From kde-panel-devel Tue Jun 05 10:31:44 2012 From: Dario Freddi Date: Tue, 05 Jun 2012 10:31:44 +0000 To: kde-panel-devel Subject: Thoughts on the Iteration Sprint, discussions and criticism Message-Id: X-MARC-Message: https://marc.info/?l=kde-panel-devel&m=133889249517220 This mail was originally born as a reply to the survey thread, but it eventually drifted into something bigger which probably deserved his own thread. First of all I'd like to speak both with a Plasma hat (which I think I always wore, at least somehow) and with an external hat, as it'll be probably clear in the next lines. At the same time, I want to underline these are my personal thoughts about all of this. The purpose of this mail is to try to answer once at all some of the recurring arguments against the planned sprint. Starting from the very beginning, I honestly can't understand the arguments about "we already have a vision". Assume this is true - this vision was created (and eventually evolved) over the last, I think now, 3 years. Maybe a bit more maybe a bit less, whatever. In the highly changing time we live, that's an *enormous* span of time. The question this sprint tries to answer is: do we need to create a new/change the existing/keep the current vision for the workspace? What should be our goal over the next months, especially for the desktop? If I were an author of the original vision, I would be HAPPY to see this happen and I would strive to take part in it. The argument about names doesn't really stand - this is as clear as it gets, it is a sprint for finding out who we are now and who we want to be. Does this have a clear answer now? I don't think so. Also, I'd like to point out that Plasma != Active. Active IS Plasma, but Plasma IS NOT active. Plasma is (or should be) much more than that, should focus on other platforms more than tablets. At the same time, as much as consistency should be valued, it's arguably hard to see a potential common vision for Active and the Desktop Shell. One could have a common vision about Plasma as in *the framework*, but the shells NEED to have different goals, targets and visions. If there is a naming mismatch at all, it's here. What is Plasma then? A shell? A framework? Something else? If Plasma == Active really stood, why the need of a different name in the first place? The answer, in my opinion, is quite easy: Plasma is something *to build upon*. And as much as there are people working actively on active (pun unintended), I guess you should be happy if there's people who still care about the desktop and want to strive to make it a better place to be. I would also like to note that there was not all this ongoing bikeshed and worries when active was started/announced. The question one should pose himself, in my opinion, should be: how this could be harmful or beneficial to KDE? If we take apart our egos and sentimentalism and try to see things in a rational way, there is an obvious benefit in revaluing what (I personally believe - wouldn't have worked on those if I didn't think so) were good ideas, but could probably be laid down in a better way now, maybe with a spin of new things. We learned from our mistakes and successes, and now we want to see how we move forward. How could such a thing be harmful to KDE? And to be 100% honest, I'm quite let down that almost every person involved in Plasma (as in the framework/shell, not the workspace) at the time of writing won't be there out of their own decision. Alienating just because of a different name or intended purpose is a dull argument - we communicated early, timely and *on plasma-devel* most of all. If we compare this to the Active sprint, which was kind of a fail from this perspective (even though there were a number of factors not imputable to organizers which I reckon), I think we did way better. It's hard to argue that people who are not coming are feeling left out instead of leaving themselves out for their own decision. All in all and in fair honesty: I don't really like where this and other threads are going. The feeling I am getting is that we are trying to sacrifice a potential innovation just for the sake of sticking to a goal which is not clearly defined and hasn't been revised or maybe even shared by the people working/willing to work on the project *now*. When Active was started everyone tried to be positive about it and trusted people working on it. We are not newbies. We know and love KDE and we are trying to do this just to benefit KDE. A bit of trust in us would not hurt, just like we did with Plasma, we did with Active, and will do with the next big thing out there. Ending this long mail: if you want to ask me for my proposed plans for this "new vision", they're currently the following: improve what we have, make it better, and get it up to speed with what we learned from these years, and what we can do now which wasn't there in 2007. If this is how you feel as well, then this discussion is pointless, and we likely still have a couple free beds in the house. We're waiting for you. _______________________________________________ Plasma-devel mailing list Plasma-devel@kde.org https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/plasma-devel