Re: KDE is now broken (Fwd: Heads-up: KDE4 hitting testing tonight (UTC) )
Andrei Popescu said:
> On Mon,25.May.09, 16:20:44, marc wrote:
>
>> I read a defensive post on the Kubuntu list - there is a *lot* of
>> defensiveness around kde4 at the moment - that claims that kde4 is a
>> rewrite and so users should adjust their expectations accordingly.
>>
>> It reminded me of Joel Spolsky's article, 'Things You Should Never Do':
>>
>> http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html
>>
>> "They make the single worst strategic mistake that any software company
>> can make: They decided to rewrite the code from scratch."
>>
>> "if [they] actually had some adult supervision with software industry
>> experience, they might not have shot themselves in the foot so badly."
>
> Looks like an interesting article, but I didn't see any mention of FLOSS
> other than using emacs to write it, all examples are based on
> proprietary software.
It makes no difference, imo; the disciplines are the same.
>> The whole kde4 fiasco has radically altered my view of FOSS. I now
>> know, with very few exceptions, that the leaders of FOSS projects are
>> very, very inexperienced at real world software delivery.
>
> You are assuming a market.
Er, nope, I'm not. Note the absence of the word 'market'.
For 'real world' read (something like): people who will actually use this
stuff in the real world, day to day.
> FOSS works more like a jungle: survival of the fittest.
Lol, if only. Next you'll be telling me that's what Darwin said. FOSS has
all the hallmarks of corporate s/w. All the crap. All the politics. And
never the best solution. Linus, by holding onto his vision, is one of the
few that has achieved useful, usable, coherent success. Witness the git
offshoot. That's what you look for to determine success. But Linus knows
about development, and he certainly knows a shed load about migration.
> Maybe some users will migrate away from KDE, maybe some
> will join. Only time will tell.
The options, the real options, are limited at the moment. And with Gnome
and KDE becoming more and more Windows-like by the day - and certainly by
philosophy - we need a new player.
>> Heaven help us when Linus moves on. I bet there are folk lining up to
>> rewrite the kernel right now. And there will be a huge queue of folk
>> right behind them shrieking, "New! Shiny!".
>
> How much code does 2.6 have in common with 2.4?
Ah! But that's the wrong way to look at it. That's the mistake. That's
precisely what Joel's article is about. It's not about commonality of
code, it's about how you migrate to the later revisions.
Migration is a skill, a learned skill, and I understood that more folk
had it these day - what with all the tools that make it so easy to do -
but clearly many folk don't know the first thing about it. kde4 is a
classic example of how *not* to migrate.
--
Best,
Marc
"Change requires small steps."
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