No more release schedules.

[Eric Hameleers]

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On Thu, 9 Jun 2011, Andreas K. Huettel wrote:

> Dear KDE upstream,
>
>> Since KDE is the community, how can we do a KDE 4.8? And then Platform will
>> call itself 5 if I understood correctly. So how do we call a new release
>> schedule then?
>
> I just read a very good novel where all such talk about "Software Collection"
> or "Platform" was aptly called "commercial bulshytt". I think many of us,
> including your "only-users", would appreciate it if you all there upstream
> would just stick to KDE, because that is what everyone uses. Nothing else.
>
>>> Are you serious that you want to decouple the release of our
>>> frameworks from
>>> each other? THat would create a huge mess, extreme amounts of
>>> overhead, be
>>> very destructive to our community... This puzzles me as I know how
>>> much you
>>> love KDE.
>>
>> What does my love for KDE have to do with it? I think it's good for KDE to
>> let each module set their freezes on their own, depending on which work
>> flow they will adapt. If we decide it early the module maintainers have
>> time enough to get used to creating the schedule.
>
> Basically this is nothing but a dissolution of the KDE project as a whole.
> Sure, we'll end up with a lot of projects using and enhancing kdelibs (or
> whatever becomes of that), but there will be no coherence anymore.
>
>> We can set a preferred release day twice a year, which every module can
>> work to if they like.
>> We can still package and release them if you like, that's independent of
>> the schedules.
>
> That both makes no sense. Suggestion 1 fails completely with the "if they
> like" part, since we all know already how much pain the "out of sync kdepim"
> caused. Suggestion 2 fails with the "independent of the schedules" part,
> because you can't release somthing that is not stabilized and tested.
>
> Please try to get some sense back...
>
> Cheers,
> Andreas

Andreas, how I agree!

This now, is _exactly_ what I was afraid for when I voiced my concern 
about the break-up of this relatively small collection of coherent 
source tarballs we are used to work with, into a fragmented and 
potentially disconnected set of individual small (project-oriented) 
source tarballs. This would mean, KDE as an integrated software 
collection is dissolving into a loose collection of software perhaps 
not even branded "KDE" anymore.

Notwithstanding the "frameworks" concept, which sounds appealing, you 
should focus on keeping the ecosystem together. Otherwise there will 
not be a "KDE SC" soon, but instead "KDE for Slackware, KDE for 
Fedora, KDE for Arch, KDE for Windows, KDE for Solaris ..." and every 
version will be unpredictably different from the others. This 
unpredictability kills the killer concept: that KDE transcends 
operating systems. I predict that it will end up like GNOME: one 
distro adds Gnome Shell, the next adds Unity, and yet another decides 
to stick to a forward-ported old version of the desktop manager. This 
surely is not what KDE (and its users!) deserve.

Eric

- -- 
Eric Hameleers <alien at slackware.com>
Jabber: alien at jabber.xs4all.nl
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