interesting comment from a poster on phoronix

[Kevin Krammer]

On Thursday, 2015-08-20, 14:47:30, ianseeks wrote:
> On Thursday 20 Aug 2015 14:06:34 Kevin Krammer wrote:
> > On Thursday, 2015-08-20, 10:37:59, ianseeks wrote:
> > > http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=KDE-Applications-15.0
> > > 8
> > > 
> > > >> "Ahead of the Plasma 5.4 release later this month and after last
> > > >> week's
> > > >> KDE
> > > >> Frameworks 5.13 release is KDE Applications 15.08."
> > > >> 
> > > >> How am I supposed to keep track of these things?!
> > > 
> > > Thats a lot of numbers to keep your eye on when reading about KDE
> > 
> > From my point of view these kind of comments are very close to troll
> > territory.
> 
> I don't see it as that. I just thought it was an interesting take on what
> someone was reading and how they saw it.

I can understand that there is a certain mental step involved in realizing 
that a vendor can in fact have more than one product.

What I do not understand is why other vendors would be allowed to have 
multiple products but KDE would not.
Why KDE should cease to develop applications and soley work on a desktop 
shell.
Why Qt application developers should not benefit from third party Qt libraries 
and restrict themselves to those provided by the Qt project.

The different version numbers are a constant reminder to those who would 
rather see application development to be stoppped and libraries to be kept 
internal that their wished are just not the reality.

IMHO this allegeded "difficulty" is just an attempt to gather support for 
their goal of having KDE deliver a desktop and nothing else.

> Its just the version numbering has a chance of getting out of hand and not
> being linked to each other.  E.g. does the "5" in plasma 5.4 relate to the
> "5" in Frameworks 5.13?  If so, what does the KDE-Applications-15.08 relate
> to regarding Frameworks etc.

One of the initial proposals for the next Plasma version was Plasma 2, as this 
is what it would have been.
There was concern that would cause confusion since many people equate the 
desktop with KDE itself, so that would have been KDE 2, which was already 
taken.

So to allow people who only use KDE's desktop product to refer to it as KDE or 
Plasma with the same version number, 5 was chosen as the base version for what 
is actually Plasma 2.

Similar reason for the Framework version, to avoid them being called "KDE Libs 
1". Seems this alternative naming wasn't used at all, so yes, it could have 
been KDE Frameworks 1.

As for KDE Applications, being a bundle, similar to a Linux distribution being 
a collection of individual software items, the version chosen reflects the 
point in time of the release.

Its version does not relate to any of the libraries being used by the 
applications it contains, it would be impossible to do that given the number 
of libraries involved.

> Would it be an idea to prefix all sub projects of KDE with a unified number
> relating to the framework it depends on so as an example, KDE 5 is made up
> of Plasma 5.5.4., Frameworks 5.13, KDE Applications 5.15.08.  This will
> make it easier for us outside the development world to see a link between
> the sub projects.

What would be the benefit of that. This would only artifically suggest 
relation where there is none.
Microsoft Office 2015 is not called Microsoft Office 10.2015 just because it 
happens to be released at the time when Windows 10 is the vendor's current 
"desktop" product.

Users could be confused, guess a relation and assume Office 2015 can only be 
used on Windows 10.
While Microsoft would gladly have as many Windows users as possible to upgrade 
to Windows 10, they have abstained from creating this mental bridge.
Most likely because they rather have people get Office 2015 even if they are 
"just" on Windows 7 or 8.

Exactly why KDE Applications has a very different version scheme, to avoid 
people mistakingly assume a connection between the applications and Plasma 
desktop when there is none as far as using the applications is concerned.

Cheers,
Kevin

-- 
Kevin Krammer, KDE developer, xdg-utils developer
KDE user support, developer mentoring
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 173 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part.
URL: <http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde/attachments/20150820/925ba21f/attachment.sig>
-------------- next part --------------
___________________________________________________
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.