Slashdot Mirror
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.
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
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.
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 you're target audience has proven, on more than one occasion, that collecting information like that is frowned upon.
I disagree. It depends on who's collecting the information - do you trust them?
I don't like the fact that Windows XP seems to communicate regularly with Microsoft. But I'm happy to run the test builds of Mozilla that send crash info. back to the Mozilla team. I'm sure many others in the OSS community feel the same way.
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
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.
'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.
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'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. :) )
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
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
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.
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.