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KDE on KDE 4.0 (Groklaw)KDE on KDE 4.0 (Groklaw)Posted Jul 13, 2008 18:58 UTC (Sun) by mikov (subscriber, #33179)In reply to: KDE on KDE 4.0 (Groklaw) by sebas Parent article: KDE on KDE 4.0 (Groklaw)
I think it is clear that this is not a problem with KDE4 itself, but with how it was communicated to the public. Regardless of the technical motivations for releasing, there is no denying that even KDE 4.1 is not yet ready to be used as a replacement for KDE3 by ordinary users - not by hackers or KDE developers, but people who use their PC for office tasks, etc. Granted, it is primarily the distribution's responsibility to decide whether to bundle KDE4 as default or not. As far as I know, OpenSUSE and especially Fedora are not aimed at "ordinary" users, so the complaints by people who downloaded the distro to "try KDE 4", but don't actually use it for their day-to-day job, are greatly exaggerated and borderline dishonest ! Regardless, I think that you guys should take the high road and apologize for the miscommunication and make it even more clear that KDE 4 is not yet ready for mass adoption. In retrospect, I think that adding a suffix to the release name (e.g. "-DR1" or whatever) would have been ideal. I am sure that such an announcement would be taken very positively by everybody and would silence the majority of the complaints.
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KDE on KDE 4.0 (Groklaw) Posted Jul 13, 2008 21:05 UTC (Sun) by sebas (subscriber, #51660) [Link] If we would've waited until aunt tillie can use our desktop, then we would release some months after the last developer has left the project. I think that expecting a release not before KDE 4 is usable for everyone is just not realistic, moreover, it's also not how Free Software development works. In fact, we were continuously asking ourselves the question when KDE 4 would be good enough for a first release, being aware that we probably cannot get it perfect the first time, especially not WRT to Plasma being brand new and all. Frankly, for the part I was involved with, I'd do the release scheduling again like this, just try to communicate more clearly who it's meant for. The communication around has not been perfect, although we tried to make it clear enough. As I already said in the other thread, releasing is not just for the users, it also plays an essential role for the community itself -- and that's what we focussed on. We simply put the health of the project above the gusto of some users that -- in retrospect -- didn't even follow closely enough the purpose and status of this release. As opposed to saying "We were wrong, we shouldn't have released 4.0 at that stage", I'd say "Next time, we'll try to make it more clear what our target audience for a release is". I hope this makes it easier to understand the constraint leading up to the release of KDE 4.0.
KDE on KDE 4.0 (Groklaw) Posted Jul 13, 2008 21:22 UTC (Sun) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link] Well said. I just want to make sure that one important point is not lost in the noise: KDE is a great desktop. Some trouble is unavoidable from time to time, but you guys are doing an excellent job. I and the overwhelming majority of users are very grateful for your work and dedication. Keep up the good work! Don't let the (hopefully constructive) criticism bother you - we, the users, are not ungrateful, just spoiled :-)
KDE on KDE 4.0 (Groklaw) Posted Jul 19, 2008 10:15 UTC (Sat) by malor (subscriber, #2973) [Link] We simply put the health of the project above the gusto of some usersAnd that's exactly the problem. You chose to screw over the early adoption crowd by releasing software that was glaringly broken, and calling it 'stable'. Point-zero releases mean something to the rest of the world, and blaming the users for not understanding that YOUR use of that release term was different than everyone else's is entirely disingenuous. YOU blew it, not the users. You cared more about some nebulous project goals than the actual people who are trying to get real work done with it. And you didn't even get what you wanted; any short-term bug reports you may have gotten have been entirely outweighed by the credibility loss you've suffered. You're further compounding that loss by now blaming users for your mistake. By losing credibility, you lose users, which means you also lose testers. So, to get a short-term testing bump, you've sacrificed future testing. You ate a bunch of your seed corn. If you want more testers, you need to recruit them honestly, not by deception. You recruit testers from the pool of users, and you get users by providing stable software releases that are actually stable. If you try to fool users into being testers, they'll stop being both.
KDE on KDE 4.0 (Groklaw) Posted Jul 19, 2008 10:47 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] Yeah. Point-zero releases mean 'unstable and dangerous, early adopters only' to the rest of the world, and have for *decades*.
KDE on KDE 4.0 (Groklaw) Posted Jul 19, 2008 14:38 UTC (Sat) by malor (subscriber, #2973) [Link] A point-zero release means that the devs think a piece of software is stable and feature-complete. It's a claim that it's done and ready for public consumption. Now, reality often differs from that. Some organizations do better than others, but at least the devs are trying. If a point-zero release is broken, it's at least inadvertent.In this case, neither of those things were true. It was a point zero release that the devs knew perfectly well was very unstable, with an API still in flux. Not everything was even written yet. Calling that a .0 release, no matter how many caveats you hang off it, is guaranteed to mislead users who aren't really paying attention that day, or who figure that the people warning them away are overreacting; this is KDE, after all. How badly could it be broken? Call it 4.0 beta something and everyone is happy. Nobody gets mad if it falls apart into smoking pieces. Beg and plead for testers if needed. Calling it even an RC candidate would have been misleading, since it wasn't ready to be released yet. Giving it full point-zero status was an outright lie. It netted them a minor short-term gain with a probable larger long-term loss; how many users are on GNOME now because of this? Even if it's just a few hundred, that's a real loss for a gain that appears, as far as I can see, entirely theoretical.
KDE on KDE 4.0 (Groklaw) Posted Jul 19, 2008 14:41 UTC (Sat) by malor (subscriber, #2973) [Link] (oh, and before you start listing commercial software with borked .0 releases; payware sometimes has to ship to make the quarter. Open source has no such need. There's no fiscal pressure to release before a product is ready.)
KDE on KDE 4.0 (Groklaw) Posted Jul 20, 2008 19:08 UTC (Sun) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link] Technically, I think you are right. KDE lost credibility and potential users/testers because of this. But I also think that there is no need for all this negativity. Everybody is bound to screw up once in a while. While they failed in labeling the release or communicating it, they didn't fail as developers - the technology is great (or will be) - and that's what really matters. I think it is important for KDE users and supporters not to make a too big deal out of it.
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