[kde-edu]: 2009 introspective

[Torsten Rahn]

Am Dienstag, 5. Mai 2009 11:08:49 schrieb Anne-Marie Mahfouf:
> On lundi 04 mai 2009 21:59:09 Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> > * What have been the defining achievements in the last year?
> -> individual applications achievements:
> -- Marble components in several applications and plasmoids

* Marble being perceived as (one of) the strongest possible Free Software 
competitors to Google Earth ;-)
* Support for OpenStreetMap in Marble

> > * What are the major pain points in your project right now?
> - release cycle too short for casual contributors: all KDE-Edu developers
> are either working or students and for most of them, they do not seem able
> to meet the current release schedule. After 4.1 was out I see very few
> activity in terms of new ideas, directions to follow, group synergy,...

I think this is more a problem with regard to the last point you mention: We 
have a few projects in kde-edu which don't have intensive maintainership. For 
these the release cycle might be quite short indeed.

For Marble the release cycle is fine: Many casual developers start to 
contribute only once they realize that the release is near. Extending the 
release cycle would only increase the "offtime" in between. 

I'd also like to emphasize that XOrg is one of the things at least Marble 
heavily relies on.
The current driver situation and the way the current DRI2 migration gets 
handled is a real pain and hurts us.

Torsten

>
> -------
>
> Best regards, probably other people will add their thoughts, it's a good
> occasion to see where we are and where we want to get to (and how).
>
> Anne-Marie
>
> > You can reply to me directly; I'll be collating and making public the
> > results when they are in ...
> >
> > As an example of what I'm looking for, here's the answer set of Plasma:
> >
> > In the last year:
> >
> > 	* Parity with KDE3 desktop/panels
> > 	* Finished out the foundational pieces (extenders, activities,
> > scripting..) * Moved libplasma to kdelibs
> >
> > Focus points in 2009:
> >
> > 	* Ease of creating Plasma components (Plasmate)
> > 	* Netbook interface
> > 	* Media center components
> > 	* Remote plasmoids
> > 	* Social desktop features
> > 	* Improved integration with Nepomuk and rest of workspace
> >
> > Major point points:
> >
> > 	* x.org driver quality
> > 	* QGraphicsView is still going through growing pains
> > 	* newness of our own codebase resulting in larger #s of defects
> >
> > Major technologies we rely (or will be relying) on:
> >
> > 	* x.org and kwin compositing features
> > 	* QGraphicsView
> > 	* Solid
> > 	* Nepomuk
> >
> >
> >
> > As for why I'm doing this survey, here's an excerpt from
> > http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2009/04/trailheads.html:
> >
> > "The pre-4.0 development of KDE was helped along by everyone knowing what
> > we were striving towards: we had the Pillars, these new big chunks of
> > technology we were busy slotting into place so that we could build ever
> > better applications on top of; we had a renewed focus on clean, usable
> > interfaces; we were also aiming for beauty and greater platform
> > independence.
> >
> > The individual projects around the KDE universe all swirled around these
> > shared goals. Each headed in their own direction that reflected their own
> > interpretation of these goals as weighted by their development team in
> > terms of importance. Not remarkably, while there was variance in
> > execution, there was a remarkable harmony in the overall approach and
> > results.
> >
> > That didn't happen by accident: it happened because we were communicating
> > with each other about our goals and in-the-moment situations. I was part
> > of only a fraction of these conversations, but I remember the huge number
> > of informal meet ups both online and in person (part of my "coffee shop
> > meetings around the world" tour, or at least that's sometimes how it felt
> > ;). It was inspiring and helpful and marked a high water point in KDE
> > community togetherness for me.
> >
> > We're into 2009 now and it's time to stoke those fires again."
> >
> > Thanks for your time and energy in advance :)
>
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