KDE Usability Improvements

[Cornelius Schumacher]

Hi James,

On Wednesday 20 April 2005 02:08, James Richard Tyrer wrote:
>
> I have been criticized (even flamed) for asserting that designing is
> work -- work that is at least as important coding.  This makes no
> sense unless those that do it are just protecting their turf.  If we
> are all peers in this project then people should not need to protect
> their turf.

That's right. I really appreciate that you are still around, despite of 
being flamed and criticized. You must be serious ;-)

I agree with you that design is important. But you have to realize that 
the development process we follow is not that of traditional 
engineering. We can't distinguish between designers and coders because 
most of the time the same person does both jobs. The best design 
emerges from the team doing the actual work.

That's the point and I think you are on the same line when you say that 
we are all peers in the project. It's much more important to 
communicate in a good way and be part of the community instead of 
specifying formal roles and processes. That's the power of KDE, that we 
can concentrate on the work that has to be done, and don't waste time 
with playing management and setting up formal procedures.

There is an interesting read, the Manifesto for Agile Software 
Development (http://www.agilemanifesto.org/). This summarizes quite 
well what the principles of the open source development process are. 
It's different from the traditional development process, and it might 
be hard to accept these principles if you are used to a more formal 
process, but the success of KDE and other open source projects shows 
that they actually work quite well.

I hope this helps a bit and that you will find your place in the 
community.

Regards,
Cornelius

-- 
Cornelius Schumacher <schumacher at kde.org>