discussion? where? well, not here...

[Navindra Umanee]

Mat Colton <mat.colton at web-xs.de> wrote:
> Sad thing. Didn't know about that, thank you for pointing that
> out. What were the reasons? What can we do to make sure this is
> unlikely to happen again?  What has been done so far?

> I don't know anybody who goes to kde.org to get the current Appsy
> items. You do that once, then you bookmark Appsy I would think,
> maybe I'm wrong. But anyway, I find that very interesting
> information, how do you know that it's one of the most appreciated
> features of www.kde.org? Do you have overall link-off statistics?
> That would be an interesting thing to know. I can imagine that it is
> very interesting for a first time visitor of kde.org.

This is twice you don't know.  So what was the point of going on the
offensive like that?

Question all you want, certainly.  dot.kde.org has been down quite a
bit too.  Even www.kde.org has been down in the past, as have been the
various sites under kde.org.  It would be unrealistic to consider that
a reason to throw them away.  Andreas already told you about some
statistics, I don't really need to bother any more with this.
However, if you would like to conduct an enquiry, maybe you can start
by asking all those people who mailed webmaster at kde.org when
apps.kde.com was down.  You could send them a questionnaire and gather
the required data.  All in the name of redesigning kde.org and
gathering information interesting to a first time visitor of kde.org,
of course.

I guess I don't know why you would like to hide a service that
innumerable KDE users enjoy already.  I don't particularly have the
energy to play the defensive but to me I only see your unrealistic
approach adding further delays to a probably already doomed site
redesign for KDE.  (I hope not though.  Prove me wrong, I would be
happy.)

> - So, you own apps.kde.com and it's your content? 
> - You can say exactly where Appsy is going in a commercial sense?
> - When did you tell KDE crew about the subscription thing?
> - Uploads by the author (or you as you do a lot of work) will always be free?
> - The author may upload as many packages as he/she/it wishes?

Where can I read about this subscription thing?  Is it something like
Ximian's Red Carpet?  If so, it sounds like an interesting service. (I
have heard of it before from Andreas but I didn't know it was
announced yet.)

> That brings us back to consistent design... :P No really now, don't take it 
> off, put on a message or whatever. Is there no way to mirror Appsy?

Well you can start by mirroring the simpler kde.org services, that
might be easier.  Note, I don't mean hijack by forking and/or changing
the link on kde.org to point to your website instead of the real one.
Just a mirror at this point, otherwise you might annoy the authors.  I
recommend you contact them first, since it's not nice forking a site
without letting the people involved know.  Other than that, you should
be able to check them out and do most of the work yourself.  Note that
the different modules may be hosted on various servers with different
configurations and requirements.  Of course there are sites that
aren't in CVS or are in a different CVS.  More complicated stuff like
the dot is a lot of work to do properly, but we already have an
incremental backup on master anyway.

However, I do again have to stress that I don't think it would be nice
of you to forcefully change the design of these websites.  You should
contact each author and maintainer for consent on that.  Personally I
think it's a bit ridiculous to have all websites look the same.  There
is no good reason to apply the same design to websites that have
different functions and/or different expressions and ideas.

Cheers,
Navin.