summary of the aKademy meetings

[Matthias Welwarsky]

On Monday, 6. September 2004 11:52, Matthias Welwarsky wrote:
> On Monday 06 September 2004 10:44, Charles Samuels wrote:
> > On Monday 2004 September 06 01:57 am, Matthias Welwarsky wrote:
> > > > And one day kdemultimedia will depend on all of them because every
> > > > app needs a different backend, that will be fun for packagers.
> > >
> > > ... and then finally kdemultimedia is gone which is a good thing. A CVS
> > > module for the mere aggregation of applications, that's what we have
> > > extragear for.
> >
> > So kdemm solves things by removing multimedia apps from kde?
>
> Yes, this is all part of my crusade to get rid of as many applications as
> possible. I tricked the others into following my path to the dark side.

No, serious now. I actually think that a "spatial" separation of applications 
and the framework is a good thing. It forces you to think harder about 
interfaces if you cannot customise them deliberately.

However, we have two different issues here:

1) finding a KISS solution for the basic needs of KDE as a general application 
framework.

2) providing a KDE Multimedia Framework that fulfils the needs of highly 
advanced multimedia applications.

I am reasonably sure that we can only have 2) if we completely do it on our 
own. If we rely on thirdparty stuff we lack the necessary control and 
understanding of the underlying technologies. You cannot prevent bitrot in 
code you don't understand. And then again, we would duplicate work that a lot 
of capable people have already done.

1) can be done fairly easy, maybe even backend agnostic.

Rationale:

I'm absolutely convinced that the KDE project will never be able to meet the 
demand for applications. Thus, the one thing KDE must do is not being an 
obstacle. We should not impose our ideas of doing things on others. We should 
offer ways of doing things, but not enforce them. I think this is the biggest 
objective of KDE4. 

Now, if we enforce a multimedia backend (like we did with arts) ... you get 
it. I don't think that sabre-rattling in the spirit of "we are the desktop" 
is going to gain us much credit. There's probably a reason for amarok trying 
to support as many mm frameworks as possible: It just broadens the base for 
possible deployments. True for KDE, too.

-- 
Matthias Welwarsky
Fachschaft Informatik FH Darmstadt
Email: matze at stud.fbi.fh-darmstadt.de

"all software sucks equally, but some software is more equal"