Yet another failed KDE release?

[Ross Boylan]

I too am finding the reliability of KDE and its apps not what I would like, but 
one thing puzzles me about this complaint, the statement that bug fixing is not 
welcomed...
On Tuesday, May 07, 2013 02:54:19 AM James Tyrer wrote:

> 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'm not sure if the developers would agree, though most developers would 
rather make new things than fix old ones.  They are supposedly fixing lots of 
bugs with each release; it's just there are so many.
......
> 
> 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.
Where do you get the idea that you have "no merit in the KDE project", or that 
someone fixing bugs would be greeted with anything other than enthusiasm?  
Well, it's free software and so there's bound to be some static, but apart 
from that :)
> 
> 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.

Continuous improvement will not immediately yield a stable product if there 
are a lot of problems, as there seem to be.  I'm sure even one person could 
make a difference. I'm not sure even a small group could get things under 
control reasonably quickly.

Ross Boylan

P.S. Composed in kmail 1.13.7, which mysteriously hangs from time to time, 
can't autocomplete from the address book, and sometimes show blank messages 
with any way I can see to get it show html.
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