[RFC] Draft Roadmap for KDE 4.0

[Boudewijn Rempt]

On Tuesday 06 March 2007, Alexander Dymo wrote:
> On Tuesday 06 March 2007 21:45, Boudewijn Rempt wrote:
> > I think that's splitting straws -- it's not important compared to getting
> > a schedule and getting people out of tinker mode and into release mode.
>
> C'mon, that sounds like KDE is now a commercial company that promised
> the customers to deliver and now is trying to release whatever crap they
> have. KDE4 with such schedule reminds me classical death march project.

No, it's the way any software project works. You can be in tinker mode or in 
release mode, but you'll never release if you don't get out of tinker mode. 
It has nothing to do with customers, it has nothing to do with commercial 
companies. If your goal is a release, you'll have to work towards a release. 
Get into release mode. Start finishing stuff. Three months always sounds long 
enough to finish your stuff, long away enough that you don't need to think of 
actually wrapping up, but can continue doing fun stuff like starting all over 
and Doing It Right This Time. Slipping time and again is just as bad for a 
real software project as it is for a commercial software project.

It's impossible to get a project the size of kde (even if you take just 
kdelibs + kdebase) really perfect so that no api needs to break, all 
documentation is in place, everything tinkerty-tonk. For me, as an app 
developer, kdelibs is Good Enough. Sure, liveui or whatever it is called 
would have been nice, but if it cannot be ready in a month, it won't be 
ready. If the various api owners can't get their api's sorted out in a month, 
they won't get it sorted out in three months.

> Sorry, Coolo ;) I can't stop too. Seriously, who wants KDE 4.0 with
> unfinished BIC kdelibs with no applications? Users? They won't care about
> the desktop without applications. Application developers? They don't need a
> release to be productive, just more or less stable environment.

They need a release to code against. And they need a release to be able to 
release their applications. It's going to be awfully funny if Krita 2.0, 
which _is_ going to be released this year, needs its own private copy of 
kdelibs.

> So my question is who is going to use KDE 4.0 we're going to
> release in October?

KDE developers, application developers, bleeding edge fanatics and Mandriva 
users.

-- 
Boudewijn Rempt 
http://www.valdyas.org/fading/index.cgi
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