Move kppp away from kdenetwork

[Maksim Orlovich]

I am probably somewhat biased by my personal experience --- having
found kppp highly valuable on a recent occasion --- but I think a tool
that helps you setup your internet access is exactly the sort of thing
that should be bundled because, well, you're not going to be able to
download it if you don't already have it, are you?

Furthermore, functionality is the highest virtue of any software; and
last I checked kppp worked pretty well. So what if it might not have
UI following the latest fashion, or provide cool functionality
(sharing a dialup link? it's barely useable for one person with
websites needing 5MiB of JavaScript to do what can be done in 2 lines
of code).  Certainly, bitrot is a huge concern, but on the flipside it
can probably be considered feature-complete.

Thanks,
Maks




On 8/15/10, Eckhart Wörner <ewoerner at kde.org> wrote:
> Hi Albert,
>
> maybe I should explain myself more.
>
> Am Sonntag, 15. August 2010, 22:55:00 schrieb Albert Astals Cid:
>> Unless you have data saying it doesn't work, what's the reason of removing
>> something someone might be using, remember KDE is used my millions of
>> people.
>
> in the last years, especially with the first release of the 4 series, we
> removed a lot of things people were actually using. Remember, KDE Software
> is
> used by millions of people, so every feature is used by someone, therefore
> this argument shouldn't count. ;-)
>
> Now, first I want to remind you that I didn't ask to delete the software
> permanently. With revision control, this would be difficult. ;-) I just
> stated
> the fact that kppp is totally unmaintained, and got little love in the last
> few years, i.e. basically it is bit-rotting. I also think maintaining kppp
> is
> quite tedious, so it's unlikely a lot of people will step up for its
> maintainership (ever wondered how many of those provider files are
> outdated?)
> Putting it into the unmaintained corner of svn would therefore only be
> stating
> the obvious. Maybe someone then gets compelled to revive kppp, which alone
> would make this proposal a success. :-)
>
> Now why am I against keeping kppp in the KDE Software Compilation? I believe
> this compilation shouldn't be a random assortment of things, but form a
> coherent experience. With our 4.5 release, we bundled great networking for
> the
> first time. Next to that, kppp looks totally out of place: it uses a
> different
> UI, it doesn't work well together with the remaining networking (try sharing
> your dial-up connection via wireless, try IPv6, try disabling networking
> completely...).
>
> Furthermore, in my eyes the Software Compilation consists of software that
> most people would find useful in their day-to-day desktop experience -
> essential things like a mail program or mini-games. Now at the time of
> writing
> kppp, it certainly belonged into that category, however, time changed
> things,
> and today I don't believe kppp belongs to that category anymore.
>
> Another way of detecting what belongs into the Software Compilation is to
> see
> what other people think of this. For this reason I asked a bit in IRC
> yesterday, and found out that the FreeBSD packagers don't even package kppp
> anymore - probably a sign that they think about this the same way I do.
>
> In fact, I'm a bit surprised by unambiguity of the reactions on my mail: all
> the people I asked about this for the last few months agreed to this point
> of
> view. (Please don't take this as an argument, it was merely too check
> whether
> my proposal looked sane to other people.)
>
> Hopefully this makes things clearer.
>
> Eckhart
>