns as "immature."  Everyone involved has earned some respect here, 
so everyone should give that respect.

- -- 
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
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