TT vs. the community (Re: Using StyleSheets is bad WAS Re: Konqueror lineedit Bug)

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Tuesday 20 November 2007, Oswald Buddenhagen wrote:
> oh, cool - tt-bashing. let's join the party! :=)

heh ... that's so two years ago. the cool kids are looking for ways to fix 
problems these days.

> On Tue, Nov 20, 2007 at 01:30:32PM -0700, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> > you may have noticed i also take this same sort of "fix it in the
> > right place" position in many other areas,
>
> i'm the first to agree with this attitude. buuut ... for it to work, the
> "right place" has to be open. timing, decision-making, active
> contributions - *nothing* of which we mere mortals have any impact on.
> and you can say what you want - tt is by far worse than any other entity
> we depend upon.

some of us are doing something more than ignoring the problem or just bitching 
about it. i'd like to ask you to not work *against* those of us who are and 
to try to consider the possibility of greater cooperation (on both sides, not 
even primarily ours).

has TT earned this situation? i think they have. can it be fixed? i think it 
can be. but it's harder (than it already is) when the community isn't at 
least willing to engage in a better way of doing things.

> > > Girish is probably *very* responsive to you, probably you even have his
> > > phone number and can phone him directly,
> >
> > no, i use his publicly available email address like any other mortal.
>
> oh, yeah. so can we please have access to the tt code repo, the
> corresponding tt-accounts file and an open subscription to qt-commits?
> no? oh, well ...

i will not let you forget that you said this, because things are underway that 
may well end up making your attitude here look very uncalled for.

remember that to have friends you occassionally have to be nice. if you wish 
to throw mud at someone everytime they try and make things better, don't be 
surprised when eventually they just tell you f' off.

> > hm. see, i don't have that experience. this is *why* Trolltech put
> > forward individuals as KDE liaisons, to get these issues triaged
> > properly. *use them*, don't complain.
>
> those few dudes won't change the fundamental problem.

those "few dudes" were one of the early steps to changing how things work 
between TT and the free software community. so yes, *they* won't change it, 
but they were early evidence of the change that is happening and ongoing.

> > Trolltech is trying to be more open and accessible; i (along with
> > others) am trying to poke them along even further; i'm also trying to
> > encourage the necessary responding behaviour from this community.
>
> yes, there was some substatial improvement. they are now at 10% openess
> instead of 3%. woo-hoo.

300% improvement and you're still mocking it? ;) 

these things take time and don't happen immediately. that things are improving 
at all is the important thing. not at the rate either of us would probably 
like, but it's not easy. you likely have no idea what it's like to try and 
get these things moving when dealing with people in management, sales and 
legal. it's a different world than ours, and not an easy one. all i'm asking 
is that we try not to throw stumbling blocks in the way to make this job even 
harder.

and yes, pretending it's cool to bash Trolltech doesn't help. it's just one 
more thing i have talk down when dealing with these people. which is to say, 
you're more to blame than you even know for this current situation. so stop.

hm. here's the kind of thing i don't think many people here appreciate: 
there's a cycle to this that gets in the way of KDE being successful. what do 
i mean? here's a REAL WORLD situation that i've experienced in the last 
couple of months:

a) big industry company hooks KDE people up with another technology project
b) technology project decides to bet more heavily on KDE
c) technology project is still learning about how to do open source best, and 
they end up talking to Trolltech people since they make Qt which KDE is based 
on and Trolltech thinks the open source technology project is really 
interesting
d) Trolltech relates how the community hates them (i'm not kidding; that's 
what sales and marketing management generally believe there)
e) technology company voices concern to me about this and starts to rethink 
their plans
f) i have to do some fire fighting and deal with people involved with 
technology company (and also deal with people at Trolltech saying things that 
weren't helpful, even if based on actual events)

now, this open source technology project will likely bring a bunch of really 
good things to KDE. stuff that you and i will actually appreciate as KDE 
users, even. on top of that, it will bring further monetary investment into 
the project.

but because of the bad attitudes on both sides of this relationship, it was 
put in jeopardy. i was not impressed. in fact, i was absolutely pissed off 
about it.

so yes, attitudes matter and relationships count. i don't expect you to play 
politics or deal with business management type folk, i just want us to try 
not to make my job more difficult than it already is. i'm trying to make 
things better for us, after all.

you know, so we can have things like having open repositories for stuff.

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
humru othro a kohnu se
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

KDE core developer sponsored by Trolltech
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