[KPhotoAlbum] Improved Image Viewer? [PATCH]

[Jesper K. Pedersen]

I'm afraid that the world unfortunately is not as black and white as this. I 
do want to share. I do realize that the project could run much faster were we 
several people to take care of it. Unfortunately, the 4-5 people I've asked 
to step up so far has all sayd no.

Regarding packing, man have I asked for this forever. I don't have time, nor 
interest, and esp not abilities to pack for a lot of different systems. I've 
tried to pull of that I contacted the big players asking them to pack, but 
even that takes a lot of time. So by all means, HELP!

Regarding patches. The reason for my response is that I'm older than many of 
the other projects maintainers, and thus more wise :-)))
Seriously, I always have to compare the time it takes to integrate a patch 
with writting the code myself. Over the last few month, I've had very little 
KPA time as you may know. Most of that time has been spent on integrating 
patches. That includes everything from ensuring the correct naming convention 
to the right way of doing it. I DO WANT MORE PEOPLE TO CONTRIBUTE to the 
project, but by far I prefer people contributing a longer time with many 
patches than just with one monster patch, and then running of.
I know I dont make friends out there by telling someone to take a hike with 
his patch for making KPA into a ping-pong-game too (just a silly example), 
but a rough estimate is that only 10% of the time is spent in the initial 
development, while the rest 90% is spent on maintaining the code (which of 
course also includes implementing new features around that code.)

Good morning
Jesper.

On Wednesday 20 December 2006 15:37, Shawn Willden wrote:
| On Tuesday 19 December 2006 23:41, Jesper K. Pedersen wrote:
| > Well there is three problems to branching.
| > 1) I don't have enough time to maintain two branches, so I would have to
| > let one branch down.
|
| One solution to this is to find some volunteers who are willing to take on
| the task of maintaining the branch.
|
| > 2) History has shown numerous times that as soon as I've accepted a patch
| > into the code, people kind of keep interest in maintaining it. this means
| > that I need to test patches with new features *before* they go into the
| > code. With me focusing on the release, this would just be problems piling
| > up for me.
|
| Again, assuming there are folks willing to help, the solution is to get
| another developer or two who can be responsible for vetting incoming
| patches, freeing you up to focus on the release branch, up until the time
| you decide to switch gears and focus on the trunk development.
|
| > 3) If I branches, everyone using SVN would be using the new cool branch,
| > and the release would be even less tested before released.
|
| This one is particularly easy to deal with:  don't put much effort into
| keeping the trunk code stable.  If you reduce the set of trunk users to
| those who are willing and able to diagnose and fix bugs, then your trunk
| user base will be small :-)
|
| I think more of the testing comes from downloaders of snapshots, anyway.
| Perhaps one way to make that testing even more effective is to find a
| volunteer or two who will create binary packages for the major distros.
|
| This next bit is going to sound a bit critical, Jesper, so please keep in
| mind that it's written with the best of intentions and that I understand
| it's only my "outsider" perspective, which is almost certainly inaccurate
| in at least some respects.
|
| It has always seemed to me that the pace of KPA development has been slowed
| by your unwillingness to allow anyone else to work on the code.  I think
| KPA would benefit substantially if you were to find another developer or
| two that you can trust, and give them commit privileges and suggest tasks
| for them. Beyond that, your typical response to most feature requests
| differs from that of most other OSS projects.  Where they typically say
| "You want X?  Send me a patch", you tend to say "That's a good idea, I'll
| look into it later".
|
| Frankly, I think it's amazing that you have the dedication and endurance to
| keep a project of this scale alive and progressing as a one-man effort.  At
| this point, though, I think KPA would benefit from some delegation and some
| expansion of the development team.
|
| Please excuse me if my perception is all wrong, and if it's a lack of
| volunteers, not an unwillingness to delegate that has driven your approach.
| I, for example, am not volunteering.  I'd like to but lack the time to take
| on yet another project.  Actually, I might be willing to create Debian
| binaries of snapshots.  I'll look into that.
|
| Finally, if you simply don't like sharing the work, then that's clearly
| your prerogative, because we all know that there would be much, much less
| progress in KPA without you.
|
| Thanks for a great program,
|
| 	Shawn.
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-- 
Having trouble finding a given image in your collection containing
thousands of images?

http://www.kphotoalbum.org might be the answer.