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Kdenlive Developer Jean-Baptiste Mardelle Has Been Found
jones_supa writes "A month ago there was worry about Kdenlive main developer being missing. Good news guys, Jean-Baptiste Mardelle has been finally reached and is doing fine. In a new mailing list post by Vincent Pinon, he says he managed to find Mardelle's phone number and contacted the longtime KDE developer. It was found out that Mardelle took a break over the summer but then lost motivation in Kdenlive under the burden of the ongoing refactoring of the code. Pinon agreed that there are 'so many things to redo almost from scratch just to get the 'old' functionalities'. The full story can be read from the kdenlive-devel mailing list. After talking with Jean-Baptiste, Vincent has called upon individual developers interested in Kdenlive to come forward. Among the actions called for is putting the Git master code-base back in order, ensuring the code is in good quality, provide new communication about the project, integrate new features like GPU-powered effects and a Qt5 port, and progressively integrate the new Kdenlive design."
An open source project stuck in "refactoring hell". Seems to have happened to Inkscape too. Such a waste.
Heavily refactoring projects of this size rarely brings any benefit for the users, it's just technical masturbation. If you're lucky, you will after a few years end up with a project that does the same things as before, most likely it will have acquired some bugs as icing on the cake.
Taking a few years to refactor your project might sound like a good idea at first, but chances are, you won't even be relevant anymore by the time you're done.
Some open source projects would benefit from proper managers who can stop them from shooting themselves in the foot.
it's a mature enough product that a kickstarter could probably raise the funding needed to get the work done :).
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Sometimes when a girlfriend or wife stops speaking to you, you count your blessings and leave well enough alone.
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When this was last a Slashdot "story" somebody said, "he's probably busy - here's his phone #, why doesn't somebody give him a call?" So, somebody did that and we get another "story".
The real "story" here is that a lead developer gave up on a project and left without communicating. Perhaps there's a good lesson here about Open Source project governance that.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Found alive having a life. More news at a 11.
Kdenlive is essentially one guy's hobby project. Blender has a number of professional developers working on it full time. Both are open source, but it's really an apples-to-oranges comparison.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
It makes it different because there was other people involved and Kdenlive has a status of being an important software.
It still makes no difference because he still do not owe anything to people who have decided they find his work important.
I certainly think he owes. Not juridically but as part of having good manners.
Actually, I think more OSS project developers should do something like this. This is what I do all the time on my projects. If the software is working but 1) you're getting burned out, 2) you want to re-write it from scratch, 3) you're wandering off on some tangent, 4) real life happens, well, STOP.
The code works. Leave it alone. Don't break it. Don't touch it. Take a breather. Meditate about something else. Read a good book. Don't start typing in more code until you're relaxed and refreshed and eager. If you're still excited about the code you've probably already been thinking about it and have changed the architecture in your mind half a dozen times, and have already iterated on a much better solution than the abomination you would have hacked up in a hurry earlier. Good. If you'd rather move on that's fine too, just announce it's over and let someone else pick it up if they're interested.
Way too many developers are like manic bridge builders--they build a perfectly fine and functional wooden bridge across a river, but then decide they should have built it in concrete with twice as many lanes. They destroy the old functional bridge by driving concrete pilings through it and get the new bridge built halfway across the river before running out of drive, materials, or both. The end result is yet another project plunging into obscurity. Don't do that.