KDE browser work team

[Matt Lewandowsky]

Wrote "Ariya Hidayat" <ariya at kde.org> at 2009年7月1日 12:26:

> When I reread the original closing sentence from Enrico, it does not
> imply that the consensus will be used to force developers to work on
> that.

Indeed, having a good feel of what *everyone* wants helps (volunteer) 
developers focus their time to get results that get user feedback sooner. 
And getting feedback earlier in the process helps prevent the sort of "us 
vs. them" mentality that's overly prevalent in the Open Source communities 
these days. (That and "not invented here syndrome" have probably killed more 
projects which should have thrived than anything else I can think of off the 
top of my head.)

I feel that Enrico's post was highly constructive, and will help get 
developers who are not only willing to work on this long-needed project, but 
are also willing to put forth the effort on a concerted basis. I'm not sure 
how long everyone on this list has been around, but an excellent case study 
of what NOT to do is Mozilla: there wasn't a good community-defined "big 
picture" at the outset and that made it take even longer to get something 
"useful" out there; some argue that the mentality of the early days is still 
deep enough that it causes some huge us vs. them issues still. (As it's not 
directly relevant to the topic at hand, I'll leave out examples as it has a 
good chance of derailing this thread if they're included.)

So, yes, we need a good, simple, and relevant set of questions. We need them 
to be well-defined, as well as a good set of choices. And, above all, "none 
of the above", "don't care", and "other" (with a text entry area to explain 
what/why) options. Sometimes not including those will cause someone to 
innocently feed bad data. (If you HAVE to choose something, even as a 
perception, you'll be giving bad data. No two ways about that.)

Again, I think Enrico's on the right track. First there needs to be some way 
to get a wide range of input, then it needs to be well publicized and 
encouraged for EVERYONE (not just KDE users!) to participate. The aggregate 
data will help whoever ends up joining the project provide something more 
quickly that meets more users' needs. And that's really what the goal should 
be: "Making browsing *work* inside KDE"... That emphasized word is the one 
where user opinions differ and probably ought to be collected before the 
work starts. :)

Just my two cents.

Warmest,

--Matt Lewandowsky