KDE 4.6 released

Posted Jan 31, 2011 18:22 UTC (Mon) by halla (subscriber, #14185)
In reply to: KDE 4.6 released by thoffman
Parent article: KDE 4.6 released

This sort of comment makes me so sad... Behaving like you really don't know how volunteer-based open source projects work. You do know, I hope, that nobody is paid to work on kwin? That nobody is paid to work on plasma? That among the couple of hundred KDE developers only one or two work on kwin? It's not a company where you can redirect resources to please those users who don't pay, don't contribute, who do nothing but whine, every release.

I suppose that this kind of smart-ass comment makes you feel good about yourself, superior to those stupid KDE hackers, whatever. You're smart enough to use Gnome, after all. Good for you!

But you'd better get the sourcecode from git, use your super-duper setup and fix that bug and join the project. That will earn you real respect and will make you feel really good about yourself for real.

As for presentation mode -- that hasn't been a problem with KDE 4 for a long time now. krandrtray makes that work plenty fine. It's just some weird multi-head setups that seem to cause problems. And nobody who complains every release about those problems, nobody ever actually steps up to help.

That is not what open source is about. Scratch your itch, dammit.

KDE 4.6 released

Posted Jan 31, 2011 22:24 UTC (Mon) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (1 responses)

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the KDE developers need to decide whether they want to produce a dependable desktop environment where users can rely on bugs or regressions being addressed (in which case some developers will eventually have to condescend to working on the unpopular tasks, too) or whether they want to provide a free-for-all for hobbyist developers (in which case every developer gets to do what they please), with users being allowed to tag along for the ride as long as they don't make themselves too obnoxious. In other words, is the KDE project's primary goal providing entertainment for its developers or a service for its users?

Summarily dissing people with legitimate claims about bugs in KDE as »whiners« who do not contribute is a cheap shot. KDE is a large and complicated body of code and it is not as if someone could, just like so, pull down the source and fix a few bugs that even the KDE developers themselves seem to be either afraid or else incapable of addressing. Also, for all you know, those »whiners« may be contributing to the FLOSS community at large in untold other ways.

KDE 4.6 released

Posted Jan 31, 2011 23:52 UTC (Mon) by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164) [Link]

problem is that we're talking about a niche issue here. Multihead is something very few people run - multiscreen on the other hand is used plenty (and works just fine). The developers simply can't fix every minority issue - they have to focus on big things. And keep fun in mind too, otherwise, why work on this in the first place?

So aseigo could of course tell ppl he won't accept new features but wants them to work on fixing every darn issue they don't personally care about - KDE would quickly wither and die.

So for the long term, KDE has to make sure it's products are good enough - and at the same time, keep working in and on KDE fun. It is a delicate balance and usually minor features and issues are the victim of it.

That's why it is good to have some corporate funding - they often pay for the boring, finishing touch ;-)

KDE 4.6 released

Posted Jan 31, 2011 22:41 UTC (Mon) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

so if the problem is the lack of funding for KDE, they should have some way for people to donate to the project.

the amount of money we are talking about to equip some of the developers with a second monitor to be able to replicate a very common user environment (laptop with an external screen) is very small