From kde-core-devel Mon Nov 01 20:58:44 2010 From: Andras Mantia Date: Mon, 01 Nov 2010 20:58:44 +0000 To: kde-core-devel Subject: Re: "Cornelius's grand plan" - Merging KDElibs into Qt Message-Id: <201011012258.51665.amantia () kde ! org> X-MARC-Message: https://marc.info/?l=kde-core-devel&m=128864380720808 MIME-Version: 1 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="--nextPart2267477.OGzjHOBmZG" --nextPart2267477.OGzjHOBmZG Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Sunday 31 October 2010, Mark Kretschmann wrote: > Hey all, >=20 > after reading the whole thread that started with Chani's mail ("why > kdelibs?"), I think the noise level has become a bit too much there. > Cornelius had proposed this rather daring idea: >=20 > http://lists.kde.org/?l=3Dkde-core-devel&m=3D128842761708404&w=3D2 [..] > What do you think about it? I will ruin the show, and say: do we want this? What is the goal for KDE=20 (and not KDE eV, for which the goals are written down). What do we want=20 with KDE itself? I will say what I want: the best desktop available,=20 that is a pleasure to use and pleasure to write applications for it. And=20 I'm egoist enough to say, that I also want the fame part: that it is=20 recognized that this product was created by people who believe in open=20 source and this people are those who form the KDE project. Is it the best desktop available? For me yes, but it is not, in=20 general. Unfortunately it still has quite some bugs, in many areas. I=20 always try to believe how nice and easy to use is, and see that I end up=20 apologizing for this broken feature or that, or fixing myself the=20 desktop of others, who are beginners in KDE. So that is clearly work to=20 do. And where we need to work nowadays is mostly the applications. Not=20 only (e.g a notable exception being the printing system and another=20 famous bug I don't want to mention directly), but in many case. They=20 want a desktop that doesn't crash, a browser that just works, an email=20 application that is easy to use, and so on. Is it a pleasure to write apps for it? For me, yes, it is. In the "why=20 kdelibs" thread, lots of the nice technologies were listed. For=20 newcomers, again, it isn't perfect. And I don't say newcomers, who are=20 interested in one or other part of KDE libraries, but who are interested=20 in KDE as a whole. This is mostly a documentation issue, though. The=20 library code itself I find to be good quality, with much less bugs than=20 in the applications (now somebody can give me bugzilla kdelibs vs. apps=20 statisctics to prove me I'm wrong...I talk about my daily experience). The monolithic approach and being an extra lib on top of Qt might also=20 scare some developers. The question is, how much do we sacrifice to get=20 those developers. Do we break SC and BC again to try to do it "right",=20 and piss off all the current app developers, who need to port they=20 lovely project again. And do the same with the users, as there won't be=20 regression free porting. I'm not against reducing inter-module=20 dependencies, or making it easy to check out part of a library and=20 build/install only that, but I'm against doing a full library=20 restructuring which requires the application developers to port their=20 application to a new version. Remember, we still did not fully port the=20 applications to KDE4 technologies! And I bet there are still quite some=20 Qt3 and KDE3 support module usage in the main kde modules themselves=20 (eg. korganizer was cleaned up only recently). Instead of doing it, we should provide good code examples, good=20 tutorials and a good tool for developing. Like Qt Creator is for Qt=20 projects. Be it an extension of Creator, or even better a good KDevelop=20 (which has the same problems as of now as I said before: it is buggy and=20 feels unfinished). And then something that is about fame and recognition: we tried to=20 build a brand, we try to show that open source is innovative and can=20 produce cool technologies. I'd not like to see that our work disappears,=20 by being merged into something (Qt). If it happens we will sadly see=20 what we have now with webkit and also phonon. Companies have no idea=20 they are KDE technologies. I have no problem with Qt itself, it is a=20 very good library and the base of KDE. I'm glad Nokia made it available=20 under free licenses. I'm glad they are more open than ever. But it is=20 still a product of a company, it is not the product of a community. Even=20 if former and current KDE people work there. And this is related to=20 licensing: do you want to give your code to a company to do whatever=20 they want with it? To market it as their product? I have no problem if=20 somebody makes money based on KDE, but I'd like to see that the credit=20 is also given to KDE.=20 =20 So what do we need? I think we need to work on three areas: =2D advertize the good things we have in the libraries (marketing=20 material, tutorials, blog and forum posts also in non-KDE related=20 websites, even books) =2D make sure that people can actually easily use what we advertize=20 (tutorials, API documentation, development tools) =2D bugfix our applications as much as we can, so end users enjoy the=20 power of our platform I know, people cannot be forced to do this or that in an open source=20 project, and we shouldn't do, still I think the above should be the=20 goals of the project and the steps that needs to be done in order to=20 achieve the goals. Andras =20 --nextPart2267477.OGzjHOBmZG Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name=signature.asc Content-Description: This is a digitally signed message part. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.15 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQBMzyoLTQdfac6L/08RApiKAKCBNQqwkM4W7vIGwiD1RejUaMg1VQCeMF8u XXsAALLz+C6R3TmynOApUE8= =R99O -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --nextPart2267477.OGzjHOBmZG--