Distros and QtWebEngine

[Sune Vuorela]

On 2015-04-20, Albert Astals Cid <aacid at kde.org> wrote:
> IMHO the duty of a distro is providing software to their users to use, =
> if the=20
> rules of the distro make providing software hard/impossible they need t=
> o be=20
> updated or these distros need to understand they will lose users to mor=
> e=20
> flexible distros.

Unless distros and KDE work together somehow, it is going to be a
lose/lose situation for both KDE and and for the distros in question.
And maybe even for the free software desktop.

The exact problem here is that packaging chromium in Debian is something
that needs at least 2 skilled dedicated people to. Packaging QtWebEngine
is like packaging chromium (because it is chromium) + a little bit more.

The rumors is that (K)Ubuntu is likely following Debian.

To the best of my knowledge, chromium aren't shipped at all in fedora
because maintenance nightmare.
And Red Hat is following Fedora.

That's likely half of the actual linux desktop landscape.

We (as KDE) can either insist saying "if you don't ship this technology
we won't deal with you" or we can try to work together with our
downstreams to find a way to somehow make everyone somehow happy.

We (as KDE) need to understand that if we don't have our software in
distributions, it is just as likely that people will switch
applications, as it is that they will switch distributions.

So, all in all, if everyone takes a hard stance, everyone will lose.

Let's find a way so we all can win.

/Sune