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List:       koffice-devel
Subject:    Re: thoughts from community member on a split
From:       Boudewijn Rempt <boud () valdyas ! org>
Date:       2010-10-27 22:13:28
Message-ID: 201010280013.28552.boud () valdyas ! org
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On Wednesday 27 October 2010, Andrij Zinchenko wrote:

> 2. Confusion - I am not the only one who was waiting for the Beta 3.
> The confusion of many people now is not about the fact that it does
> not arrive on servers, but because no one ever cared to tell the
> community what is going on and that the release is postponed. 3 lines
> of news on site saying that the release is postponed would not take
> much of the time. But withought these 3 lines community feels that no
> one cares about communication. Again, this undermines the trust and
> the community.

The problem is, we didn't know either exactly how to proceed either. By now 2.3 beta3 \
has been tagged and can be packaged. Whether 2.3 will be released from the current \
trunk or whether Group B will release is a big question, unfortunately. We can't \
really give more information than we have ourselves since we're really struggling \
right now. There's also the issue that quality-wise, 2.3 cannot be released yet. \
Speaking just for Krita, we still have a fair amount of release blockers that need to \
be fixed.

Also, a "split" is perhaps the wrong word: there will be a group containing all or \
nearly all applications that currently part of KOffice, maintained by the current \
maintainers (kexi, kpresenter, krita at least) as well as a fork of kword, but one \
that will be maintained by people who have been denied involvement in its development \
before. We are confident that we will be able to improve support for ODF, for the \
Microsoft file formats, for the features needed to support those file formats, to \
improve performance and stability. And, most importantly, to foster an environment \
where people have fun hacking, are respected for their contributions and are seen as \
community members.

As for which apps the other group will contain or fork and then maintain, I don't \
know. It won't contain Krita for sure, unless Krita is forked under another name.

> The problems of KOffice community:

...

> I think it truly exists. Developers often have their conferences on
> writing code, all kinds of  sprints, but they rarely work on solving
> human interaction problems among them. And I this is what we got to do
> now. We need to have some kind of reconciliation sprint or something
> like that.

I really appreciate your long and thoughtful mail, and it hurts me to have to answer \
that it's really too late...

The problem is, the issues in the KOffice community have been festering for a long \
time now. Your proposal is good, but we had the first reconciliation sprint in 2007 \
already (I organized it, in my house). It did not solve anything. In 2008, Thomas \
Zander left the KOffice community because the rest of the community asked him to; he \
returned however when the community decided to make one app (kpresenter) user-ready \
first. Since the whole community was focussing on kpresenter back then, we did not \
protest at that moment. Definitely our fault.

I disagree with everything Thomas Zander has brought forward in this discussion, \
indeed I feel that he completely misses the point. But I don't think that there's any \
point discussing causes, apportioning blame, exchanging recriminations. I've been in \
this community for a long time now and I cannot see it heal.

By now, so much has happened that the only possible solution is to make a clean \
break. Discussing why the split is necessary is not productive anymore.

-- 
Boudewijn Rempt | http://www.valdyas.org
Ceterum censeo lapsum particulorum probae delendum esse
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