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KDEvelopers on KDE Users
An anonymous reader writes: "KDE developers spent some time this week on their mailing list discussing what motivates them and the extent to which user concerns figure in their decisions. Dennis E. Powell's column on Linux and Main draws excerpts from the exchange, in which he participated, and says that he believes a lot more of this kind of discussion is needed."
Someone said that Open Source will never effectively work on the desktop, because it's far too unstable; you can't program anything really useful for it without spending a lot of time and money nursing it through the inevitable changes the platforms around it create. I respectfully disagree, because I think that whenever there is a will, there's a way, and that when people need something, they're going to create it or maintain it.
There is a great deal of burnout being created by users demanding features in software that the developer isn't being paid for, too. KDE has mostly escaped this thus far, however there is some speculation that GNOME has more momentum because it's the underdog. Let's hope these two projects can continue to bring great things to the Linux desktop.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Oh My God
Cuckoo Cocoon have I come to, too soon for you?
It's good that the KDE people are doing research into such things, as companies with successful GUIs like Apple and Microsoft have done.
Although with what little funding they have, it is difficult to do much more than this sort of 'market research' polling. Actual experiments set up to monitor GUI usage and human reactions may be more difficult to organise.
I tried a few times to get up and running with KDevelop. Have a KDE programmers book at home, tried every tutorial I could find.. And the results? The KDE programming book doesn't use KDevelop and the best result up till now is a KIO slave for hello world..
What I found to be the biggest problem with KDevelop is the lack of up to date documentation and tutorials. Whatever I found was always based on older versions, different templates etc. I haven't found 1 tutorial which I could go through from beginning to the end and end up with the results I should accourding to the description.
KDevelop is attractive to programmers who are not fluent in KDE, C++ and QT and lacking basic, but up to date and included, tutorials is IMHO one of the biggest things that stops new programmers from using it.
Nobody expects the spanish inquisition!
This article really exposes some issues about why many open source projects 'fail', or look like failures, in the eyes of many 'average joe' users.
No one is getting paid, therefore, things are only as good as what a developer wants, not what an end user may need.
Most of the comments I read focused on money. The problem is, I may *want* to donate money or actually pay for code. The way KDE in particular is coded, though, it makes it hard for others (the Kompany) to write software worth paying for on it (relative to other platforms). So there's a big disconnect there. If more care was taken with the underlying framework, it'd be much easier to have people writing apps that work with less concern for portability - the framework would help take care of that.
Tranisitioning from Win 95->98, or 98->2000 worked pretty well for most apps (excluding games - I dunno about those). People didn't need to go back and recompile apps and redistribute them, most just worked. Why can't it be that easy under KDE?
Back to the payment issue - many of these developers seem *averse* to ever making money from their efforts. Of course the developers don't *need* KDE users, but eventually the users won't need the developers becaus they'll migrate to something else. Without a critical mass of users, any project falls into obscurity. It's not impossible to imagine RH10, for example, not bundling KDE4 because early tests show *nothing* from KDE3 will work on it. "So what?" would be the answer from most KDE devs.
Instead of trying to capitalize on their efforts by creating something which is useful beyond their own immediate needs and longer lasting, many of these developers seem to wear it as a badge of honor that they are *only* in this for themselves, to hell with everyone else.
It'd be great to see something *like* Ximian for KDE - I prefer KDE to Gnome, but at this rate, Ximian seems to be going after user's needs more, and I may just have to switch at some point. DE aside, it's sad to see *SO MUCH POTENTIAL* being thrown away on projects that don't organize themselves effectively.
When you're 5, you have the attitudes and behaviours and respect for others that a 5 year old has (regardless of getting paid!). When you're 10, your attitude, behaviour and respect for others changes and is usually more mature. Same for 15, 20, etc. I don't see that same type of growth pattern happening in the KDE project - it's growing technically, but stagnating attitudinally(?).
creation science book
- People say they do it in their spare time and that they don't care if they have users. Then they complain when they can't get drivers, and then they complain they don't get commercial software, and then they complain they don't get commercial backing or support.
That is a really good point. But it sounds like it could more like disgruntlement that they are doing work and other aren't, in their perception at least.Still no woody, so still no KDE3 debs.
Granted not ever OS developer craves attention, and some don't even desire it, but deep down its always welcome.
I'm not an OS developer, but being self-employeed, its sometimes hard to get motivated, other times its very easy.
The OS community needs to become much more appreciative to prevent burnout . The article says it best.
Tournament Management Online &
Open source coders are more interested in having fun than in producing usable software?? Stallman must be rolling in his gra..er...chair...
If this is a surprise to anyone,they haven't been using linux lately. It's a textbook case of having NO interest, talent, or effort spent on making something usable to an *end-user*. This article and the related discussion threads explain better than anything else could why that is so.
By contrast, look at Mac OSX. Apple decided to make thier next release run on a unix core, and voila, for the first time in 20 odd years, a damn fine user environment for Unix! Methinks it was about time someone gave a shit about the users instead of endlessly insulting them for not being 3l337 enough to use what they were given.
there were some points like "this is my hobby, my free time, I dont want to be critizised because of what I have done with it", which brought my attention. The user feedback - even in form of critics - is essential for this kind of hobby. If you dont want to be critizised - dont publish it, if you want to become better - ask for it. And if you want the community to answer to your requests, give something back and answer to their ones.
The good software meets its users needs. And hobby or not, if you want to be good in it, users feedback will only make you better.
- No money - no responsibility. Money in - responsibility out.
I agree. It is for this reason that companies want to buy support contracts for otherwise free software. For most people in our capitalist society, money is an incredible motivator.This may well be a bad thing.
Users tend to forget that there are many different views on how a project should progress. Just because a developer does not implement a certain feature the way the user wants (or at all), the developer isn't "ignoring" the user. Developers have to find one way which pleases him and the users the most. This necessarily means that the implementation will deviate from almost all individually preferred implementations. Guess why software has so many tweakable parameters, many hidden deep inside configuration files or registry entries. Users who fail to accept that the developers are not on a mission to please every individual user are adding frustration to thin-skinned developers' lives and further the "I don't care about users" attitude. Constructive criticism is always welcome, but people who want their personal pet feature implemented for free should try to put themselves into the position of the developer.
The idea of KDE was planted in October 1996 when Matthias Ettrich posted a note to a newsgroup.
Speaking of which, I found it at Google-groups. Google was not interested in putting it in their Usenet timeline, though.
Personally I think that the KDE guys should have a special version of KDE that logs the users interactions and then sends it to a central database. Or perhaps rather than a special version, a first use config option - "do you mind if we gather stats about your usage of KDE?" This would allow the KDE guys to profile different types of user, and see which types of user makes use of which functionality. Just as KDE has themes for visual elements, so it could have themes for menus and buttons, based on the user profiles generated by the logging version of KDE.
The result of this could be that the first time you started up KDE you would be able to choose from three profiles, roughly translating to 'programmer/advanced user', 'intermediate user' and 'average Joe user'.
Rarest of all are requirements and architectural documents. Essentially there is no way to validate most Open Source Software because there exists no requirements or architecutural documents. Anything goes.
These factors make real, legitimate quality assurance an impossibilty. At best QA on Open Source Software consists of ad hoc bug fixes and low level "lint" style syntax checks. Without requirements documents, there is no way to achieve QA in-the-large.
I think the reason why all this discussion about kde is taking place is because most of us use it and that makes us feel strongly about it.
For the critics of kde I would ask them to think if they would take the time to talk about an unsuccessful project.
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
This is good recogntion that Open Source need not mean non-profit, and that a revenue-generating production model could have positive effects on the project at hand...
For most people in our capitalist society, money is an incredible motivator.
I hate to say it, but it is exactly for that reason that the system works so well (not perfect, but the best for now). We are all like littles bees, which gather the more pollen they can and take it to their eeves. It is just that instead of pollen, it's bucks... In the long run, it's all the same. We strive to become bigger to feed our sense of survival and our fear of not achieving it. Money in the capitalist model is like a carrot at the end of the stick...
Well, not enough cafein yet...
Back to work!
I'd rather be sailing...
Maybe. I know writing docu is not the most entertaining use of free time. But then again, most software I can get up and running with the README and INSTALL files plus tha man pages. A programname --help gives me usualy more than enough info.
Maybe there's not enough "end-user" docu, but for me there more than enough "docu" in general. (besides, what's the last docu you got with windows, office etc..?)
The real problem at hand here is that there's way to much information. If you want to get up and running, endless files with class-descriptions and nitty-gritty details are not what you need. A simple, but compete application step by step will do the trick a lot better. A tutorial.
And there's hardly anything more frustrating than trying to follow such a tutorial and finding that the files, are not there, that extra parameters are needed, that userinterfaces have been changed completely etc.
Nobody expects the spanish inquisition!
The problem with the KDE programming book is known, the simple ansver is that the book was written before KDE 2.0 and the API changed sligtly before final release.
Working code for the examples in the book can be downloaded. Don't remember the URL, look in your book or do a serch.
[Ok I got flamed for my incomprehensable spelling last time I mentioned this, but no other real feedback. My spelling and gramma are no better so feel free to flame away!.]
Statatistics are a bit better than neural nets, but a neural nets is good for working out how to use the stats.
As well as the 'he never does that' approach, you also need to give the user a carrot and stick to train the interface, maybe even a fuzzy stick crtl+ = I want to do this, ctrl+shift+ = I want to do this, but only under current conditions.
The initial interface should be fairly open,
Microsoft tried the 'intelegent' interface before and produced shit head the paper clip, and those nasty hiding menus
on second thoughts the menus maybe not that nasty, the home user functions were shown, but power user functions where hidden, the adverage power user would have been able to work out how to turn the evil menus off.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I personally wouldn't trust anything written by DEP about KDE. He has been known to go on personally bashing KDE developers and contributors in his articles, instead of presenting real arguments. This seems to be attributed to some kind of an ancient personal hostility DEP has towards the KDE developers, which may be traced back to a political background, no less.
You see, about two months ago, DEP was behind an editorial on Linux And Main that blamed the KDE developers for promoting antisemitism and nazism (!), believe it or not.
Here's an excerpt from that article:
It seemed as if the mystery had finally been solved.
The mystery is what the "K" in KDE stands for. There have been various explanations offered over the years, but nothing has "stuck."
For a time last week, one might have had reason to suppose that "K" was chosen because it is the letter that most resembles a goose-stepping soldier, arm raised in a salute not widely seen since the dark days of the early 1940s.
You can read the whole thing here.
This is something that has troubled me for a while.
All software methodologies seem to state that the software should meet the user requirements. It always seemed to me that it would be hard for a OS project to compete in the mainstream if its users are not developers.
What needs to happen is that Desktop Linux projects (or other similar projects) need to focus on MAKING THE PROJECT SUCCESSFUL, rather than fulfilling developer's desires.
Alas, this seems hard to achieve.
Then again, who would like all software to be free relying only on unpaid developers (or corporate slaves)? Personally, I enjoy working for SOFTWARE companies.. wouldn't want that to change because too many people are giving out too much Corporate AID to poor starving Corporations and individuals..
I always thought the FSF was kinda nuts.. this confirms it.
If you're a KDE developer, either set up a company or, in the short term, actually ACT like you WANT money. They don't - they act like money is some sort of disease and they are so much more holy because money doesn't enter in to their development mindset. If you WANT money, COMPORT yourself like you DESERVE money. "CODE IT YOURSELF", "THIS IS MY HOBBY", etc. don't get you many people who want to give you money. Contrast this with the Snort story - it WAS a hobby, but the guy treated it like a business. That's a niche market. If KDE developers rallied together, many could make a decent living just making a good DE and making it easy to develop good apps for it. KBASIC would be something we could pay $ for if
1. It helped create good, stable apps which ran on multiple versions of KDE (within reason)
2. It had a good installation routine.
One shell file, RPM or a few binaries that could install the KDE app in multiple platforms (Alpha, Intel, etc) with a good VE under the KBASIC banner would be worthy of $49 -> $99 easily. Instead, projects like this linger on in 'hobby' mode for YEARS.
creation science book
To most OS developers, their projects ARE "successful" because "success" is defined as having the project work the way they wanted to. Having numeroud end users is normally NOT the definition of success, nor is making something 'easy to use' in most cases either.
"If you want something that 'just works', go use Windows".
Actual quote from IRC conversations with different project developers over the past 8 months. I guess the attitude can't get much clearer. They don't WANT end users using their stuff, only themslves. WHY it's published on the internet instead of simply their ~/kewlProjects/ dir is beyond me, though.
creation science book
One peeve about end user documentation is the plethora of arcane options and excess configurability. I think this is part of your peeve too. When starting to use a new piece of software, too much time needs to be spent sorting the wheat for the chaff. The useful information is often buried amidst bizarre and rarely used options: e.g.:
I've been wanting to help the KDE project myself, my main interest being noatun (I believe its interface is a bit lacking). Being no expert I contacted noatun's coordinator on my thoughts, he said sure jump in and help. Since then I've been looking at the KDE architecture documents, it's a very impressive architecture (I think most C++ programmers would agree with me) that has opened up my mind to the possibilities of extensibility. But at the same time it is also a daunting architecture, I just want to learn a small part of it, but to do that I have to learn about most of it. Some people may disagree, but for a hobbyist amature programmer, it sure is. I hope someday I will be able to contribute, but for now I'm still learning.
I prefer GNOME to KDE, yet I use KDE, why?
The GNOME UI is much better, yet KDE is more stable. Stability is much more important than pretty pictures and I can live with it.
There is significant scope for user growth which will only come from a more polished and more user orientated User Interface.
There are many good reasons to write free software: education, personal need, exposure, generosity, and altruism. But idealism will only carry you so far, and at some point, you need to feed and clothe yourself.
Money is more than a way of buying "stuff" -- it is a social contract between individuals, a symbolic binder that defines relationships and responsibilities. For "free" software, the lack of any "binder" between developer and user is a problem that must be addressed.
All about me
Good user feedback is essential to a non-commercial free software project, but bad user feedback can kill it. It is the difference between writing
"I love your software, but wouldn't it be cool if it could do XYZZY?"
and
"Your software sucks because it can't do XYZZY!"
The first kind of feedback makes the developers feel appreciated, the second make them think if this is really how they want to spend their free time.
So users essentially have the choice of whether they will be part of the solution, or part of the problem.
Some other user advice:
- Never make demands. It is increadible aggrevating when someone think they have a right to your free time. This also includes formulations like "your project must do XYZZY, otherwise it looks unprofessionel".
- Never make threats, even if you think of them as facts. This includes "unless you implement XYZZY, I'll have to switch to ". If you want to switch, just do it, don't advertise it.
- Never, ever try to take the user community hostage. E.g. "The developer isn't listening to the users, because he doesn't implement XYZZY."
Always remember, it is the developer who (perhaps) do you a favor by releasing his code. You are not doing the developer a favor by using the code. If you feel that relation emotionally stressful, gratis software is probably not for you. Find someone you can pay for the software (whether it is open source or not), in that case it becomes an ordinary economic transaction, where the two parties are equals.
Ok, maybe that's a bit strong, but user suggestions tend to attack the symptom of an underlying problem, not the problem itself. And that's when they are good suggestions. Many suggestions just display the user's lack of understanding of his own needs or the software's capabilities -- perhaps caused by a deficiency in the documentation.
Even users that aren't morons usually aren't programmers. So a genuinely good idea can be ignored as well because of a failure to communicate. They don't know the jargon. They may not understand the program structure of the functions they want to change, so the suggestion of a good feature sounds like the rantings of the uneducated.
Figuring out what would actually benefit the user is a non-trivial task and is definitely NOT just implementing user suggestions.
What's a sig?
Here's me thinking I'm giving a good idea to the KDE community and I get modded as over-rated. Strange are the ways of the Slashdot moderator.
If you haven't already, check out the comments made to his posting. It's funny to think that something that got dismissed so easily by a number of people is now considered a large part of the way Linux "is".
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
'Issue': KDE is driven by the desires of evil developers who dont care what users want, are arrogant, and rude to anybody who asks for feature xyz: therefore open source is flawed since all projects must be similar.
First of all, as a general rule, telling somebody their work 'sucks' because feature xyz is missing and needs to be changed will never be well received by a developer. Open Source or commercial. Try it.
Second, the only guaranteed support you'll ever get is the one you paid for. This is why distributions exist and why they offer pay-for support. Good will usually comes when it is given first.
Third, the author seems to think the motivations of Open Source developers differ from commercial ones. I recall in particular the quote "I do this because it's cool" and the criticism following it.
Commercial developers have exactly the same motivations, they do things because they are cool.
Want fast turnover in your company? Keep your programmers working on boring projects. See how good your 'code' is after that.
The author laments about backwards compatability. I compare and respond with: "who the hell wants Windows 1.0 compatability anymore"-- in fact, there isn't a single programmer I know that doesn't twitch violently at the thought of writting win16 software much less supporting it. KDE has been evolving at a dramatic speed. 3.0 is the version has brought it into it's age in my opinion. Everybody I know who actually uses KDE doesn't touch or need 1.0 apps anymore.
I'll finish by commenting on my expericence dealing with/working on commercial software. Most of it sucks monkey balls. It's spaghetti, crap, driven by tight deadlines and endless kludges to fix issues just enough to meet the requirements. 3/4 of the stuff would get laughed of usenet if the code was posted. With open source, distributions and companies can evaluate exactly what they are getting and make changes as is needed. I'll take that freedom over closed binary crap anyday.
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
I believe that the core problem with KDE/Gnome and the concept of "Linux on the desktop" is due to a lack of focus on what is most important for achieving this. If you look at the two most popular desktop environments today - windows & macintosh - they are both designed with two important things: Usability, and backwards compatibility.
Taking the view that developers are building the software for developers only is a bad direction to go in. If open source developers want their software to reach a wide audience, and to be of the maximum use to the largest number of people, then they need to focus on what users want, not just what is fun to code. Sure, they're doing it on their spare time - and no one can tell them how they should be going about their hobby. And if some is just writing code for fun, then so be it. But if the open source community really wants to achieve anything more than a small, obscure place in the desktop market and the mindshare of the world at large, then some of the bigger issues really need to be thought through.
Backwards compatibility is a big part of this. Each major revision of KDE has broken both source and binary compatibility with previous releases. These have been 2-3 years apart, and it could certainly be argued that this is such a long time in this industry and much has changed since then, with regards to what a modern desktkop environment is epected to provide, so it's necessary to improve the software. This is all well and good for us linux geeks who like to upgrade their machine every week, but in the Real World (TM), this is not always the case - people buy software, and expect it to last longer than a couple of years. Yes, many people choose to run the latest & greatest version of office/photoshop/whatever, but there's nothing stopping you from running software from 1996 on your latest Windows XP installation. You're not constantly forced to upgrade each of your applications because the platform is changing underneath your feet. And software developers can target an older version of the platform in order to cater for users with older systems, safe in the knowledge that they do not have to make the tradeoff between supporting only the "current" API standard (thus limiting users), or having to support multiple versions to cater for a wider user base running different versions of the platform.
I believe this is one of the main reasons that there is almost no commercial applications available for KDE. With no commercial applications, and only a very limited set of useful "mainstream" open source applications (and i am referring to things like word processors & spreadsheets, not the thousands or irc clients and logfile viewers littered around freshmeat), there is little incentive for users to switch to linux as their desktkop environment. Can I run visio? Can I run photoshop? Can I run quark express? No. If these were critical applications for my business, then linux would simply not be an option for me.
In order for a desktop environment to succeed, it needs applications. To get applications, a desktop environment needs to have a stable, consistent set of APIs that *does not change faster than developers can code for them*. For this to happen, there needs to be a generally-agreed-on focus for development, and the willingness of developers to sort out the prioirities and put the interests of the project ahead of their desires to work on the most "fun" code that they feel like at any given time.
The role of creator carries with it a certain burden, that by being the creator, it is inherently difficult to accept/deal with criticism or "suggestions." You pour so much into your creation, and when all you get is, "How you can make this better" it starts to undermine your motivation and animation. I mean, that's why normally programmers in larger companies don't deal with end users.
One: The company knows that programmers are grouchy creative types and aren't especially good talking to l-users.
Two: If they (programmers) hear all the complaints or "suggestions" they will just get frustrated and demotivated.
I can say this is true from personal experience. I work for a small company, where I am both programmer and tech support. I find that I slip into despair about the job I have done less when someone else deals with the tech support "issue." Since, clients/users don't call you to tell you how wonderful your product is, or how they love X feature, or how it's the greatest thing since sliced bread... you are left dealing with the nitpicks (some legitimate and some not).
It ends up making you kick the cat a lot *G*.
So, my advice is to pat your friendly neighborhood developer on the back more often. Talk about what you LOVE in a separate email all by itself. Don't combine a "I love X feature... but...". If yer gonna compliment, send an email with JUST that.
Feature request should be polite and humble. Try to be more questioning (Socratean method), rather than demanding. Lead the programmer to make the same conclusion that you have, but don't just throw it in his face. Lead him to it with questions. He will feel empowered, not helpless and frustrated and put upon. You are building teamwork, not a master-slave relationship.
Toddlers are the stormtroopers of the Lord of Entropy.
There is a German saying "Money does not stink". It is in reference to the fact that Money is the only meaningful way we have devised that formalizes a barter system. No other barter system will improve this because money is neutral and does not rely on age, or other factors.
For example in Japan money was rice. The more rice you had the richer you were. Problem though is that rice spoiled and rice could be grown. And at some point more rice does not matter anymore.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Personally I see this as a two way street. And one that certainly hasn't had a lot of two way traffic.
I like to wander around kde-look.org a lot. And from the comments posted there, the average joe's "criticism" consists of "this sucks." Or "blue sucks." Or "my desktop is green, why the hell would I use this." Hardly constructive by any stretch of the imagination.
I feel that there should be some sense of loyalty between the developers and the end users - but not directly. If a developer is loyal to their project -- and they are, more often than not, that's why they do it -- then they should want to see their project do well in the open source community. If a user is loyal to a project -- which they often are as can be evidenced by the KDE/Gnome rivalry -- then they should do whatever they can to help the developer see things in a different perspective. Perhaps a different angle for an interface.
Personally, I am a piss-poor coder. I love to code, but I think that my contributions would only work to set the community back. Does that mean that my suggestions are worthless? I have a background in interface design so shouldn't my suggestions (when well formed) be taken worth a grain of salt? Rather than ignored because "I didn't write the code."
I use open source software. I am an end user. I understand that my software will crash. That's my responsibility. If I want to keep using it, or convert others to it, I need to respond constructively to those that have put in countless hours of free time to use something that most take for granted. It's the "silver spoon" syndrome.
And, in response to the "you're not paying me to write xyz" comments... did any of you pay for vi? Perl? Regex functionality? We're a community. We all take what we haven't paid for. The least we can do is help make more stuff for someone else to take without paying for it.
I don't think this is a problem of open source (or free) software per se. I think many software vendors also fail to deliver what the enduser needs.
Remember deactivating Clippy?
Ever seen really stable software?
I think many of the problem that the article discusses are valid and important, but I also think, that a great lot of it is caused by the usual conflict between programmer/techie against enduser. No programmer loves writing documentation.
No programmer likes to build (in his/her view) pointless features.
Bye egghat.
-- "As a human being I claim the right to be widely inconsistent", John Peel
When it boils down to usabilty, KDE/KWin is nothing much more than a silly rippoff of the crappy Windoze CUA model. It's so much Windows in it's inflexability and "user-railroading" that it quite often just plain SUXX0RS!.
The KDE/KWin Enviroment is closer to Windows than to a well configurated Linux/Enlightenment enviroment.
And for users and coders working togther:
It's ALL about communication. If at all, we need a quick and easy way for controling usability and getting users and coders together to discuss the issues arising. Special usability mailinglists of forums for every project would kinda be the thing.
But a former Windoze user to lazy to switch to an enviroment that is so usable he can't even imagine it is NOT the right person to judge usability.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Typical Slashdot, the FUD makes it up to a front page story and the releases and betas who needs testers are not mentioned with one word.
You do not cover the release of KDE-3.0.2, about 2 days ago, but you make room for dep, a guy who is so crazy that he thinks KDE developers are Nazis and racists. Don't believe me?
= article=47
QUOTING dep:
All that notwithstanding, the initial troll was from a KDE developer, using a kde.org email address, posting to a KDE-sponsored list. Anyone reading the thread will come away with the view that KDE is a product of anti-American, anti-semitic developers pushing an agenda of which the National Socialist party would have been proud, indeed was proud.
source: http://www.linuxandmain.com/modules.php?name=News
This guy has contributed little to nothing to KDE, but he is pissed off because the KDE adressbook was not developed according to his wishes. So he tries to slander the KDE community.
Slashdot is pissing me off, giving this guy a bigger forum and not even mentioning the hard work in the KDE-3.0.2 release!
Moritz
From http://linuxandmain.com/modules.php?name=News=arti cle=47:
"For a time last week, one might have had reason to suppose that "K" was chosen because it is the letter that most resembles a goose-stepping soldier, arm raised in a salute not widely seen since the dark days of the early 1940s."
"Anyone reading the thread will come away with the view that KDE is a product of anti-American, anti-semitic developers pushing an agenda of which the National Socialist party would have been proud, indeed was proud."
Now, don't wonder why he spreads severals anti-KDE articles a week.
The source code is out there. It's free. The developers don't *have* to write it. You are *completely* free, and even welcome to change it to your heart's content. Don't tell them what to do. Do it yourself! If you think that users are getting the short end of the stick, I'm sure that they'd be quite happy for you to take whatever efforts you felt necessary to make users happier. I gaurantee it.
If some code doesn't work as you want, don't bitch, don't post, avoid usenet, slashdot, and don't flame the developers. Fix it. Make the world a better place.
This has already been adressed here on Slashdot by Alan Cox.
Slashdot | Feature:Cathedrals, Bazaars and the Town Council
... by Slashdot reader, and all around grand master hacker Alan Cox
Alan Cox has submitted a piece he calls "Cathedrals, Bazaars and the Town Council". It addresses a lot of really important issues for those involved with distributed software development. It's definitely a must read.
There's even an online book referenced there (Although based on KDE 2.0 and KDevelop 1.x, but it'll still "show you the ropes" and then you'll be just that much more amazed by all the features in the newer versions. :) )
As a KDE User and member of the French translation team. I want to react to the mud hurled by Dep to the KDE team just to create some traffic for his website.
I had contact with several key members of the KDE developper team (David Faure and Laurent Montel from Mandrakesoft and Stefen Westerfeld of Arts fame) and I found that they were nice people, very ready to listen to my point of view.
I'm one user amongst many others, I'm not waiting for them to code my own private shopping list of desired new features next week. But, I certainly don't feel an underclass citizen in the KDE Community.
As a French man , I also want to react against the shameful anti-German utterings of Dep. If KDE is succeeding, it is because it has endorsed some very German qualities : technical excellence, good organizational skills, decision by consensus, a low ratio of overinflated egos, a strong sense of common good and a respect for disagreement.
The KDE project is one example among many others where you can see how much the young generation in Germany is different from what their grandparents were.
Charles
As a developer, I can't understand why a one would use a desktop environment. Besides the bloat, I believe they don't add anything. I prefer using a wm that stays out of the way and is very keyboard friendly. The less I use the mouse, the better.
But I love the apps. KDE has a much more 'coherent' feel than GNOME (menu placement, configuration, etc.), from app to app. I never tried GNOME2; maybe things have changed.
As a user (not a developer), I can't see why one would change from windows to unix, unless it's a matter of convictions: that's a perfectly valid reason to me.
I still have win98 at home. Games work well, and if I want an office suite, I can install OpenOffice. What if it crashes a little more?
A couple years ago, the alpha geek where I work, who has since moved on the do kernel hacking somewhere else, made an off hand remark that he hated it when people used the stuff he wrote.
"That's odd," I replied. "We write programs to solve people's problems."
"No," he shot back. "I code because I like to code. As soon as a user gets hold of it, all he does is start complaining and asking for more features."
Which is true enough, I've since learned. Users' wants are ill-defined as well as infinite.
This all reminds me of my Software Development Rules from a few months ago.
Software Wars
The "Dance" is the Open Source GPL development model. Coders write code and publish early and often. Users responds by reporting bugs. There is no 'contract' beyond this paradigm. No guarantee that a particular feature will be added, or modified or even fixed, but most usually are. Despite being such a simple model, the baazar is the reason for the success of KDE in reaching its current state of development in the short time that it has. I've been coding since 1968, and I understand the difficulties of working for a living and coding for love on the side. I appreciate the work done by the KDE coders and thank them profusely for my favorite Linux Desktop. They, as much as anyone or anything else, is leading Linux in its quest to free software and hardware from the abusive control of a convicted corporate felon.
I encourage the KDE developers to continue as they have with KDE because those who appreciate their efforts far, far out number those who loudly complain that the Golden Goose doesn't quack right, or lay the right size, shape, weight or number of Golden Eggs. I'll gladly refund the complainers KDE purchase price if they are not happy with KDE. With their kind of friendship who needs enemies?
As a new developer for KDE I can completely understand your point of view. Just last week I decided it was time to just dig my heels in and learn to use kdevelop and QT. I am already very fluent in C++ and loathe C (let's not start a fight, these are just my feelings towards the languages) so I thought KDE and QT would make a perfect fit.
It took me about 2 days of hunting a pecking to get it right, and hopefully here in the next couple of weeks I am going to write a complete, up to date tutorial for beginners with kdevelop. My largest problem was trying to understand how QT designer fit into the project, and how to get ui files to place nicely with everything else.
My suggestion on learning this stuff is to go to www.trolltech.no . TrollTech's docs on QT3 are great. I started off just reading about QT and going through the tuturials that DONT use QT designer - that finally clued me in enough to what was happening to be able to write some lines in Kdevelop (BTW - I never use the default class that is created by the wizard - it just doesn't make sense, I do, however, leave it there for now) - and get some basic GUI stuff up and running.
Then from there I just used the kdevelop docs (in the books tab - if you don't have them, you need to get them!!! They are great!). There was one document that said "Using QT designer with kdevelop" or something like that - and that happened to be just the little nudge in the right direction that I needed - and now I am almost done with my first app and will probably be releasing it next week. (It is a graphical front-end to Gentoo's rc-update program for anyone interested).
Just keep looking through google - and just tell yourself your not going to stop looking until you figure it out and you will get there. The rewards are definitely worth it!
Derek
You know I think atoms striking a BEC sometimes
appear to leave before they enter. I wonder is
there will be a story about this.
The standard line about open source, is that programmers scratch their own itches. The idea being that an audio guy who really needs some kind of fancy audio filter will write it himself, and then it will be a much more personal product that something corporately developed.
With the whole crazy push to have Linux take over the desktop, we no longer have this personal itch scratching. KDE developers are trying to figure out how to scratch the itches of people using Windows and MacOS. The disconnect is painful and obvious. And these same developers are, because they have to use KDE et al, adding a heavy developer-centric flavor. The result is a peculiar environment without a target audience. KDE works, I'll give it that, but it's muddled. It's not clear why anyone would want to use KDE instead of Windows. It's more like, "well, I like the Windows UI better, but KDE is the best there is for Linux so I guess I have to use it." And that kind of result doesn't seem to have been worth the man-decades of implementation effort.
I know, I know, KDE fans will mark me as a troll, and Gnome fans will moderate me up. How silly moderation can be!
KDE was cooked up in the same country that started both World Wars, embraced philosophies of destruction and hate (such as Nazism and Fascism), and spawned evil murderous maniacs such as Adolf Hitler.
By using KDE you are implicitly endorsing these hatemongering people and their genocidal dogmas.
A true patriot uses GNOME, written in the land of the free and the home of the brave. By using GNOME you are re-affirming your American ideals and supporting the open doctrine of truth, liberty, and love.
Ok, I'm a little pissed about this. KDE deserves heavy praise for its attention to desktop users' needs on Linux, not these cheap insults from the peanut gallery.
dep and his cheerleaders might have a point if KDE programs were difficult to use for "Joe User". IMHO, KDE provides the most User-friendly Linux desktop and apps out there. Given that, what is the point of claiming that KDE developers don't give a damn about users? The statement is a non-starter; it's so demonstrably false. Go check out #kde-user. Browse bugs.kde.org. Read application mailing lists. Hell, use KDE for an hour. Do all that, then come back here and tell me KDE devs don't give a damn about users.
Here's a question I'd like dep or others who buy his line to answer: If KDE developers really didn't care about users, then why would they ever make a release? All KDE devs use KDE straight from CVS; they don't benefit from releases at all. In fact, releases are a pain for developers. They have to halt development during a pre-release freeze, which can last months. During this period, they can *only* work on bugfixes. Often, these bugs are obscure or don't happen on the dev's machine. How can feature-freezes and stable releases exist in a world where KDE does not care about its users? In addition, why bother with i18n? Just write your app in English or German, and to hell with anyone who can't read it! And yet KDE is translated into 40 languages. Hmmm....
AFAICT, dep's just pissed because KMail no longer uses the stone-age address book it did back in the "good old days" of KDE 1.x. Because the devs said they weren't going to revert the addressbook, dep is now on some kind of anti-KDE crusade. Damn, man, get over it! Just put your addresses in a textfile, because that's all the old addressbook was.
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
The whole point of the article was the tension between your attitude and the need (if KDE is to become 'successful' as a desktop) for more catering to users' needs.
Really, you've added nothing to the discussion.
What is the manifestation of this painfully obvious disconnect between developers and users on the KDE desktop? Which features are "muddled" and "heavily developer-centric" in flavor?
I'm looking at my KDE3 desktop right now...sorry, I don't see anything even remotely like what you describe.
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
I don't know what color the sky is on Dep's world, but here on Planet Earth KDE is the easiest to use and most stable Linux GUI I know of. Especially if you use KDE apps with it, it rocks and is rock-solid.
The version of KDE that came with Red Hat 7.2 was hardly as solid as KDE 3. Konqui in particular was touchy. However, after I moved to KDE 3 I was delighted by Konqui's improved stability and improved compliance with Web standards.
I was born Jewish. If anyone would get a "Nazi" vibe off of KDE, it would be me. I don't, this guy is silly, and KDE just works.
Now if only Red Hat would have everything working without tweaking, I'd be a happy camper. You still have to tweak things after you install, which is going to alienate J. Random Newbie.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
There is a simple solution to this; help out yourself. This isn't directed at you personally of course, but at the whole GNU/Linux community.
Reading through Slashdot, there are so many people who can write fluently enough to write a few good tutorials. Whenever I figure out something which I consider badly documented, I try to at least put together a little HOWTO-style list of the steps I went through to get program X to preform action Y. Most of these are for my own personal use, but if I've had to spend a lot of time working on a solution, I at least try to clean up my little lists and release it. Most of the time, this takes only about half an hour at the most, and even if you only help out a few people it's worth it.
Most people report bugs to help out with free software, and this is an excellent way to help out, but writing little FAQs and tutorials are just as important. Indeed, lots of open-source development teams hold bug-days, I don't see why every now and again they don't hold 'doc-days'; fifty people writing a few thousand words of documentation for say, Mozilla could make a huge difference in one day.
--jon
Cleanstick.org: Dumb weblog about nothing
It stands for Kool Desktop Environment as mentioned in the very first usenet posting avalible
here.
I mean cmon, you can twist anything to your views..
I think the crux of the article comes with the claim that in order to be serious and get many users, KDE needs to attract commercial developers -- hence a stable, backwards compatable API is needed.
But "commercial" and "proprietary" don't need to be synonymous. Proprietary software companies can't afford to recompile and tweak their source because of potential support and debugging issues that may come up. But Free software, whether it's commericially made or the result of a hobby, CAN afford to have things break a lot -- there is a wide pool of potential tweakers who can fix things, should there be a demand.
This puts proprietary developers at a disadvantage. On Windows, they can write and compile once, and be (somewhat) sure that their program will run on MS's OS for the next 2 or 3 or 5 years. On Linux, if they don't Free their code, they're fucked by Sunday.
But as Linus Torvalds always says, breaking compatability is a FEATURE of Free software: improvements and security cascade, and the system isn't bogged down with millions of compatability work-arounds.
First off, I wouldn't attribute that opinion piece to Dennis Powell. Had you followed the original ymmv discussion back in April, you would have noticed that many people attributed the piece to a certain person who had been in flamewars on the KDE Cafe list. It's not surprising that international projects are occasionally troubled by political issues that are emotionally explosive. While some have questioned Powell's willingness to publish the opinion, I think it's defensible in that it might have stimulated discussion on some potential conflicts between political and software affiliations.
I have little doubt, having followed Linux and Main since its inception, that Dennis Powell has been a true KDE user and fan, who genuinely wants to see Linux succeed on the desktops of ordinary users. If he also tends to roil the waters, well, that is his gift. There is a kind of journalism that hypes the good and conceals the bad, and then there is the journalism that stirs debate, and is based on the idea that public debate is a good thing. And which do you think lacks integrity?
And finally, Dennis Powell puts his name behind his opinions. You may believe that he does not present real arguments, but he gives you a forum to reply to them or present your own instead. That's journalistic integrity in my book. Perhaps that's more integrity than you can handle?
I was even more disappointed when the KOffice beta release wasn't posted. It's not like we have a release every week like OpenOffice and Mozilla do... and there was some really good stuff in the new beta.
Geld stinkt nicht.
Aber du schon!
Dennis E. Powell is concerned with something else, which can best be described as elitism among the kde developers themselves, which untimately will trivialize any technical advantages kde may have over gnome at this time.
I worked on the koffice team for a while, and I did not consider what I was doing to be hobby programming. Some of it was fun and challenging but a lot of it involved grundge work and adapting to changes in koffice common code. Yet, I felt that I had no voice in decisions affecting koffice as a whole or in kde as a whole. Considering that there were only 5 or 6 koffice developers doing any work to develop and maintain the koffice components, kde did not seem very interested in keeping us involved. Nobody seemed to be in charge. Instead decisions were made by a small group of "core" developers but I never was sure exactly who those people might be.
Kde is a private club. It most certainly is not run by "the developers", but by the kde core developers group, which includes some people who don't even submit any code. It's a social club, similar to a university fraternity. That group should disband. Instead decisions should be made by the people actually developing and maintaining what goes into kde cvs. If a developer's code is not good enough to go into kde cvs and the releases then he or she would have no say in overall planning. It would not be so bad if kde did not make so much noise about its being run by "the developers". That's very dishonest.
I think this stems from the relationship between kde and Trolltech. Some of the core developers work for Trolltech and others work in close consultation with Trolltech. But they can never be sure that Trolltech will continue to be cooperative in coordinating with kde. Trolltech may be more interested in the embedded market, for example. Because kde is dependent on Trolltech, a feudal system is established. Trolltech is the king, kde core developers are the barons, and the rest are peasantry.
It is true that Gnome and Gtk (the core libraries and system) is mostly coded by paid employees of Redhat and Ximian, but Gnome is honest about that. Further, Gtk is not a proprietary toolkit in competition with a free toolkit in commercial markets. Gnome and Gtk do not claim to have the best toolkit or the most elegant architecture. I think that if financial support dried up Gnome and Gtk would have no problem getting plenty of help from competent volunteer developers. Originally gtk was developed by volunteers.
Kde has a very hard time getting people to develop and maintain koffice and other apps that go into kde cvs. It will always be that way so long as an elitist attitude among core kde developers persists, and I can't see that changing so long as kde is dependent on Trolltech. The elitism is just a disguise for powerlessness and dependency. Those who have no real power themselves certainly don't want to share the illusion of power with those who are not in their private club, which has no real independence from Trolltech.
It took me a long time to understand this is how things are at kde. I do feel that the core developers and others work very hard in trying to please users and helping new developers get started.
Kde League could help a lot in such matters, but has done absolutely nothing except to drive away commercial sponsors kde has managed to attract. Unless Kde core developers and Kde League can get off their high horse and ask for help, help will not be forthcoming. Sure, a lot of hobby developers use kde, but making a committment to such a project as an unpaid volunteer is something else. People will put up with ass kissing and toadyism when working for pay, but they are less likely to tolerate it when working without pay.
In my opinion the situation is impossible becaue the relationship to Trolltech is so central to kde. I do think that good desktop environments can be developed in the free software community. Kde has already proved that. But Kde's evolution is checked by forces that are not an issue for most free software projects.
Gtk is also a very good tookit and Gnome is an excellent desktop environment. Not as polished as qt or kde but because both gtk and gnome have a lot of room for improvement and are not checked or checkmated by a relationship with a proprietary tookit vendor the situation there might be more hopeful.
John Califf
"documentation" encapsulates end-user dox, not just README/INSTALL. The README & INSTALL files can be enough to get a program installed, but that doesn't mean it's documented.
Windows is Windows and I hate it for that fact, but it is relatively decently documented, between the help system and the KB (and XP's help system integrates both, albeit sluggishly). Too bad good documentation doesn't always imply good software. And that goes for all software, not just MS.
As for KDevelop and other programming environments, I disagree with you partly. You do indeed need a simple & complete step-by-step to get up and running, but you also need the endless class descriptions and and the nitty-gritty. Otherwise you could never [easily] progress beyond what that simple tutorial shows you.
Linux: The world's best text-adventure game.
We just write the code that we want, and sometimes that happens to fall under a users' request, after all, developers are users too.
This attitude is a problem for the future of Open Source. See, there's no reason why we can't, as a community, topple the vast majority of proprietary software in a few years time. But it would take a serious entrepreneurial effort. How so? Well, we need to establish a way for geek and non-geek users alike to fund free software developers to work full time on their pet projects and add a stronger incentive to listen to our feature requests. I think the best way to do this is some type of "code bounty" that can be placed on desired features. Put funds into an escrow until somebody comes along and fulfils the need. Then, that person gets the reward. And make a system by which many people can contribute to a bounty through micropayments, so that even casual users can help out in their small way. Say there's a needed feature missing in Mozilla and 300 frustrated people around the world each pitch in on average $5. That'd be a pretty tempting reward for a project that may take an experienced programmer only a few days to complete. Or, on a larger scale, businesses could become "patrons" to a project and by doing so gain a proportional say in directing development towards their own needs.
Don't get me wrong. There are dozens of other ways to encourage focused OSS development, but it's all about capitalism. Some folks like RMS seem to ignore this, but it's the truth. Open Source needs commercialized so that we geeks can get paid for doing what we love. Keep the software free as in GPL, but let people put their money where their mouth is.
One solution to the problem of meeting the desires of users and the coding desires of the
developers, is a system where:
* Users can request features (vent their
desires)
* Users can also contribute monetary values
to their requests
* Developers inside of the given project
can choose to "pick up" user feature
requests (a sum of money donated by users of
the requested features).
The problem with the current model is that the
system isn't benefial for both sides. It is
benefial in the sense that developers produce
code that makes them happy, but that does not
necessarily mean anything to the users. The users
win only by coincidence.
The time has come for users to contribute; to do
their fair share (instead of just mooching off
of developers). Developers have done their
part by creating a wonderful system (linux), which
gave birth to projects such as KDE.
By having a system that compensates the developers
to produce the not-so-fun tasks, I believe the
open source movement will go much further.
An excellent example of this is the current
competition being held to run Linux on the XBox.
I believe this will be a very successful project.
This is just an idea to solve a problem. I don't
have the time or resources to implement it, but
I sincerely hope someone else does.
-----
nlogn@space.com
KDE is free software, so feel free to take it and try to dominate the world with it.
Just don't expect KDE developers to drop everything and try to help you. As the threads point out, KDE developers have their own needs, motivations, and problems.
>> commercial software... Most of it sucks monkey balls. It's spaghetti, crap, driven by tight deadlines and endless kludges to fix issues just enough to meet the requirements. 3/4 of the stuff would get laughed of usenet if the code was posted
I'll second that. With notable exceptions, I also had this kind of experience.
Commercial software is only always good in marketing prospects.
Don't know much about open source yet, but things like KDE or Mozilla don't come out of the air, you know. My limited experience shows KDE evolving at an astounding pace.
If I were competing with them, I'd be very worried.
It's interesting to notice that nobody is arguing KDE is lame or doesn't work; this user ignoring thing (which I'm not able to confirm or deny) is indicative of a quickly maturing user-base. We don't look at it and say "Cool!" anymore, we demand it to get better faster and faster.
Dennis Powell is the guy who put up an editorial suggesting that the K in KDE stands for a marching Nazi soldier, and has implied repeatedly on his site and on kde-cafe mailing list that KDE developers are Nazis or Nazi sympathizers.
excuse my ignorance - but can anyone nme me one QT/.KDE app which is classed as best of breed off the the top of my head I can quote the following gnome (not gtk) apps which are commonly regarded as clearly THE best linux apps in their category evolution galeon gnumeric
Flame me if you like, or mod me down. but I'd like to say that I've often contacted OS authors for one reason or another. Most have helped out, sometimes being a little short, but they've helped out.
Twice, I've contacted KDE developers about some issue or other, and also tried to post on KDE developers mailing lists asking for help, and I've got nothing back. These guys are the grumpiest (or busiest) developers in the OS world, if you ask me. Of course, I have no right to a reply, but it's a remarkable coincidence that I've never got anything from KDE developers.
Perl guys are the best, IMHO, I have found Lincoln Stein especially helpful and courteous.
Note to ACs: I won't mod you up, even if you are being funny or insightful. So take a chance! It's not real life!
You seem to be assuming that KDE developers _approve_ of this being posted on slashdot.
Pure open source cannot compete with commercial products when usability is a main factor. Im glad that linux will continue to make inroads on the server side. As far as the desktop is concerned, there is no hope at all. maybe we should turn to openBeos for the desktop where they appeart to want it to be as user friendly as possible( I guess I just made a contradiction with the first sentence :-)), while keeping linux for the server room and data center. there both still open source.
Also dekstop environment: KDE
PPP dialer: kppp