The case for a kdelibs 4.8

[Arne Babenhauserheide]

Am Freitag, 30. September 2011, 10:07:27 schrieb Aaron J. Seigo:
>  will say "Platform 4.7, Plasma 
> Workspaces 4.8 and application updates" (or something along those lines).
> that  was not just a marketing ploy, but an attempt to align our public
> communication with the realities that already existed in KDE development.

I hope I am not the first to note that this sounds really horrible. 

Take this message: 

	KDE releases 4.8: Platform and Workspaces got some spectacular changes, 
while applications received much polish.

In a blog, this becomes

	YAY! KDE releases 4.8!

Take your example. It becomes: 

	Plasma 4.8 released!

Well, where is KDE in that? Suddenly the community it is all about becomes a 
sidenote. 
And a newspaper will likely only see “hm, some stuff our readers won’t 
understand” instead of “new version of the tools from KDE!”

There is a reason why Apple releases MacOSX 10.8 and not “Xcode 4.1, Apple 
Mach 1.3, Quartz 4.7, …”

Technically it is cool to have a kmail 5.8 which depends on frameworks >=5.1, 
but as a User I am interested in the changes KDE did for 5.8: All the changes, 
to Frameworks as well as to the Workspaces and the Applications. If I then 
decide to not use the testing frameworks, it makes me happy when an 
application only needs an earlier version. But do you actually think that most 
people can follow the info-input of having different version numbers in a 
release - and really remember the news? Due to 3 hours daily travel time, 40h 
work per week and wife and son, I won’t be able to do that in the near future, 
so there are likely many more people who can’t.

Best wishes, 
Arne
--
singing a part of the history of free software: 

- http://infinite-hands.draketo.de

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