KDE4 release discussion, Was: KIO::NetAccess static methods question

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Thursday 25 October 2007, Andreas Hartmetz wrote:

> I think that everybody who listened to the hype will also listen when tell
> them that 4.0 is expected to be somewhat buggy. The hype never included
> anything about bugs, so it's not even like we'd have to revoke previous
> statements. As long as the worst problems get fixed quickly some users may
> even find it interesting to see what software that isn't 100% finished
> looks like and watch the improvements :)

I seriously doubt that.
4.0 sounds like finished. We didn't mention bugs or an experimental release 
before, so a real release which can be used (not necessarily 
in "enterprises") by home users and geeks is expected.

There will also be blogs and reviews of the "stable" KDE 4.0 release by people 
not pro-KDE. Imagine how they will react to an "experimental" release when 
they heard the hype all the time.
Bad news damage much more than good news help.

I think Gnome 2.0 had such issues too, and it wasn't very good for them. They 
recovered, but avoiding this would be better.
I mean, if we know now that 4.0.0 will have issues which will be fixed with Qt 
4.4, which will be released not that much later (actually I expect we will 
need more than 2 RCs and so everything will be later), isn't it worth a 
thought to delay 4.0.0 by 1-3 months and then have a much better release ?

Just using a different name may be good enough too. KDE4 0.1, or staying 
with "betas" until the 4.0.0 release date and then instead of releasing KDE 
4.0.x release KDE 4.0.0 RCx and celebrating RC1 like the real 4.0.0, so KDE 
4.1 will be KDE 4.0.0 without RC.

Alex