[kde-linux] Another KDE 4.x print problem?

[Duncan]

Dale posted on Sun, 01 Nov 2009 18:19:23 -0600 as excerpted:

> Anne Wilson wrote:
>> On Sunday 01 November 2009 12:34:16 Duncan wrote:
>>   
>>> #2 follows from that, and has to do with the fact that they aren't
>>> following thru on the very public promise to keep kde3 supported as
>>> long as it had users
>>>
>> Please stop this FUD.  You have expressed it so often, and it's
>> completely wrong.  They promised security update as long as needed, but
>> they never promised any development.  And there exists a group that
>> maintains 3.5 for enterprise releases which continue to use it, with no
>> time-scale, so far as I'm aware, set for this to stop.

> I hate to say this, but that was my understanding as well.  According to
> the Gentoo devs list, nothing is being done on KDE 3.5 and they are
> already removing some packages.  Bad thing is, KDE 4 is just not
> finished enough for me to switch to it yet.  It's getting there but not
> quite there yet.
> 
> I would have hoped that they would support KDE 3.5 at least until KDE
> 4.4 or 4.5 was out and stable.  At least that way most features would be
> working and bugs worked out.  This makes me consider using another
> desktop.

The promise was made it public, the breaking of it should be kept equally 
public.  And yes, it IS a breaking.

If support is promised by the developers of the software to continue, and 
it's not stated in that promise that it won't be /them/ supporting it but 
someone else, then that it's the developers of the software continuing 
the promised support is implied.

Also, reasonable support doesn't have to include new development and I 
don't see anyone attempting to credibly argue that it should, but it DOES 
need to include whatever's necessary to keep the packages building with 
current versions of the toolchain, gcc, glibc, etc.  That's not 
happening, so the promised support isn't happening, and the promise is 
broken.  It's as baldly simple as that.  To claim otherwise would be, at 
least for me, breaking my integrity.  Others can try to weasel-word 
around it all they like, but the simple bald fact is that the promise is 
broken.

As I said before, I remain a 100% committed supporter of KDE in general, 
which is /why/ it's a big deal for me in the first place.  But I'm going 
to call a spade a spade, and a broken promise a broken promise.  IMO, KDE 
should at least step upto the plate and admit it, and either correct the 
problem, or admit that it's beyond the point at which it /can/ be 
corrected now, and move on.  Just doing so, as equally publicly and 
prominently as the promise was made if not more so, would go a long way 
toward recovering at least /some/ of that lost integrity, and would 
probably have the effect of focusing renewed energy on fixing the 
remaining bugs to get kde4 back to at least basic kde3 level 
functionality as soon as possible.

But it doesn't appear it's going to happen.  It appears that KDE as a 
whole simply continues to want it swept under the rug... and hope it 
eventually goes away as kde4 continues to improve (as basically everybody 
agrees it is) by leaps and bounds.  Yes, that'll eventually take care of 
the practical issue, but it won't solve the problem of the lost trust and 
integrity over the promise so publicly made... and broken.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman