Yet another failed KDE release?

[James Tyrer]

On 03/19/2013 09:58 AM, dE . wrote:
> This release of KDE (4.10.1), is till date the buggiest I've seen.
>
> I switched to KDE when it was at 4.4.
>
> I personally, don't really mind the bugs, it reminds me how ignorant KDE
> release team is; KDE was, is and never will be suited for the enterprise
> if it continues these 6 months feature focused release cycles.
>
> This mailing list is full of rants and complains and the KDE teams
> doesnt give a damn.
>
> Again --
>
> We DON'T want features pouring at speed of light, we need STABILITY so KDE
> can be _used_ by *common* people.
>
> Increase the release cycles to 2 years, or don't have ANY such time
> limiting goals; i.e. wait for the new release to become stable enough,
> and provide bug backports for the current stable release.
>
> Is Novel listening? I wonder how they manage with KDE.
>
> This mail is for sake of the project, not for MY personal frustrations
> with KDE. I deploy Xfce anyway.

The KDE development team appears to be interested in something other 
than producing a stable release.  It really is that simple.  As a 
result, the release process is not oriented towards producing a stable 
release.

I would prefer the two track process of a development release and a 
stable release.  If you apply that to KDE, I guess that you would say 
that the current releases are the development release.  But, then I 
don't know where Trunk would fit in except that work needs be done 
somewhere for the next development release.

Part of the problem can be found in the parable of the hammer and the 
nail.  The hammer being the tool.  KDE selects a certain type of tool so 
those that use it automatically select a certain type of nail.

I find very useful the dystopian novel: "The Rise of the Meritocracy" 
which is a critique of the idea of "the meritocracy".  A meritocracy is 
defined by the search for merit -- but that is dependent on the 
definition of merit.  I find that I have no merit in the KDE project 
despite the fact that I went to college and studied EE and computer 
science.  In the KDE project, you obtain merit be designing a new 
application.  So, that is the nail that everyone is hitting with their 
hammer.

I don't want to do that.  I want to improve applications.  That is what 
engineers do; we find the faults with things and fix them -- we improve 
things.

Unfortunately, everyone designing new applications from square one is 
not conducive to building a stable and bug free desktop environment. 
You can see how this has contributed to the failure of KDE 4.  Much of 
KDE 3 was thrown away rather than being improved and some of what was 
kept was either not improved (e.g. Konqueror) or the internals were 
replaced to the point that they became new apps with the old names.

It takes time to build a code base.  Plasma is getting nowhere.  It is 
new, but it is still unstable at the pre-Beta state.  The DeskTop can't 
even remember a configuration.

Contrast this with the Japanese system of product development which is 
one of constant improvement.  Apple has has some success with it.

There is nothing wrong with KDE that a few committed software engineers 
-- committed to quality -- couldn't fix.  But, I don't think that the 
hackers would like it.

-- 
James Tyrer

Linux (mostly) From Scratch
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