Konqueror problems and a SERIOUS commitment

[Dawit A]

On Sat, May 7, 2011 at 3:32 PM, Zé <mmodem00 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2011/5/7 Dawit A <adawit at kde.org>:
>> This has been said time and again, but it bears repeating since most
>> users do not seem to realize it.
>>
>> Since there is always lack of man power in volunteer projects like
>> KDE, which is especially true for Konqueror,  the only way you can get
>> your bugs fixed is by helping out in some way or fashion. I know most
>> users do not like to hear that, but that is the cold hard truth! How
>> can you help ? Well you can do any of the following depending on your
>> skill:
>>
>> 1.) If you are a developer, you can start with fixing some small
>> issues. If you do not know how to get started with solving a
>> particular problem, then you can ask.
>>
>> 2.) If you are not a developer, then you can in the least make sure
>> your bug report is not a duplicate of another that was previously
>> reported.
>>
>> 3.) The most important help any user can provide however is to help
>> the developers weed through bug reports and find ones that are truly
>> valid bugs. This is especially true for the components that have the
>> highest amount of bugs reported against them. For example, since we
>> are talking about konqueror specifically here, there are some 441
>> crash, 1505 normal, 1085 wishlist bug reported as generic konqueror
>> issues. The truth is most of these bug reports are really not
>> konqueror bugs, but bugs against components used in konqueror, e.g.
>> khtml or they are totally duplicates, or they have already been fixed
>> in recent versions or simply they cannot be reproduced (by even the
>> user that reported them).
>>
>> In order for a developer to fix your bug report (s)he has to weed
>> through all of that in the order reported. Old bug reports first and
>> fix them. Then Imagine how long that would take when there is not a
>> dedicated team simply triaging and managing bug reports ? Right. So as
>> far as I am concerned the actual solution to your problem is to
>> convince people like you to participate in the process so that you can
>> get what you want fixed or even learn how to fix it for yourself, in
>> which case you do not even have to worry about people fixing things
>> for you.
>
> Dont put things like that, why would it be for me?
> I simply like konqueror, and im one of the persons that would like to
> see it better, why address things on purpose just for me?

I do not know why you take it personally ?!?!? I only used you as an
example, but you feel free to substitute any "joe" user. This is not
directed toward only you, but all users! Ever since KDE 4.x got
released, I see so many users have the time to write articles to
complain about how much KDE sucks?!!?! blah blah, but cannot spare
even 1 hour a week to help the very same volunteer project they want
to cut to pieces. It gets really tyring after a while. Really. And I
have been doing this for over 12 years now.

Even those like you that have best of intentions and want to see their
favorite free application prosper, rarely participate in the process
to improve it in whatever capacity they can. Perhaps that might not be
true in the "bling bling" components like plasma that gets all the
attention these days, but down here in the dungeons, it is a very rare
thing to see people contribute their time and/or skills. But of course
the expections from these very same people about things working
properly in the "basement apps" is just as much if not more than the
components that benefit from all the love. Anyhow, it is nothing
personal against you.

> There are severall problems mainly when using khtml view, so far the
> bugs i have reported are real, it would be a good improvement to have
> the html related problems fixed.

That may be a very valid point, but have you seen how many outstanding
khtml reports are around ? Now consider how many developers volunteer
to work on fixing and improving it. There is a handful of them around.
That is the point. Do you see now ? No amount of asking for a meeting
to discuss how

> This can be easily seen for example when entering in Gmail, using
> khtml causes severall problems, even using webkit view haves some
> issues but without man power theres no point to discuss :(

The webkit related problems are less of man power issues and more of a
complete breakdown with the trolls not releasing a more upto data
version of QtWebKit engine independent of the Qt release. The version
of webkit included in Qt is so old it is not even funny. Even the
recently announced QtWebKit v2.1 is over a year old! Anyhow, QtWebKit
got more resources and developers behind it than khtml ; so the issues
you encounter with webkit are more of a release mis-management.

> Im just in the begining of learning c++, if i could i would already helped...
>
> I hope i can reach the point in wich i can interview and develop
> konqueror, until there i hope that konqueror still exists...

*sigh* you did not get my point. My point was you do not have to be a
developer at all. You can contribute by going through the bug reports
and marking duplicates as such assigning bug reports to the proper
components, closing those that cannot be reproduced. Non of that
requires programming skill. It simply requires ones time. If there
were 10 such users who did this on a regular basis and closed say 20
bugs each per day (an hours worth of work), then I guarantee you the
very valid reports you said you reported would be handled quicker
because there is not so many bugs to go through! If you do not believe
me, go take a look at
https://bugs.kde.org/component-report.cgi?product=konqueror and tell
me when you think the very very very very few (probably one or two)
developers that work on Konqueror occasionally will get to the bug
reports you put in ?

Oh well...

Regards,
Dawit A.