[Kde-imaging] Discussing the future of kipi and kipi-plugins

[Sebastian Röder]

In this post I want to give my view point concerning the question how one 
could speed up the somewhat slow development of kipi-plugins. 

My short answer is: regard the nice idea of sharing certain functionality 
between KDE imaging programs as failed - bring the kipi and kipi-plugins code 
back to digikam-core and do the further development there.

Here are my in detail explanations for that:

1) The idea is good but the world is not ready for it yet ...
In my opinion the kipi/kipi-plugins approach of sharing code with other 
programs mainly put additional load on the shoulders of the digikam devels. 
Sharing code is only good when it means coordination with benefits for all 
participents but this is not the case. To my surprise even the kipi homepage 
says that the work is done by digikam. And I heard more then onces from 
digikam devels that this is frustrating ... 

2) Coordination is a lot of additional work ...
Having kipi and kipi-plugins development outside the main digikam project 
means additional SVN, mailing lists, web administration, release 
administration, all which could be avoided when kipi funktionality is 
maintained as core part of digikam.

CONCLUSION: the way things are done atm slows down both digikam and kipi 
development and thus should be changed to the better.