Are We Ready? Beta1 vs. Alpha3

[Sebastian Kügler]

On Monday 23 July 2007 10:13:21 Stephan Kulow wrote:
> Am Montag 23 Juli 2007 schrieb Allen Winter:
> > But maybe I'm wrong.  Are we beta quality??
>
> The libs on UNIX sure are. It's just tough to release only libs as final if
> we haven't software to test it with. Then again: tons of other libs are
> doing it all the time ;)
>
> It just would be a very first for KDE to release kdelibs only. But if you
> set the desktop aside (which is for sure our main asset if you remember
> what KDE stands for :), you have e.g. games that are already excellent and
> the bugs in there you find are beta bugs, not alpha bugs.
>
> I'd still vote for another alpha from what I hear, but Cornelius is right:
> we need to make sure that we're saying we're delaying for the desktop not
> the libs.

FWIW, this is in line with my understanding of Troy's proposal. Shipping a 4.0 
this year, and polishing more for an end-user release which is then promoted 
heavily as such. That would allow us to get KDE4 as development platform out 
earlier (a libs releases doesn't have to wait for apps to be finished). 
Getting kdelibs frozen would probably also shift some attention to app 
development, and would IMO be the good sign (i.e. "it's really supposed to be 
used now, start porting your code!"). Right now, we're adding features to 
libs, so any conservative app developer will say "It's not finished yet, I'll 
wait until it's at least API frozen".

So weaving various past discussions into one:

- How can we ship kdelibs (which apparently is in beta shape) without having 
  people expect a complete desktop?

- How can we address Wade's reservations? ("We're delaying the release, but 
  making up stuff so it doesn't sound like it" [sorry for the wild 
  paraphrasing])

I'm getting the feeling that the truth lies somewhere in between those two.
-- 
sebas

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