KDE Quality (problems)

[John Layt]

On Thursday 14 Apr 2011 15:29:17 Billie Walsh wrote:
> On 04/14/2011 08:59 AM, Anne Wilson wrote:
> > On Thursday 14 April 2011 13:23:33 Billie Walsh wrote:
> >> I suppose we all have our favorite parts of KDE. For me it's Quanta. For
> >> whatever reason the devs at wherever have pretty much decided it was not
> >> worth the effort to bring it along with KDE 4.x. There is one person
> >> trying to bring it along and I hope someday he manages to do it.
> >> 
> >> Why they decided to kill off Quanta is beyond me, well maybe "kill off"
> >> is a bit of an over statement, but it is crippled very badly.
> > 
> > This thread is a perfect example of how basic facts about KDE are
> > misunderstood.  It sounds, for instance, as though KDE consists of a body
> > of people who sit in a room and make decisions about what will or won't
> > be developed.  That couldn't be further from the truth.
> > 
> > There are thousands of developers, most of which code for fun after doing
> > a day-job.  Once you understand this, it makes a lot more sense.  I
> > would like Quanta to be ported to KDE4, too, but the truth is that it's
> > a job that doesn't appeal to anyone capable of doing it. enough to spend
> > their evenings on it.
> > 
> > Then you have things like Telepathy, that are ambitious, and will
> > eventually be very useful, but again, the developers are going as fast
> > as their time will allow.  The developers of Kopete lost interest in
> > taking it further, and the new team wanted to do more, so a new project
> > was born.  That's how it goes. Developers come and go.  Life happens to
> > them.  They leave college, get a job, get a girlfriend, get married,
> > have a family etc., etc., etc..  Their work slows and sometimes has to
> > stop altogether.  They are simply human.
> > 
> > And that's why in FOSS we will always have some beautiful fireworks and
> > at the same time some things that make us weep.
> > 
> > Anne
> 
> I realize how the "system" works. And I do applaud their efforts, they
> do a great job. And, Quanta probably fills a "niche market" so it's
> priority is low, except for those that "need" it.
> 
> It's just a shame that such a great program is allowed to drift off into
> Never-Never Land. You can spend several hundred dollars and not find a
> better program.

We were lucky with Quanta for a long time that there was a commercial sponsor 
of the work, an American small business owner who liked it so much he 
sponsored an Eastern European developer to work on it.  Unfortunately that 
person can no longer afford to sponsor development, the developer has moved 
on, and few people in KDE are interested in web development work so no-one was 
available to port Quanta to KDE4.  I believe the future plans for Quanta is to 
use the KDevelop framework, but it's still a lot of work.

John.
___________________________________________________
This message is from the kde mailing list.
Account management:  https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde.
Archives: http://lists.kde.org/.
More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html.