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/ ;).

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.

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...

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...

[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'".