Saturday, April 12, 2008

To Build or Not To Build

I build therefore I am.

I appreciate the pointers to the kdemod KDE4 packages and PKGBUILD's. I prefer to maintain my own. It helps me get to know a system if I have to build it, and allows me to keep as up to date as I wish, and easily revert if required.

Speaking of which, Konqueror now starts from the menu. Svn revision 795948.

I feel I need to get something off my chest. My expectations for KDE 4 series are realistic. It is not ready, but will probably get more and more usable and useful as time goes on. There are some very interesting, may I say even exciting stuff being done. Qt 4 series has some very nice ways of doing things that I enjoy working with. Technology is fine. What really bothered me over the last year or so was the attempt to market KDE4. Everything that I like about free software was assaulted. Attempts to control the message, to spin, to pull the vaporware trick out of the hat created a feeling of revulsion. I knew what state the code was in. I followed the discussions on IRC where fundamental parts weren't working or ready. Nothing wrong with that. But trying to portray it as something it wasn't made me question my desire to be attached to such an effort. But, patience is a virtue. Marketing is meaningless when it's not attached to production. And thank goodness, it isn't in free software, it isn't in KDE.

I would be perfectly happy with a truthful message, something like "All software sucks. We suck less. Sometimes."


Comments:
Ok, the kdemod packages does _not_ conflict with kde 3.5, just fyi. I'm not saying you should drop your own, but at least you know they exist ;).
(There are however some separately maintained packages that are automatically rebuilt every now and then from svn trunk, that do conflict with kde 3.5.)

Also, have you tried Shaman and/or Arxin (shaman.iskrembilen.com and arxin.iskrembilen.com)?

Also, I think the marketing is good. With all the "major" distributors having Gnome as default, I think KDE needs to stir up people a bit. I'm also pretty sure that the "marketing" and hyping has given KDE quite a lot of new users.
 
Of kde4? Maybe once.

Derek
 
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