Ars reviews KDE 4.0.0: "KDE 4.0 was officially released last week after extensive development. The long-awaited 4.0 release ushers in a new era for the popular open-source desktop environment and adds many intriguing new features and technologies. Unfortunately, the release comes with almost as many new bugs as it does features, and there is much work to be done before it sparkles like the 3.5.x series." They were also at the KDE 4.0 release event.
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Member since:2005-07-24
That's what svn access, alphas, and betas are for. You are *severely* twisting a CatB catch phrase to suit your purpose by using it in that distorted way. (And when did that become the Bible, anyway?)
Edited 2008-01-22 00:29 UTC
Member since:2006-04-04
the definition of 'show stopper' is something that (hold your breath) stops the show. If alpha and beta testing reveal no more of these, then it is time for release.
How on earth did I twist the phrase 'release early release often' when we're discussing something that people are complaining about being released [i]early[/]??
I don't thing anyone is claiming the Cathedral and the Bazaar is any kind of bible, bit, you know, its about developing free software and kde is free software, so hey, not that far out of left field I'd have thought.
So, in summary, a free software project, in concert with the opinions expressed in a book about free software, released a piece of feature complete software, mainly so that application developers have an ABI stable base to develop against and people are complaining like the developers individually came round to their houses, formatted their systems and put a gun to their heads and made them install KDE4.0
As far as I'm aware, there is not a single distro with KDE4.0 as anything more than a preview package at present.
Programmers have a stable development environment to work against. Power users get to run the latest and greatest and start filling out bug reports, making suggestions and contributing however they feel. Distros get something that they can start packaging, port their unique apps to. Technically unsophisticated users don't even need to know it exists. And people with nothing better to do, who get something for nothing sit around and complain about other people's hard work on the internet. Which category do you fill?
Member since:2005-07-06
You don't understand development. Having open repository access, and releasing alphas and betas is one thing, but getting a catch-all in place for lots of bugs, feedback and getting enough people to actually really test something is quite a different matter.
There is also a point to tagging something, setting it in stone and releasing - you are working progressively from known points and know issues and bugs that existed at a point in time.
Because that's the way it works, and it's why people have talked an awful lot about development methods such as Extreme Programming and alike and why there has been so much scrutiny over the years as to why most software projects fail to meet expectations - ever, no matter what the release number.
Welcome to 2008. I mean seriously. People don't understand this?!
Member since:
2006-04-04
if the feature list for 4.0 is complete and there are no show stopper bugs then you release. Release early, release often.
And of course there are differences between a free software project and a commercial one. No one is asking you to pay money for KDE4 and noone is making the distros package it and make it the default DE. The only people who can even get at it are those technical enough and interested enough to know what they are getting into.