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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!"
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).
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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.
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.
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.
Karma whorin' since 1999
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.
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.
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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...
Code poet, espresso fiend, starter upper.
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...
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.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
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.
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.
My other dog is a Wienerschnitzel.
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'".
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!