[KDE/Mac] Re: KDE vs Macports (Was: trouble with snow leopard)

[Bernhard Reiter]

Am Dienstag, 4. Januar 2011 13:13:52 schrieb Mike McQuaid:
> 2011/1/4 Bernhard Reiter <bernhard at intevation.de>:
> > You could have responded a lot more positive to Ben's question.
>
> You're right, it wasn't Ben's fault so a simple correction without
> explaining my annoyance would have been better, I should have linked
> him to the Macports bugtracker rather than just saying "not here".
> However, I wonder if criticising out my behaviour on a public list
> might have not been done better by a private email?

I did consider a personal email. 
In the end I thought that having this discussion in public is helpful 
for others and that I believed that you could handle this constructive 
criticism in public, which positively reflects on you.

> > if KDE applications on Mac shall become a success, I believe that we must
> > grow a healthy community.
> >
> > I can understand that you feel slightly annoyed that people
> > confuse the packagers of Macports with the KDE Mac initiative. Also it
> > would be better if some patches from Macports would go upstream (in my
> > understanding there are also some patches that should better stay on the
> > packagers level.) But this is something that should be solved alltogether
> > with Macports and KDE Mac people. If a user comes to any of us, I think
> > we should try to help first and then explain some of the finer details of
> > our community.
>
> No, I don't agree here I'm afraid. Most of the Macports patches can
> and should go upstream, I've been talking with the maintainers and
> trying to do this last week.

Thanks for doing so. I just meant to say that I've seen a number of patches in 
packaging distributions in the past that were best placed on the packaging 
level. So in general a zero patch policy for packagers is not something I'd 
recommend.

> I think you'd get a similar (but perhaps more polite) reaction if you
> posted a bug with installing distro KDE packages on other development
> lists, you'd be told to file a bug with your distro rather than
> discussing it on list. Those of us who don't use Macports don't want
> to be on a mailing list that becomes a Macports support forum. If it's
> desirable to have this, perhaps we should get a kde-macports list
> instead (but I'd think Macports would prefer if people just used their
> bugtracker).

Yes, it would be nicer if the defect was placed in the macports channels.
Currently our overall community is small, so we should welcome anyone on all 
levels first and then try to raise the chances that they find the right 
channel by themselfs.

> If KDE on Mac is to become a success then there needs to be a team
> with a clearer sense of direction than just fixing the latest bug and
> people who want to build KDE on Mac applications that appear
> completely native to OSX users and work fantastically. We are
> basically in an alpha stage currently where you can get the
> applications to work but they don't work that well. 

I agree.

> We need to fix the 
> technical issues and attract developers rather than users at this
> stage as more users just mean we spend more time fixing simple issues
> and less time doing actual development.

If someone comes and asks us a simple user-level question, we cannot forsee if 
this person is to be come a contributor on development level or not. Being a 
developer within some initiatives and not in others my experience is that 
developers are also attracted by initiatives that treat their users nicely. 

Thanks for working on Free Software and KDE,
Bernhard

-- 
Managing Director - Owner: www.intevation.net       (Free Software Company)
Deputy Coordinator Germany: fsfe.org. Board member: www.kolabsys.com.
Intevation GmbH, Osnabrück, DE; Amtsgericht Osnabrück, HRB 18998
Geschäftsführer Frank Koormann, Bernhard Reiter, Dr. Jan-Oliver Wagner
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