Add some apps to the 4.7 release?

[Thomas Zander]

Good evening Sebas,

I've gone over your email and I want to put some effort into addressing the 
topics you post, and hopefully cause some of your doubts to dissipate.

The choice of KOffice being released in KDE SC has been announced at the time 
the splitting agreement was made (on the koffice-devel ML if you want to 
check), at the same time Calligra has written they want to continue to 
release separately from KDE.
I understand that you don't want to be between two arguing parties, the fear 
that calligra would respond to an inclusion would indeed be unpleasant.
Such a response from Calligra would create new facts while on arbitration 
and that means you can say no to them based on that.
The fact that KOffice stated the next release would be part of the KDE SC 
already before the split makes this request not political, calligra never 
objected in the past many months and if they would do so now than that 
objection is the political. In the mean time can we avoid stopping to act 
based on fears?


Your other worry that somehow KDE choose one over the other implies that KDE 
makes such choices. AFAIK KDE doesn't have rules for official-ness. The only 
thing that comes close is the inclusion of apps in the base modules. But 
thats not relevant here as thats not the request thats been made.
Actually KDE does have a relevant practice, its just not political at all. 
KDE has a practice of selecting based on technical merit.
Maybe the technical quality and stability can be taken into account if you 
really feel this represents a choice KDE makes.
I personally don't see it as a choice; there are 3 apps in KDE vs the 14 
apps in calligra. How do you think people would see things if they are both 
released?

In case it helps, I'd be fine with the release announce not mentioning these 
apps, the point is not publicity, its not political, its just practical.

I understand you feel uneasy, the questions that you have should be asked 
and people should address fears and misconceptions in public. I want you to 
ask those things.
Your worries about this being political are essentially not founded; the 
earliest mention of KOffice going with KDE is 26-oct-2010 and with the request 
being about 3 apps we can easily sidestep issues by not talking about koffice 
at all.

Please let me know if there is anything I can do to make this possible. 
Being uneasy is unpleasant, setting aside your personal feelings and letting 
the technology speak is certainly an option to try and I welcome any 
comments or questions to that effect.

Thanks


On Monday 16 May 2011 14.58.43 Sebastian Kügler wrote:
> On Sunday, May 15, 2011 21:45:02 Tom Albers wrote:
> > Just as Amarok is welcome to release at the same day as the SC, KOffice
> > is too. And they both can have their lines in the announcement. Just
> > because
> 
> I'm actually really uneasy about taking KOffice into the announcement.
> However you take this internally, it would create the message that we
> somehow choose KOffice over Calligra, or realistically just push
> Calligra to do the same, which would mean we'd announce two "office
> suites" at the same time. That's confusing external communication and
> not good for KDE as a whole.
> 
> It's probably best if the communication part would be handled by either
> of these projects, release management / communication is not a means to
> resolve conflicts or to act as political levers. This issue seems to be
> hot enough that any fact that the release-team creates has big impact on
> how KOffice vs. Calligra works out in the end, and it's just not our
> (r-t) thing to decide.
> 
> Also, in KDE SC, we try to prevent duplication (look back at Okular vs.
> Ligature, or at the image viewers discussion before 4.0, ...). In this
> case, including KOffice (or some of the apps in there) would basically
> close this door for Calligra, I'm assuming they'd not be comfortable
> with that. (Given the recent history, seems like a reasonable
> assumption, if I'm wrong -- speak up.)
> 
> As a result, I'm opposed to anything that involves "some kind of offical
> vetting" from "the KDE community" side.
> 
> Much rather, I'd like to give the message that release-team is not some
> kind of arbitration instance, and that conflicts should be resolved
> elsewhere.
> 
> > I don't like Amarok, does not entitle me to block it. If we don't want
> > KOffice in the SC, it's time to say that it should leave the KDE
> > infrastructure.
> 
> No, there's a huge difference between "uses KDE infrastructure / is
> developed by KDE people" and "is part of the KDE SC". You can use KDE's
> infrastructure just fine without any plans to ever become part of KDE
> SC, and in fact, extragear supports this mechanism quite well.
> 
> If Thomas is looking for someone to put a bunch of tarballs online, but
> making it part of KDE SC doesn't sound like the right thing to do for
> us.
> 
> Since there is at least some kind of disagreement how to go about this,
> I'd suggest Thomas takes his request to kde-core-devel, to have it
> discussed there in a wider group. Maybe everybody agrees with him, and
> in that case, I won't be the party-pooper, but right now, it just seems
> too politically laden for the release-team to decide.
> 
> Cheers,

-- 
Thomas Zander