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Criticisms of KDE 3 Release Process
An anonymous submitter sent in a link to a recent email from the kde-devel list,
criticizing the release process. Hopefully the KDE guys can work out any problems and keep up the good work that we've seen in the past. Update: 03/10 14:20 GMT by M : One of the comments below points out that another KDE developer has made an extensive response to the original criticisms.
After all of the people recently complaining about the possiblity that previously open sourced software might have to succumb to the relentless tide of capitalism, I find it somewhat confusing that they are willing to find fault with KDE.
Right now, KDE looks to be the best hope for Linux to enter mainstream as a desktop OS. A VERY major portion of the impetus for users to not change is a lack of familiarity with the desktop. They don't care how it works, or what it does. They need their computer screen to be familiar to them the first time they experience their new OS. Once they're comfortable with it, they might abandon the "Windows look", but until then it will get users.
KDE could probably use not criticsism, but instead help from able computer scientists who want to see the open source movement triumph
KDE3 is early beta software.. Take a look at his first comments
1) Packages missing from the release entirely (1)
2) Rampant compile problems
3) Last-minute changes to build requirements that cannot be met by
many developers without an operating system upgrade (2)
4) Many outstanding bugs (3)
of course there's going to be problems with the software.
no one has made a post about the development of Woody and there are a lot more problems in it than KDE3. isn't this all part of the sotware development proccess? (emphasis on development)
The best part of developing free software is that it is low stress. People tend to get all bent out of shape about it. I think this is a pretty good example of what happens when people get stressed out about something that people are for the most part doing because they enjoy it.
So the KDE guys got together and were inspired to perform lots of last minute hacking. More power to them! So what if the 3.0 release is delayed or has a few issues. I think these three guys who signed the letter were just jealous because they weren't involved in the process.
I don't use KDE, and never liked it, but I have to stand up for the developers here. Just enjoy developing the software and stop bitching because there aren't 'hard freezes' before a release.
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
It's a failing of leadership (if the criticism is true). I think it's important to remember 2 things here:
In light of this lack of management discovery, maybe a couple programers will start to see all the recent criticizm's of software managers (as in recent stories here) may be not as useful as trying to actually support managers of projects (espically OSS ones) a little more.
This is in no way unique to KDE; large development projects sometimes stumble even with the best of intentions by those involved. The Open Source community is unique in that everyones dirty laundry gets aired in public. This can make the process seem unruly, haphazard and chaotic compared to closed development - the truth is that the same kind of conflicts, friction and occasional disasters occur there as well, but hidden from view.
I'm not a KDE user myself (I prefer gnome), but I'm confident and hopeful that the KDE development team will get past these problems and produce another good release. They've done very good releases in the past, and there's no reason for them not to do it again.
/Janne
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
... I'm glad Gnome is perfect.
:)
http://lists.kde.org/?t=101566017800001&r=1&w=2
And specifically, Dirk Mueller's response:
http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-core-devel&m=101567612 207504&w=2
I'm not saying one side is more right than the other -- merely that there are certainly two sides to this issue.
Gentoo Linux http://gentoo.org/
KDE isn't the only open-source project to jump the gun. Maybe the should release a KDE-3_dont_use tarball ;)
I personally don't use KDE because it feels cluttered and slow. I usually use Enlightenment 0.17 CVS (when I can compile it). It looks great, is lightening fast, and is already very stable.
Anywho, whatever happened to Katabase, of KOffice? I have been waiting for that before I try a switch from OpenOffice to KOffice...
Professionalism is a Good Thing(tm). However what your PHP calls professionalism might just be artificial. Sticking to a release date no matter the state of the code is unprofessional.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
My shop develops web based database software for the Marine Corps in the Okinawa, Japan region. Every application we support is based on a core set of libraries to handle all the ugly parts of talking through ODBC and the mundane parts of HTML Tags.
Although I've been coding for almost 16 years now, I've never been involved as a project manager for something this big. (our main app is rapidly approaching 100,000 lines) We have found through trial and error that code freeze/documentation periods are essential to ensure that we are all still using the same vesrions of the core libraries. This is especially critical for web page design as each page can almost be considered an object with a specific interface. If you change the interface on a page, you just broke every page that connects to that page. I'm sure the various components of KDE are no different.
KDE dev team, don't shoot the messenger! I think this is a fantastic opportunity for you to have your development practices analyzed by the slashdot community. I don't even think you could hire a consulting firm this honest and experienced.
I've dirtied my hands writing poetry, for the sake of seduction; that is, for the sake of a useful cause. --Dostoevsky
I didn't realize Adrian Bunk had decided to "participate" in the KDE release process too...
</sarcasm>
My Blog. Sela Ward can sell me long distanc
My recent builds of kde3 are looking rather nice. Everything runs smooth, the fonts look good, and a lot of older bugs no longer show up.
:)
Whats the problem here?
This is Neil blowing things out of proportion again. It's honestly nothing new. He has long history of lambasting anything to do with KDE3.
Others are having *excellent* experiences with KDE3. Just check the "fucking amazing" (sic) post, for example.
So yes, there are two sides to the story
(Please browse at -1 to read this comment.)
From: Waldo Bastian
To: kde-core-devel@mail.kde.org
Subject: Thoughts about releases.
Date: Sat, 9 Mar 2002 15:47:53 -0800
Releases are a funny thing, you know, we love them and we hate them. Before a
release everyone tends to get all excited and some people see a bunch of bugs
and problems and then go into panic-mode. I have seen it happening with about
every KDE release. Psychology must be playing tricks on the human mind.
Looking back though, KDE releases have all been pretty ok. 2.0 could have
been a bit more stable, but it is questionable whether delaying it would have
helped much.
Instead of going in panic-mode it is usually more constructive to check for
remaining problems and either fix them yourself, or report them to one of the
lists. Based on such reports a release coordinator will be able to get an
impression of the overall quality and make an informed decission whether to
release or to postpone.
Unlike popular believe there is no shame in delaying a release till it has
reached a quality that is desirable. It is up to the release coordinator to
decide when that point has been reached. The sole purpose of release
schedules is to coordinate develoment _WITHIN_ KDE itself. Distro's like
Conectiva, Mandrake or SuSE may find it inconvenient that a KDE release
happens later than originally planned but quite frankly that's their problem,
not KDE's.
(And in my case that's partly my problem because I happen to work for SuSE,
but I disgress).
I would also like to make use of the opportunity to thank Dirk for his hard
work on this release. Thank you Dirk!
And now let's have some fun finding those last remaining bugs....
Cheers,
Waldo
--
Advanced technology only happens when people take a basic idea and add to it.
-- Bob Bemer
(Please browse at -1 to read this comment.)
This guy has been moaning about KDE since ages. He may contribute to KDE a bit, but by God he pisses off nearly every developer.
lists.kde.org and dot.kde.org are where he trolls most.
He has:
Criticized *many* KDE developers good work, even though they are working for free in their spare time.
Would rather see Microsoft go off scott free and end up killing KDE than have Microsoft be punished for being a monopoly.
Has sabotaged KDE CVS because people didn't agree with him.
He now wants to lead KDE.
The guy has an agenda to cripple KDE anyway he can, by sowing discord and criticizing everyone. He shows no respect for peoples work and never apologizes even when he is completely wrong. Its a miracle KDE has put up with him so far.
I don't buy it (the complaint that is). The reasons for the changes seem to be for the long term good of KDE, and to keep the breakage of going from 3.0 to 3.1 in the future to a minimum.
I have found the KDE guys' release scheduling and management of high quality in the past, and judging from the minimum of hiccups I got building 3.0 RC1, I can say they're still top notch.
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
Three developers out of all of KDE's developers criticize the KDE dev process and it's newsworthy?
Now it's guaranteed to be picked up by other "news" sources and generate a bunch of useless controversy. Sometimes when I see what Newsforge (gag) puts out, I wonder if they have a secret agenda to discredit Open Source development. A quote from someone (Tina) at Newsforge about their policy of posting any and everything:
we assume that our readers are smart enough to separate the sheep from the goats
I've gotten this response from them before, and they don't seem to understand the difference between filtering crap and saying that they shouldn't post critical or negative commentary. Yes, by all means, run a negative story if it's important, but don't run crap -- positive or negative. Posting a diatribe by three KDE developers -- folks, that's crap.
In other words "don't look to us for news, because we don't do perform any kind of quality checking or the typical gatekeeper function you'd expect from real journalists. Someone submits it, we'll post it somewhere."
I'm not saying that it's wrong to report on genuine conflicts or negative stories when they're important, but this really doesn't qualify IMHO. When a site purports to be a news site, there should be some quality checking and filtering going on. Stories that are comprised of nothing more than a rant or stories that are obviously biased or outright false should not be picked up -- or at the very least have a disclaimer attached.
Microsoft must love the fact that Free and Open Source software development discussion takes place in the open where everyone can examine and dissect every personality conflict and internal bitchfest. It makes the Linux and Open Source community look like a bunch of fractious losers while no matter what Microsoft PR's department spews everyone marches in lock-step to it.
Sticking to a release date no matter the state of the code is unprofessional.
True, but if you don't do that, there will always be a few developers saying the code is not ready, and there's still work to be done. That's how releases end up getting ridiculously delayed.
It comes down to the responsibility of the developers. If there's a freeze coming up, have enough common sense to know that it's not arbitrary, and it's for the good of the project. Don't barf all over the code 2 weeks ahead of time just to get a whiz-bang feature in.
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
KDE 3.0 is currently in beta. This means that if it doesn't compile or is missing things then so be it. Beta software by definition isn't ready for general release. (I know redundant but you know...eventually the point may sink in)
The 2.4 series kernel and recent Patch penguin broohaha could be criticised for the same. In fact the 2.4 kernel has been called the "Kernel of pain" because of the problems. What this has done is force the development community to work harder, and even Linus is trying new things (automated patch integration into the tree). I believe that constructive criticiscm is always helpful, and a good sanity check BEFORE KDE 3.0 is released does not in any way take away from KDE. Perhaps the can avoid the pitfalls of the 2.4 series Kernel.
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
My Point presumes that you can have a rational system of managing a development process. It presumes that the QA process can be applied to life outside of dev issues.
Now I can see that the idea of putting in a bug report on a boss or supervisor is going to sound a bit funny. Sort of like putting in a bug report on Clinton or Bush.But what happened has to be documented someplace, it has to be analysed someplace, the fix has to be made somehow, And it has to be tested so that screw ups don't happen again. and of course, it has to be the right fix.
Now of course, the typical attitude this is the energetic use of a middle finger accompanied by shouting. Along with the conviction that damn well no-one should ever try this, because somebody will put a stop to this nonsense. No-one should ever change jobs, and everyone is always peechy keen.
God forbid that the process used to make sure that a software system works smoothly were ever used to make sure a human system runs smoothly. Besides, everyone knows that it is not needed. Everything always runs perfectly.
The major problems for most folks in something like this are on the points on making sure you have the right fix, and actually getting the fix rolling.
Of course this is unbelievable to many folks. What do you mean fix the System? everyone knows that it can't happen! Gee, what a maroon ...
Of course, if you don't fix it, it goes to hell.
Enjoy your handbasket.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
"A VERY major portion of the impetus for users to not change is a lack of familiarity with the desktop..."
I just wanted to mention that it wasn't the interface so much that makes me not us Linux, it's that I have no clue how to get hardware to work. Windows has me that spoiled. I'm so used to having neat little menu driven things I can run that allow me to get things up and running, that when I went to use Linux (KDE on Redhat, I believe), I was unable to find what I needed to get network and sound going.
You may chalk this up to me being a helpless newbie, but I don't have this problem with Windows or even Mac. I guess what I'm really saying is that KDE at 2.0 was fine, but tinkering with the hardware to make everything work was what turned me off. I admit that I didn't put all that much effort into it, but I only have so much time, you know?
Apple got the idea right, though. Look at what they did with OSX. They built upon the BSD Kernel (I think it was BSD... don't shoot me if I got it wrong. Please feel free to correct me, though) and made the interface with a target audience in mind. The result? I have a coworker who is able to tinker with his Mac, but he's never needed to know the root password to his machine.
Redhat's gotten close to this in 7.0. I really feel like 8 or 9 may be enough to get me going in the Linux world. A new version of KDE is icing on the cake.
"Derp de derp."
Well, if you want to talk about professionalism, it also is very unprofessional to bad mouth a project right before it's release.
A lot of the time, developers like to blow things a bit out of proportion and that's all well and good when your just around developers, but it is very bad to make such public comments.
We always had a general rule of thumb that we follow. Within a month of a release of our project, we never use the word 'core dump' around the management. Dumps are no big deal most of the time but it doesn't give management a warm and fuzzy feeling to hear the words 'core dump' so close to deadline.
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
> ./configure; make; make install
/usr/local/kde3
/usr/local/ /usr/local/qt-copy-XXX /usr/local/qt3
>>How do you uninstall?
This is a good question. It's really pretty easy,
acutally to try out things like this without interfering
with the package management system you use.
The key is using the "--prefix" configure option to
choose the target install directory.
1) Create your own target location
mkdir
export QTDIR=/usr/local/qt3
export KDEDIR=/usr/local/kde3
cp qt-copy-XXX.tar
tar xvf qt-copy-XXX.tar
ln -s
cd $QTDIR
./configure (+ options listed in README.qt-copy)
./make
tar xvf (kde-whatever-pkg.tar)
cd kde-whatever-pkg
./configure --prefix=$KDEDIR
make
make install
Now all the kde3 software you install like this goes
under $KDEDIR
If you want to uninstall it, just delete everything in
that directory. Simple, eh?
Neil here,
:-)
Well, the vote of no confidence won't come on Dirk until after 3.0 is out, for better or worse.
Question is, which one of Ryan, Charles, and myself is Padme?
Neil here,
What post are you talking about?
Now I'm going to have to start looking through your past posts to figure out just who you are. From the name I have to guess you're one of the dot.kde.org editors, but I'm not sure.
When you run into problems with GUI speed, consider your video adapter. Most of the processing needed to make things jump onto the screen is done by the video processor.
I consider Matrox to be the best video adapter for business (non-game) use. (Hitachi monitors are very sharp.)
I have a 200 MHz Pentium II with a Matrox adapter that is acceptably fast with KDE 2.
Bush's education improvements were
In every discussion of KDE, there is at least one person who comments that GNOME is better, but without providing support for the statements. I'm not saying this is wrong, but I don't understand it. What about GNOME strikes you as so much more advanced than KDE?
Bush's education improvements were
Why Gnome? What does it have that KDE lacks? I tried Gnome, didn't like it, went back to KDE.
KDE is developing FAST (unlike Gnome it seems), it was here before Gnome was. Why should people support Gnome instead of KDE?
It's funny, Gnome was started as a "free" alternative to KDE (back when Qt still had licensing-issues). But now it seems that of those two, KDE is the "more free" one. Gnome is influenced by corporations. Hell, one of it's chief developers (Ximian) is a for-profit corp! And certain chief-developer of Gnoma has openly suggested that Gnome should use *gasp* Microsoft-technologies!
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
"overall, kde is a good 'product' but i'm just too disappointed with the speed issue."
The major cause for slowness in KDE is caused by the linker in GCC. To ky knowledge, the fixed linker is order of magnitude faster, and that directly shows in startup-times in KDE. Unfortunately that fixed linker is not ready for release yet.
If you want more speed in KDE, go talk to GCC-team. KDE-team is well avare of the speed-issue, and they are working hard to make things faster in their end. However, ther's nothing they can do about the linker.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
I just compiled kgamma ( a KDE 2 kcontrol module ) for KDE 3, and it took no source changes, just a switch to the KDE 3 admin directory.
The biggest change needed to port this time are
perl -pi -e "s,QList,QPtrList,g" *.cpp *.h
KDE 3 isn't the radical jump that KDE 2 was. Porting isn't hard. And there's a nice large doc in the kdelibs sources describing the changes from 2 to 3 in kdelibs.
SuSE is really the nicest desktop OS I've used, IMO, possibly barring OSX. (That's *just* talking about the desktop experience, and not apps or OS). It blows away Red Hat and has a leg up on Mandrake... I'm looking forward to their KDE 3.1 based setup.
Incidently, so many features are hanging on the feature freeze for KDE 3.1 that that is the release that I'm really looking forward to. 3.0 is an updated API and updates on the core apps with very few killer features, other than speed and core changes... 3.1 is when the nifty features (many of which are already written) get integrated. Several of the developers who have pretty much wrapped up their code for 3.0 are seriously looking at 3.1. Remember - 3.0 is primarily a port and rework to provide a faster stable core with more functionality. 3.1 will actually use this new functionality to add new features.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
What I am told is, that is too much too fast for our company to consider using kde as a target platform. So keep it up and we will never be allowed to develop for KDE.
Get a free ipod.
Neil did not blow anything out of proportion. Uncensored opinions like these are the best, because you need some unpopular opinions to evaluate your goals and methods and so you can improve them along the way.
There have been some questionable events and changes in the past week within KDE development and the upcoming release. Since noone had yet the courage to express concerns about these changes, Neil stood up and did, with a firm voice.
The result is some strong but constructive discussions to improve the situation and do what is best for KDE. A second RC has been created and the results of testing it will decided if there will be a final 3.0.0 release next or a delay if necessary.
Yes, us KDE developers disagree sometimes. We're not always best friends. But we respect other opinions and keep our common friend in mind: KDE itself.
To add some perspective, Neil (and I) have both considered being release coordinator for upcoming releases. So we are definitely not just whining, we are prepared to do something about it. My only reason of doubt is whether I can find enough time to do a right job without compromising work and study efforts.
Well, I was close. He runs a website, just not dot.kde.org.
:-)
Maybe I owe an apology to Dre, Navindra, and the rest.
3.1 will have a whole slew of honest new features at the application level. As I said, it's more of a judgement call and open to interpretation, but I'd still call it 80% port and rewrite to interface to the new underlying features, 10% new artwork and other graphics, 5% new flash (useless features like the sidebar to the kicker menu) and 5% new stuff. Plus a good portion of stuff like documentation and translation (which takes us well above 100%, but you get the idea).
I especially like that the 2.x config files conversion is being given a high priority, so the shift from 2.x to 3.x will be pretty much transparent (not that the beta is lacking some config translations, notably and dangeriously KMail).
Again... it's a matter of opinion - this is a very complete port and rewrite (for speed) of the core libs. The apps have been adjusted to take mild advantage of the new underlying layer. I say that's part of the port process. You might disagree... we'd both be right.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
I noticed this complaint reported on Sourceforge yesterday. All I can say is, based on my experimentation with RC2 and relatively recent CVS's, things don't seem to be anywhere near as bad as the complaint implies.
Realistically, what I found was only ONE serious bug that keeps me from using the KDE3 CVS release as my current desktop - and the reply to the complaint mentioned it:
Except for khtml problems I would say KDE is in a pretty good shape right nowThe big problem right now, from what *I* have noticed (there may be others, but I haven't stumbled on them) is the broken focus. I couldn't write this post in KDE3, for example, because while in the textarea, the "focus" is actually still on the links in the page. Pressing the Enter key while typing here in KDE3 would cause the browser to jump to the currently focussed link (the first one on the page) instead of putting an "enter" into the textarea...
While the fact that this huge focus problem has been in khtml for so long and (as far as I can tell from what I get out of "cvs update kde" from anoncvs.kde.org) isn't being addressed at all disturbs me (bugs.kde.org now even has a bug entry set up to track all of the 'duplicates' that are all permutations of "keyboard focus in khtml is broken"!), the fact is that other than this ONE bug (which may conceivably only still be there because of the feature freeze preventing a reworked set of khtml focus code from being committed to fix it), KDE3 was looking like it was actually in quite good shape...
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
No, but a good chunk of it, like the Javascript and rendering engine, new file dialogue, improved printing and support for streaming I would call "core changes", which moves them to that 80% I spoke of. It affects apps across the board, but aren't really new features at the app level. Noatun's new features are mostly derived from changed to the aRts underlying engine. KMail did get some substantial app improvements and new features.
Take a look at the feature list for 3.1, however, and where the changes occured for 3.0, and it's pretty much core changes (including rewrite for speed and port) in 3.0 and app level changes generally got pushed into 3.1.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Go back to my original message - if I wasn't clear, my point was: "KDE 3.0 is a port and core rewrite for speed and new API. The apps are rewritted to expose those changes, but no really new features at the app level that aren't directly related to the core changes (with some exceptions like KMail)".
The phrase "Now you" implies that I changed my position during this thread. Untrue - read my original posts in totality. Maybe I mislead, but my position has been pretty durn solid. I'm going by what I read in the dev-list and by watching the CVS commits, not in what gets published.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien