[kde-linux] Users guide to KDE?

[Kevin Krammer]

On Saturday 05 July 2008, Gaffer. wrote:

> There seems to be a gap between what the goals are and what is
> promised.  End user expectation has been created by whoever, that
> generated enthusiasm and excitement about how much better KDE4 would
> be when it arrived.

The main problem seem to be communicating the timeframe.
As some tried to explain, KDE4 is not just KDE 4.0 and I am not aware of any 
goal for KDE 4 which has been abandoned.

Since the new major release allowed certain forms of changes, e.g. removing 
architectural limitations, implementation road blocks, replacing legacy 
subsystems, etc., the developers who were previously limited by the old 
platform started to think what they could achieve with the new one and 
started to share these ideas.

Given finite resources, it was at least clear to developers that this would 
mean adding these new stuff step-by-step and I personally would have never 
expected that anyone would anticipate all of it on the very beginning of the 
product development cycle.

But it seems that sharing insight into the ongoing development process is 
sometimes interpreted as some kind of release announcement, dispite release 
announcement usually being marked as such.

I am afraid that it currently looks like the user base has expaned beyond 
those who value first hand information about what is going on and will move 
the information culture away from community style to top-down controlled 
coporate style.

Which means that those of us who like to get excited by things to come will 
have to spend a lot more time hunting down information themselves.
And I was so looking forward to spend less time reading tens of mailinglists 
but rather reading a couple of "planet" blog aggregators.

Maybe there is a way in between, like having invite-only planets for those who 
value in-depth information and just have release announcements for those who 
want to think in terms of finished products.

Anyone seeing other options?

Cheers,
Kevin

-- 
Kevin Krammer, KDE developer, xdg-utils developer
KDE user support, developer mentoring
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