Announcing the KDE Quality Team Project

Quique writes "The KDE Community is pleased to announce the launch of the Quality Team Project, a community of contributors who will serve as a gateway between developers and users in the KDE Project, and as a new way for people to begin contributing. KDE is a very attractive project, offering high quality software and is freely available. There is a lot of people who feel the urge to give something back, but stop in the middle of the way, frustrated by the steep learning curve. The aim of the project is to reduce these barriers by welcoming these potential contributors, and by offering documentation, support, and even guidance if requested. The objective is to support the new contributors, (programmers, documenters, testers, artists...). Have you ever wished to help KDE in some way, but never knew how? Keep reading!"

Comments

Bout Time

[ErichTheWebGuy]

I've been waiting for this. Last time I filed a bug report with KDE I got some snotty reply from some programmer who said I was wrong (the bug got fixed in the next release and was listed in the changelog).

Re:Bout Time

[RPoet]

I don't know where you guys are coming from. I've submitted a few bugs to bugs.kde.org, and I've never gotten harsh feedback. Even once when I committed the death sin of accidentally posting a duplicate (bug that were already submitted, but I didn't notice), I was still treated kindly and pointed to the other bug where, in the comments, one of the core developers pasted in my somewhat different suggestion for a solution for the record.

It is my experience also from the IRC channel that the KDE developers are great guys and girls -- a few of them even hang out and help users with their stupid problems (ok, s/users/me/, s/their/my/ ;).

Re:Bout Time

[ErichTheWebGuy]

About Konqueror crashing when adding a button to the toolbar (it was a long time ago, I think like 2000 - 2001)

Also, anonymous coward said that anyone can add comments to the bug system, and I indeed did not know that.

Anyway, the point was that there needs to be an interface layer between hard-core developers and people like me who posess enough programming skill to get simple stuff done, but are not developers and want to contribute.

The bugtracking system is somewhat adequate, but people can easily be confused and a better overall experience is achieved when average everyday end-users get to talk to someone that will help them submit bug reports and fix things.

i hope these guys will integrate with kde-redhat

[darthcamaro]

i still haven't got the newest KDE 3.2 to work on my RH 7.X boxes..There's a sourceforge project called KDE-Redhat that's supposed to fill the gap but... it sure would be great if this new effort made it easy for lazy admins like me.

Sounds Good

[moberry]

Just stating MY opinion, but i prefer KDE over GNOME. KDE is pretty stable, although i do still have problems with (seemingly) random crashes of Konqueror, etc. This program sounds like it will make already great software even better. Sort of like the customer comment card at resturants, although i dont think they read those.

Someone read ESR's rant

[gatesh8r]

Now if the Gnome project (and quite honestly every large project) would make a quality team, we could get some serious usability issues ironed out.

Nice idea

[HeLLLight]

Personally I think this is a very good idea. My programming skills are limited to simple BASH scripts so Im no use to most devel teams. But I do have good documentation/bug hunting skills. I do this as part of my job. So it is a good oppurtunity for those who do want to give something back to the OSS community but fall short in the programming area. Good Idea KDE.

Re:Build it, and they won't come..

[ErichTheWebGuy]

I have done exactly that kind of shitty grunt work for a number of open source projects, without expecting any credit or whatever. For one reason, the one you stated:

it's that QA step, all the thankless hours of gruntwork, that make the final product what it is

I believe in open source, and am willing to further the cause just to further the cause, not to further my own ego.

I, for one, will join the KDE Quality (Kuality?) Team.

Re:Shouldn't that be...

[pbox]

No, I think they should be called pet lamas. To ensure open-source quality.

I had this idea after reading Eric Raymond's "Luxury of Ignorance".

At absolute minimum all open-source projects should have (pet) lamas assigned to them, and a continuously rotating basis (to prevent tainting them with knowledge) and their whining should be taken as the word of authority...

Re:Build it, and they won't come..

[bluGill]

To each his own. I personally consider the art work the hardest and most boring job that KDE has. Fortunatly someone (several in fact) is willing to do that work.

For that matter someone in the last couple days has just steped up to make some nice sounds. Don't know if he will finish the job, but what he has created so far is nice.

KDE tries to keep track of who submitted each fix. I'm sure some things slip through the cracks, but overall if you find a problem with KDE you can point that out latter as something you have done, and we can all go back into the archives and verify it really was you. There are far too many people helping with KDE for all but those who do the most work to get credit. That doesn't mean the credit is lost though.

Re:i hope these guys will integrate with kde-redha

[vadim_t]

I'm sure the KDE people simply consider that their time is better spent on writing the code. The distributions already have lots of people who do packages, and could take care of that just fine.

For a social scientist's perspective...

[Telex4]

I wrote this article for Newsforge, looking at the productive, social, political and spiritual aspects of the Quality Teams Project.

Some people might find it interesting... :-)

First thing to fix

[bonch]

THE NAME.

KDE is an awful name, as are:

KOffice
Killustrator
Kougar
Kroupware
Kaller y
KTetris ...and pretty much anything else obsessively beginning with "K" for absolutely no reason. Thank god Gnome isn't like this.

Re:First thing to fix

[gl4ss]

you know, they don't sound so bad if you're not a native english speaker. and I'd suppose that in many languages the natural way to say these is to pronounce the K seperately. (koo office, koo illustrator)

Re:First thing to fix

[be-fan]

MS Office,
MS Outlook,
MS Excel,
MS Access, etc.

WinDVD,
WinAMP
WinRAR
WinZIP,
WinACE

iDVD,
iTunes,
iMovie
iPhoto,
iLife.

OpenOffice,
OpenWriter,
OpenImpress,
OpenCalc .

Jesus Christ. Its called pushing a brand.

And how the *FUCK* is a giant foot cooler than a giant, shiny, metal K?

Well, maybe not exactly...

[gosand]

QA is also something the US government requires for many things. Especially the military. If there is a good QA process in place that can help improve US government acceptance.

Being a 10 year veteran of QA/Testing and holding a CS degree, I have long wondered where QA would fit into OSS. And by "QA" I don't just mean testing, there is a lot more to it than that. Here are some topics that would need to be addressed:

What is the development process? Is it documented?

What types of estimation procedures do you do?

What is the SCM process? Is it documented?

What is the review/inspection process for all artifacts?

Are there software requirements? Are they inspected/reviewed?

Are there development plans/design docs? Are they inspected/reviewed?

Are there code reviews?

What are your defect escape rates?

What is your plan for alpha/beta testing?

What is your release schedule?

I think I could go on, but you get the idea. If you want solid, defect-finding, QA people who can improve your product, you'll be asked questions like these. If you just want someone who will run a few regression tests against your product before you put it on a website, then you are looking for some software testers. I am not saying that all of those things are necessary, but they might be. Maybe all of this stuff is archaic and applies only to the proprietary model, I don't know. I know that is what I have worked in for the last 10 years. I don't know if anyone has asked these questions of an OSS project, or done any research into if they need to be asked.

Re:Well, maybe not exactly...

[GigsVT]

If you try to shoehorn all that useless bureaucracy into OSS development, you'll quickly see why it doesn't work that way.

Re:Well, maybe not exactly...

[gosand]

But, always remember that in many Open Source efforts, the users are the testers. That's a valid viewpoint if something is free; Microsoft is excoriated when they periodically lure customers into paying to become testers, but the practice is more defensible when no money changes hands.

All of your points are of course valid - for the state of OSS today. I am more interested in the OSS of *tomorrow*. At least my hope for tomorrow - when OSS becomes more prevalent. How will QA/testing fit into OSS vs FOSS? When someone *IS* paying the bills, how will things change?

Additionally, the themes of Superprogrammer vs The Horde" are relevant to understanding why. Having seen a few SEI CMM 5 shops in action, it's clear that to fill the man-hours for all the redudant tasks requires hiring a grade of developer that's frankly sub-par. Programming is the one field where a true 20x productivity differential between two professionals is unremarkable. It seems that the prominent Open Source projects have gotten more attention from generous SuperProgrammers than a typical commercial developement is able to attract.

Of course. But those big projects have to ensure they can survive if their superstar programmer leaves. Or they do it because they are government regulated, or they are building software that could be life or death, and they can't afford to rely on someone's opinion. You have to remember that there is a LOT of software out there, it ain't all word processors and games. These are the applications where I question if open source is the way to go. I don't think it is the be-all-end-all of software development, just like being CMM level 5 isn't either. There is a reality out there, and I think Slashdot users could use a little check every now and then.

Re:Build it, and they won't come..

[RoLi]

Look at how much more polished and usable Windows XP is than any OSS desktop. Or OS/X. They took an OSS platform and layed a slick, highly integrated and very stylish UI on top of it. In about a quarter of the time that various linux desktop projects have been around. What's the difference?

Marketing.

I HAVE tried WinXP and MacOSX and both leave a lot to be desired.

There is just no good substitute for multiple desktops with good session management like KDE has. Also Unix-style copy/paste is much faster and more comfortable than MacOS-style (which was copied by Windows) because you don't have to switch nearly as often between keyboard and mouse. Of course KDE supports both copy/paste schemes, so you are not forced to use Unix-style. Real 3-button support is another thing. For example I can open a folder in the filemanager in a new tab with the MMB, or I can jump to a position on a scrollbar with the MMB, or I can push back a window with the MMB.

But of course, marketing has told you that all those features are "for geeks" only and Windows/MacOS is the best there is - so often that people started to believe it. You don't even need examples, facts or reasons!

KDE doesn't have any usability problems, period. I've seen newbies pull hairs because of the numerous single-click/double-click inconsistencies in Windows (why do I have to single-click an icon on a toolbar but double-click an icon on the desktop? What moron invented that scheme?) which don't exist in KDE, at least not in the default configuration.

I have now presented 5 examples of KDE superiority (multiple desktops, session management, copy-paste, 3-mouse button support and single-click consistency), you have prestented nothing, zero, nada. Probably because you have never used KDE and have no idea what you are talking about.

What indeed is a problem is missing and incomplete documentation. Another is missing Win32 binary compatibility especially for games. That and that alone is keeping Linux/KDE off the masses desktops.

Task allocation!

[sl0wp0is0n]

Well, I guess I'm asking for ideas here. In an open-source proj like this, you obviously want people to choose what they want to do or how they want to contribute. When you do that, one of the biggest problem is that, there are some parts of the project that everybody tries to avoid.

I've tried to manage a project, in a similar way, on a very small scale though (~30 people). Everybody wanted to own the coolest parts of the project. What I eventually ended up doing is tying cool parts with not-so-cool parts. So, if you choose the cool part, you automatically also own the corresponding not-so-cool part.

I'm looking for more ideas. May be some brainstorming would help here.

Re:GNOME has had a quality team for years.

[Brandybuck]

The GNOME effort is directed solely at bugs. The KDE Quality Team is directed at bugs, documentation, usability, process, etc, etc. We're trying to go beyond the traditional Open Source mentality of "it doesn't crash so mark it 'release'".

Re:Build it, and they won't come..

[Brandybuck]

Of course, all the cool design work and programming, and artistry, etc, will be done by the core team - who will, of course, accept all the credit.

Okay, here's an idea. The KDE About dialog is already has a "fill-in-the-blank" API. Why not add a Quality Team field to it? Make this an official part of the libs, and you suddenly get an official suggestion to credit the quality people for your application.

Re:I seriously doubt this will change anything

[fault0]

Wow, that has been standardized in KDE since September 23, 1999 :)

It's done directly inside of the code in KDE however.

This is one of the reasons why the KDE style guide is shorter than GNOME's HIG; most of the GUI design aspects of KDE are enforced automatically while in GNOME, it is reliant on the programmer. I have to admit though, the HIG is great for PR :)

Re:Pay

[Ilan Volow]

It is recommended that companies spend 10% of their development budget on researching the usability of their products. Every dollar that is spent on usability saves $100 in support costs.

Red Hat has spent over $700,000,000 buying out a compiler company and a few silly dot coms. They recently sold $500,000,000 in bonds. Their programmers tell me the reason why their software has so many usability problems is that they "can't afford to hire HCI people".

SuSe was bought out for $200,000,000. From what I have heard from other user interaction people, the usability of YaST is an absolute disgrace. Doesn't seem like SuSe is spending money for a usability dept either.

Both of these companies claim to be making desktop software that is perfectly usable and perfectly fit for a grandmother or a secretary. They are both going to try like hell to replace everyone's Windows desktop with Linux. Many of the desktops they are currently looking to replace are those in businesses, where the end-user won't have the "don't want to use it, don't choose it" recourse that most linux zealots claim people have.

Both these companies already spend wads of money hiring people like kernel hackers and web server programmers. To ask these companies to spend equivalent amounts on usability is not, in my opinion, is perfectly justified. If they feel that only "important" technical fields like kernel hacking deserve funding, then should at least have the decency to pay to switch their existing desktop customers back to Windows.
.

KDE needs is own VISUAL BASIC

[eille-la]

Kde or any other standard linux desktop environnement should have in common a really high level and *simple* programming language.
Many not-so-skilled programmers are developing thousands of apps usefull-for-enduser under windows with visual basic.
No one should underevalutate the number of VB-only coders.
Maybe VB is not the most used language in big windows based apps projects, but some programmers begin with VB and eventually learn C and/or C++, ASM, Java.
Even if the big projects arent coded in VB, there is actually a couple of good programs sold by vb coders.

If there was an easy to use and learn language like VB under the linux desktops, the open source community could profit of many more (begginers)coders, which is good.

i dont think it could be an enormous differance for the moment if we think about the linux desktop solution popularity, but it could for sure accelerate this solution visibility at middle-term, which is good.

What do you think about it?

Re:Gnome is NOT a KDE alternative

[MonoSynth]

1) The file dialog. KDE 0.x ALPHAs had a better file dialog than gnome! Today, the KDE one is the best file dialgog in existance, with influence from all desktops.

See this screenshot for the fileselector for GNOME 2.6.

And about the KDE file selector: horizontal scrolling is a bug, not a feature. Even if it is configurable, it's still a bug.

2) More apps! KDE comes with over 150 Apps in the full install, with applications for all fields, plus its sleak integration with non kde apps (eg gimp, openoffice) make things more consistant.

Remember, it's a d-e-s-k-t-o-p. And a standard desktop must be shipped with a minimum of apps (one for every task), just to keep it simple. A whole application suite is something different, something that scares off most people. GNOME's got Epiphany for web-browsing, and if you're a power user you can install Galeon. It's got Gedit because you'll use Vim or Emacs or some IDE anyway if you're serious about editing.

3) Configureable as hell. The KDE control center has loads of knobs/dials/sliders and boxes to fiddle with, yet keeps things elegent. In gnome, half the options don't exisit and you are rudley told "use gconf-editor n00b by gnome zealots" (not joking about this, telling the truth gets you a -1, troll and footnotes).

Or: Not enough knowledge to know what's good? GNOME doesn't have all these options, but I don't need them because the default is just usable. In return I get menu's that are clean and easy to read, speeding up my experience with the desktop. Even if I had taken the time to fully configure KDE, that wouldn't take the overload of options away.

4) I-kandy! The Kde eye candy is really powerful, with styles such as dotNEt, mosfet liquid, kermamik, Crystal and more. Looking at art.gnome.org [gnome.org] reveals the same old theme in different colours. Since gnome dosen't provide a colour changing dialog for its widgets most "themes" are just colour changes. The Crystal from CVS is an Aqua killer, your eyes will want to love it.

My eyes hate crystal-like themes with too many colours, but that's personal. Like I implied before, I like a desktop to be really on the background, not overwhelming me with options and colors and styles and configurabilities. I install a desktop to run applications, not to run the desktop itself. And btw, when I tried KDE 3.2 last week, I saw the same old icons as KDE 1.x for the control-center, and I could still choose between two old KDE1 themes (but that didn't work anymore afaik)

Not 100% classic Quality Assurance team?

[saigon_from_europe]

This news was not quite new to me - I can't provide the link, but there was nice explanation on KDE traffic (i.e. digest of several KDE mailing lists).

First, they were not sure about the name at all. They needed some "department" that will improve communication between users and developers. Some sort of people who know both sides, but who are not programmers. And they did not know how to call it. As I read now, they choose Q.T.

For an OSS project, KDE is really well documented, you may really easily contact their programmers, support community seems to be nice and usefull; this should be "final touch".

This team reminds me to my last position in my old company - I was kinda liaison officer between two teams. My team needed some stuff from them, and we needed someone to force them to make it work. It is much easier to have someone who is familiar with both products, than to depend on existing QA dept (maybe it was problem that we had poor QA team).

Anyway, this new team seems like great idea. No matter that I like programming, it would be really hard to me to become so familiar with Qt/KDE enough to be usefull KDE programmer. But even at this stage, I believe that I already could be KDE QT member. So, there must be other people like me.
Thus, KDE will be even better.