Kill KIO (was: Repositioning the KDE brand)

[nf2]

On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 4:31 PM, Thiago Macieira<thiago at kde.org> wrote:
> nf2 wrote:
>>It's a "proprietary" system just for a minority of applications. It's
>>an obstackle for getting third party applications like openoffice.org,
>>mozilla or Qt-only to use full fledged network transparent
>>file-management. It's an obstackle for running KDE applications on
>>Gnome or Gnome applications on KDE. It's not that exciting from design
>>and capabilites anymore (compared to other options). It's a dead dog.
>
> I also dispute the "minority of applications". If it's a minority, it's
> still the largest minority group, with no other solution having a greater
> stake.

Of course, but it's still a minority.

>
> KIO has existed for 9 years, its protocol has been stable. It's possible
> to integrate with it using D-Bus. If other applications don't integrate
> with it, it's because they don't want to.

I guess they would love to provide full featured file-management. It's
just too hard at the moment. Therefore if an application is not
targeting a particular DE, it will choose "local filesystem only".
Which is sad.

>
> Besides, there is no other solution. GIO/GVFS brings its own set of
> dependencies and protocol. Between converting the KDE apps to use that, or
> converting the other apps to use KIO, the amount of work is more or less
> the same. So let them convert.

I do understand that GIO/GVFS would be hard to swallow for KDE.
Just like the opposite. Any common solution trying to fix the problem
will bring in additional dependencies.

I'm not sure whether converting KDE apps would be that hard. Because
KIO as an abstraction layer has been so successful within the KDE
world (I said I love it - and I mean it), there would be no necessity to
migrate everything at once as long as the API stays intact.

"Let them convert": I also understand KDEs reluctance to adopt
something different. But that kind of depends on the perspective you
look
at it: GIO/GVFS could be seen as a competing technology (some people
even call it a "clone") - but also as a
next generation KIO.

However, the whole issue is not really a technical one: It's about
independence. Does KDE need to fully control and "own" the VFS
technology it's using? I understand that for someone who has put a lot
of energy into KIO recently, the answer certainly is *yes*. I guess -
for a lot of other people within the KDE community as well. Beeing "on
par" with Gnome in every layer of the platform, having own
implementations in the first place, resolving interoperability
problems by defining common standards, that's the traditional concept
of thinking how DEs are supposed to cooperate: Assuring a high level
of independence. Unfortionately a rather complex thing like
filemanagement can't be fixed without giving up lots of independence.

>
> We were here first.
>

True, but does it solve the problem?


Regards,

Norbert