Star KDE 4.2 Released; Short Interview: Aaron Seigo
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 27th Jan 2009 18:41 UTC
KDE The release of KDE 4.0 was not a smooth one, and left a number of users a bit disgruntled. Still, the release showed so much potential that it was oozing out of every pixel. KDE 4.1 improved significantly in many areas of concern, but it wasn't yet ready for everyone. With today's release of KDE 4.2, the KDE4 vision is ready to face not only developers and enthusiasts, but every users. We have taken a look at the release candidate for KDE 4.2, and we have a short interview with KDE's Aaron Seigo.
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RE[6]: Great Release
by lemur2 on Wed 28th Jan 2009 00:24 UTC in reply to "RE[5]: Great Release"
lemur2
Member since:
2007-02-17

"Research about it if you have the time. Google for "The Cathedral and the Bazaar".
I guess we missed the part where you have to give half-baked versions of the software an X.0 version designation. Your ongoing "release early, release often" mantra doesn't apply to that particular feat of poor release planning. As google ninja noted a while back, poorly applied, "release early, release often" just translates to "it's alright to release poorly tested and unready crap, as long as you do it a lot". "

So you didn't google for it as I suggested.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar
"The Bazaar model, in which the code is developed over the Internet in view of the public. Raymond credits Linus Torvalds, leader of the Linux kernel project, as the inventor of this process. Raymond also provides anecdotal accounts of his own implementation of this model for the fetchmail project.
The essay's central thesis is Raymond's proposition that "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" (which he terms Linus's Law): the more widely available the source code is for public testing, scrutiny, and experimentation, the more rapidly all forms of bugs will be discovered. In contrast, Raymond claims that an inordinate amount of time and energy must be spent hunting for bugs in the Cathedral model, since the working version of the code is available only to a few developers."


Early releases of free software, developed in the "Bazaar" model, are intended for "public testing, scrutiny, and experimentation, the more rapidly all forms of bugs will be discovered".

Period. Initial releases to the public of free software will contain bugs. The idea is ... to identify them and flush them out. Early.

Edited 2009-01-28 00:30 UTC

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RE[7]: Great Release
by Thom_Holwerda on Wed 28th Jan 2009 00:35 in reply to "RE[6]: Great Release"
Thom_Holwerda Member since:
2005-06-29

Early releases of free software, developed in the "Bazaar" model, are intended for "public testing, scrutiny, and experimentation, the more rapidly all forms of bugs will be discovered".

Period. Initial releases of free software will contain bugs. The idea is ... to identify them and flush them out. Early.


You're tiptoeing around the issue, lemur2, as usual. This isn't about whether or not early releases of Free software will contain bugs.

This is about violating the generally accepted - by both Free and non-Free software developers - idea that a 1.0 release indicates a release which the developers believe to be free of showstopping bugs, ready for general consumption, but may obviously still contain bugs and issues that will be addressed in 1.0.1 and 1.1 releases.

KDE 4.0 violated this generally accepted idea - i fact, it ass-raped it, injected it with heroine, and made it its bitch. Yes, that's how bad KDE 4.0 was.

And that was simply a mistake. Anyone with more than two functioning braincells realises this.

Edited 2009-01-28 00:37 UTC

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 3

RE[8]: Great Release
by lemur2 on Wed 28th Jan 2009 00:42 in reply to "RE[7]: Great Release"
lemur2 Member since:
2007-02-17

"Early releases of free software, developed in the "Bazaar" model, are intended for "public testing, scrutiny, and experimentation, the more rapidly all forms of bugs will be discovered". Period. Initial releases of free software will contain bugs. The idea is ... to identify them and flush them out. Early.
You're tiptoeing around the issue, lemur2, as usual. This isn't about whether or not early releases of Free software will contain bugs. This is about violating the generally accepted - by both Free and non-Free software developers - idea that a 1.0 release indicates a release which the developers believe to be free of showstopping bugs, ready for general consumption, but may obviously still contain bugs and issues that will be addressed in 1.0.1 and 1.1 releases. KDE 4.0 violated this generally accepted idea - i fact, it ass-raped it, injected it with heroine, and made it its bitch. Yes, that's how bad KDE 4.0 was. And that was simply a mistake. Anyone with more than two functioning braincells realises this. "

I beg to differ.

leos says it beautifully:

You have a very short memory. Gnome 2.0 was awful and lacked many really basic features. Same with Apache 2.0, the first 5-10 releases of Linux kernel 2.6, Vista, Windows XP pre-SP1, OS X 10.0/1.

All of those were new releases of previously mature and stable, complex software projects. All of them were horrible. I would say all of them were worth it in the end after some fixing. If you think KDE 4.0 was unique you really haven't been paying attention.


Edited 2009-01-28 00:42 UTC

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RE[8]: Great Release
by leos on Wed 28th Jan 2009 00:57 in reply to "RE[7]: Great Release"
leos Member since:
2005-09-21

This is about violating the generally accepted - by both Free and non-Free software developers - idea that a 1.0 release indicates a release which the developers believe to be free of showstopping bugs, ready for general consumption, but may obviously still contain bugs and issues that will be addressed in 1.0.1 and 1.1 releases.


There are two issues here, although everyone seems to be confusing them. A 1.0 release is supposed to be pretty good. There are no previous expectations, it is the first major release of a product and in the cause of open source projects, has usually seen many 0.x releases to polish it.

A x.0 release, where x > 1, is different. In this case there already is a (x-1).y set of releases, and they are presumably quite stable. Then some major change was made to justify a new major version number. This is bound to introduce regressions and if we look at history, this has been the case for just about every major software project (I mentioned some in my previous post).

Now KDE 4.0 was a pretty bad example of this, but it was hardly unique. Every big re-imagining of projects starts with one pretty crappy release (OSX, Gnome2, Vista, etc). It would have been better for KDE if the quality of 4.0 was more like that of 4.1, but let's not pretend they are the only project that suffers from this.

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RE[7]: Great Release
by sbergman27 on Wed 28th Jan 2009 00:54 in reply to "RE[6]: Great Release"
sbergman27 Member since:
2005-07-24

So you didn't google for it as I suggested.

No. I read it back in 1997 when it was in vogue and ESR was still a respected FOSS advocate.

I see you are continuing your tradition of avoiding the issue by responding to my on-target criticisms with off-target points which don't relate. I wonder why you consistently do that on this topic?

Edited 2009-01-28 00:55 UTC

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 2