A few words about the Quality of KDE 4.2

[James Richard Tyrer]

Brendan wrote:
> On Wednesday 18 March 2009, James Richard Tyrer wrote:
>> Samuel Kage wrote:
>>> Currently I'm running KDE 4.2.1 on Opensuse, which is known for 
>>> making one of the best KDE packages. Even though I'm really sad
>>> about the stability of KDE these days. For explaining why, i want
>>> to describe a common use case for me an many many other users.
>> Yes, KDE has a quality problem.  I say this as someone that has
>> been
> 
> Oh lord, does this thread ever die?
> 
> KDE is great software.

I said that it would be great software if it worked.  But, the current
release has an unstable  desktop with serious usability issues.  When
you say that that is great, you become part of the problem.

> The way to fix the bugs in OSS is to get people to work on things
> they don't want to and aren't sexy...like bugs.

In what aberrant universe buggy software sexy?  I don't think that most
users find buggy software to be sexy.  Quality is one of the great
advantages we should have over commercial software.

> If you can't, you hire people to do the un-sexy work. Since KDE can't
> do that, the situation will remain as it is, I would imagine.
> 
I guess that I will have to get into Skinnerian psychology.  People
aren't really as complicated as you think.  People will do what they
receive positive reinforcement for doing.  Actually, I would like to
think that it is a question of personal responsibility -- if developers
have a strong sense of personal responsibility, then they feel the need
to have their code work 100% correctly.  But, this isn't really the
case.  If developers receive positive reinforcement for witting
glamorous apps that are 70% to 90% functional, then that is what is
going to continue to happen.  Paying people is just a type of positive
reinforcement, so what is needed is to change the contingencies of
non-financial reinforcement.

Perhaps we need more perfectionists (but they will not get along easily 
with non-perfectionists).  Or, as I said, people with a strong sense of 
personal responsibility that feel that their software isn't finished 
till it works correctly.  We have some of these people and I admire 
their work as well as their work ethic.  In either case, we need more 
people, but how are we going to integrate these new people into a 
culture where sloppy work is not only tolerated by actually praised?

-- 
JRT

Linux (mostly) From Scratch

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