KDE 4.0.0 is tagged. Support for KDE 3 will continue for years to come
KDE 4.0.0 is tagged, meaning that KDE 4 is released according to plan.
KDE3 will be supported for years to come, is the message from Aaron J.
Seigo, president of KDE e.V. Here are some highlights from Aarons
blog[1]:
This year, as with most years since KDE3 emerged, there have been huge
deployments of KDE 3 based software. These deployments will not shift
for years to come, no matter what KDE4 is. This is because large
institutional deployments (government, corporate, educational, etc)
typically have 3-7 year cycles (sometimes even longer) between major
changes. Patches and security fixes? Sure. Major revamps? No.
This alone ensures that KDE3 will remain supported for years. Why?
Because there are users. That is how the open source dev model works:
where there are users, there are developers; as one declines so does
the other. The developers tend to be a step ahead of the users for
software that is progressive, but you'll also find that they have a
foot in the here and now too (as well as the past, often).
[...]
The core KDE team will continue to concentrate it's work on KDE4 since
that is the long term direction of things. It is fully expected that
our partners (which include some KDE core team members as
employees/members) will continue supporting and even developing on KDE3
issues.
[...]
Aaron continues. KDE 4.0 isn't yet "better than good enough"; so why
don't we just release more betas? When one perpetually releases
alphas/betas a few things happen: people don't test it aggressively
enough, third party developers don't get involved, core developers
continue doing blue sky development rather than focusing on release
qualities.
[...]
KDE 4.0 rocks in a number of ways. Whether one looks at the new
frameworks (solid, phonon, akonadi et al) or the revamped existing ones
(kconfig getting multiple back end support, the UI-less kdecore), or
examines the apps like okular or kdeedu or the games or dolphin or
ksnapshot or konsole (ok, I won't list every app) or many of the new
workspace features like composite and widgets or the new artwork or ...
you get the picture. There's a lot that is just amazing.
[...]
What leaves people wondering about quality is that there is a disparity
between our stated end goals and 4.0. This is, to be blunt, due to a
lack of experience on their part: most people have never been involved
in the creation of something great. We're involved in making something
great that will end up spanning a decade of effort and be used for even
longer than that.
To be able to accomplish such a thing one requires the ability to see
beyond today and into the uncertain future. They also need to be able
to adjust and shift that vision as things evolve (ergo the shift from
tenor to strigi/nepomuk, even though the end result is essentially the
same ideas). It is simply not possible, without extreme luck similar to
winning the lottery, to create something great without that vision.
This is not my idea, this is the result of pretty much every bit of
research and practical analysis from the business operations world.
1. The full blog post from Aaron:
http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2008/01/talking-bluntly.html
Best regards
Knut Yrvin
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