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KDE 4, distributors, and bleeding-edge softwareKDE 4, distributors, and bleeding-edge softwarePosted Jan 29, 2009 0:37 UTC (Thu) by malor (subscriber, #2973)In reply to: KDE 4, distributors, and bleeding-edge software by nix Parent article: KDE 4, distributors, and bleeding-edge software Of course it is. It's the fundamental social contract that a .0 release is "done", as much as possible. Obviously, there will be bugs, but .0 means "this is feature complete, and we think it's ready for general use". If it's not done, you don't make it a .0 release. You call it an RC, or, more honestly in this case, a beta. They knew that. Everyone knows that. But they deliberately called it 4.0 anyway to get testers. They've clearly and unambiguously admitted this: they thought calling it a beta wouldn't attract enough testers. Instead of being honest and asking for more help, they lied to get the help instead. A .0 release would be more broadly taken up, and too bad for the users. This is purposeful deception, no matter what they put in the README. They tried to force contribution via deception, rather than asking for voluntary participation. That's about as unethical as you get in free software, short of stealing code outright.
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KDE 4, distributors, and bleeding-edge software Posted Jan 29, 2009 0:55 UTC (Thu) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
there is a repeated statement that they called it 4.0 to trick people into testing it when they knew it wasn't ready
if you read the article and the links in it, you will see that they made the release so that developers would have a stable platform to develop against (thus calling it a developers release)
they could have re-named everything from KDE 4.0 to KDE-infrastructure 4.0 and then make KDE depend on KDE-infrastructure, but however they did that split there would have been something one one side of the line that belonged on the other side.
x.0 == feature complete, end of story Posted Jan 29, 2009 21:59 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] if you read the article and the links in it, you will see that they made the release so that developers would have a stable platform to develop against (thus calling it a developers release) Yup. And such things have a name too: KDE 3.99.0 will be fine for such a release. Or they can use MySQL approach and called it KDE 4.0-alpha (with next revisions being KDE 4.1-beta and KDE 4.2-gamma). Instead they decided to use version number which clearly says: it's finished! It's not polished, it's not yet debugged enough - it's first rough release, but it's feature complete! KDE 4.0 was quite far from being feature complete, unfortunatelly...
KDE 4, distributors, and bleeding-edge software Posted Jan 29, 2009 19:09 UTC (Thu) by dkite (guest, #4577) [Link]
Nonsense.
The fundamental social contract with free software is you can distribute it and change it. Some make it available for free as in beer.
There are no implied warranties, you own both pieces when they break.
That is the first part of the fundamental social contract.
The second part is that if you want something, you write it. If you can't, you support in some way those who can. If you can't or won't, you wait for them to do it.
Nothing more nothing less.
If you paid a distributor for a product, you can reasonably expect a bit more. Like a money back guarantee.
You can be upset or disappointed all you like, but I for one don't owe you anything unless you pay me for something. Neither does anyone who contributed to KDE.
Don't start attempting to impose your expectations as a 'fundamental social contract' unless you have a signed copy.
I'm serious. Developers don't owe you or anyone else anything at all. If you don't want to use what they write, that is your choice.
Derek
KDE 4, distributors, and bleeding-edge software Posted Jan 29, 2009 21:48 UTC (Thu) by malor (subscriber, #2973) [Link]
Equally, I owe you nothing as a user that I don't want to contribute. Misleading me into beta testing for you is theft of my time.
KDE 4, distributors, and bleeding-edge software Posted Feb 6, 2009 2:17 UTC (Fri) by pyellman (guest, #4997) [Link]
I think the "fundamental social contract" is about communication, not numbering systems, which, despite your assertion, are obviously still a point of significant disagreement and divergence. I thought the KDE team communicated the meaning and intent of the 4.0 release quite clearly. I might cut some slack to a novice user who was surprised when 4.0 was dumped on him/her, but it's just plain weird to hear those kind of comments from LWN readers, whom I expect to be better informed.
It's impossible to escape the conclusion that there was a cadre of people out there -- not novice users at all, but really, power/expert users -- who, despite knowing full well how the KDE team had characterized the 4.0 release, insisted as a matter of highlighting a "higher" principle (the ".0" principle) on installing it and treating it as what they insist a .0 release should be, and then using any negatives from that experience as ammunition and fodder to attack the KDE team -- all to grind into the face of the KDE team (and the rest of us) -- the consequences of messing with their beloved ".0" definition.
Peter Yellman
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