No, it’s not a teen-like “I hate my life, I’m going to die tomorrow” post. I’m actually referring to the comments of a person nicknamed “I Love” that are popping up in almost all blogs that are linked to PlanetKDE which deal with Plasma or KDE4 adoption. The name “I Love” contrasts with an attitude that is unconstructive and rather trollish. This wouldn’t be such a big problem, if not for the fact that posts from said individual have had a rather negative effect: for example Aaron was forced to turn comment moderation on on his blog, Jos’ entry on the new Plasma in the upcoming KDE 4.3 was the theatre of a flame-fest in the comments, and now I’ve seen poisonous comments also on Nookie’s and Socceroos’ blogs.
Clearly this person hasn’t read the KDE Code of Conduct… and I bet he/she’s not very interested in that, either. I would recommend blog authors and commenters to just “let slide” what this person say, and go on with the discussion, since it’s too much of a hassle (for very little gain) to act pre-emptively.
To I Love: try to express your opinion in a form that is compatible with civil discussion, instead of going on a rampage. That is, assuming that you are actually interested in a civil discussion…
The dude thrives on a) attention and b) the feeling that he is the lone voice of truth against some imaginary close-minded, insular and deceptive KDE Kabal. By writing a blog post calling him out, you are feeding both of these.
@Anon: It can’t be helped, as not everyone reads comments of other blogs. It’s a problem because it disrupts discussion: that’s why I wrote this post. Personally, I am not paying too much attention to him.
He strikes again: http://labs.trolltech.com/blogs/2009/03/18/koffice-and-gsoc/
@Anon.
If your hypothesis is indeed true, then I should be elated at receiving front page mention on the premier KDE blog. Thanks one and all.
@Luca
You want a mature adult conversation, you will get one.
1. Jos says on his blog while replying to comments “Unfortunately it is not progress which impresses people, it is Present Results. And while KDE 4.2.1 is a compelling DE, it has about as many disadvantages as it has advantages over competing solutions (gnome, XFCE but also to a lesser extend Win and Mac).”
Exactly my sentiment. Who cares how much of an improvement KDE4 is over KDE3 series. Let us have a comparison with other contemporary desktops whether on Linux or otherwise and then see how things fare. Unfortunately, such candor is not seen on Seigo’s blog where the tone is mostly (and I quote out of context from a fedora 9 mailing list)
“WE like KDE. What? You have problems with KDE? Shush. We don’t talk about things like that around here. You know, why don’t go take a long hike of a short cliff.”
And Anon, I am not hinting at some secret KDE Kabal. I can show you the exact instances where this occurs.
2. As far as socceroos post on cheap netbooks in Australia, I would request all to head to the website of the manufacturer who says that after testing many flavors (including KDE4) they settled on GNOME gOS.
http://www.kogan.com.au/blog/2009/mar/10/Kogan-Netbook-gOS-linux/
“I tried it out myself, and played with Ubuntu Netbook Remix, KDE 4, and a few others as well. At the end of the day, gOS was clearly the best flavour of linux for the Kogan netbook.”
Socceroos then chooses to take another posting from the manufacturer website where KDE4 is only listed in passing at the bottom, and spin it as a victory for KDE4.
“All things considered, its good to see a company of Kogan’s size actively push Open Source (and particlarly, KDE4!) into the public’s eye”
If someone tries to call his bluff, you (Luca) are referring to it as an evil act.
3. Nookie’s post on changes that (s)he would like to see in the panel.
http://blusrcu.ba/nookie/?p=17&cpage=1#comment-10
Please check out the initial response of Chani from the KDE team on that blog.
“please, do some basic research before blogging your “suggestions” to planetkde.”
This seems like very civil discussion, doesnt it, where someone is posting in an effort to start discussion, and is being rebuked for that by KDE team. I should add that (s)he later issues a “half-apology”, but you see the general tone in dealing with contrarian viewpoints.
4. Finally as far as the flame war on Jos’ blog.
Please take an unbiased look at the tone on Jos’ posting, and the dissmissiveness about the techrepublic article along with “it is too silly to even mention”. Then please visit the said techrepublic article and read the comments there by “KDE people” such as blueget filled with F-words and bad language.
So you( Luca) think this is OK when it is in support of KDE, but if someone talks contrary to that it is somehow evil?
In any case, all these technicalities apart, this is 2009. Where is the KDE4 netbook interface? where are the pillars of KDE4 apart from Plasma? Where is a KOffice 2 that will rival Openoffice? How long can the shift to Qt4 be made scapegoat for subpar product? Where is a usable Zooming interface? Where is Nepomuk derived semantic desktop?
Well even these are lofty goals. Let me talk about lower goals. As David pointed out on the planet, WTF is the KDM so shitty? Why is networkmanager in Jaunty Kubuntu not as seamless and easy as its coutnerpart in Jaunty Ubuntu, so far?
If you are able to answer all these questions, then you will see that there has been no substantial progress anywhere except new themes, wallpapers and panel transluscence.
If you remember the KDE 4.0 release, the KDE team (and I think Seigo in particular) went about trying to convince us that since it was a new beginning, spending forever trying to recreate KDE3.5 in Qt4 was a waste of time, and so they did not do it. Now with KDE 4.2 the same people are telling us that they spent a whole year recreating KDE 3.5 in Qt4 and so we should be greateful. Do you see the contradiction?
Frankly I find it refreshing to see someone other than the KDE fanboys posting all the time. Sure ILove’s views are unpopular because they essentially point out that “the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes”.
I’ve yet to see anyone actually able to substantially address the criticism that ILove is making, and I have to say I agree with most of his points. KDE4 has been a big disappointment (but it does look really shiny :-) It’s art, not engineering. It’s style over function. Maybe when enough devs have finished making it look the way they want, they can start working on making it function.
If you don’t like what s/he is saying, argue against that. Don’t attack the person. Dismissing them as a troll and calling for them to stop posting doesn’t help anyone.
@Jammer: “fanboys” is the first word you have to tear out of your argument if you want a reasonable discussion.
And I don’t dislike “I Love”, I don’t know the person, but he/she acted in a form that I found questionable.
@I Love
1. It’s good that people have different views. But you know that FOSS is a process, not a product, right? And can you provide exact quotes from Aaron?
2. You may be right, but the tone of the message was inflammatory, or at least provocative.
3. Chani apologized immediately afterwards. There was not a single post inbetween. “Errare humanum est”. But, like what I saw in your case, “Perseverare diabolicum”.
The goals will take time. Did you really expect a fully usable product out of thin air? Did you see the speed of progression? *That* is the real poisonous attitude, although with a slight feeling of entitlement. If you want to improve things, you *can*, even if you are not a coder.
Aaron righftully said it was a “beginning”, in the sense that things got *started*. It wasn’t an end. And the last part of your comment marks why I think your views, expressed as is, are detrimental to the discussion. Notice that aside your comments on Nookie’s post, people were actually discussing various things in a civil manner.
I’ll see whether allowing the discussion to go further depending on the replies.
@ Jammer
Be thankful that our posts are not being deleted immediately like in Aaron Seigo’s blog. We need to bow down to the mighty KDE Gods for this favor. As Luca says “(S)he’ll see whether allowing the discussion to go further depending on the replies.” I guess we need to be mindful not to offend said KDE Gods. /sarcasm
@Luca
1. Word play is fine “FOSS is a process not a product”….and all that. The distro is a product. The netbook I am using it is a product. It seems the only place the accountability is missing is in KDE. And by using this “we are neither upstream nor downstream” passing the buck attitude, all KDE problems are either pawned off to the distro or to the hardware manufacturer or to users who are asking for too much, or to reviewers such as Vaughn Nichols or Techrepublic who are spreading FUD. There is no introspection or accountability. At least there is no visible sign of anything changing (except lest I forget, wallpapers, themes and panel decorations).
2. As I say, you only need to view posting of your ilk(KDE fans) on techrepublic or sjvn’s posting or in the phonon/gstreamer discussion, and you will relize that it is only what goes around that is coming around. Please dont remain in this illusion that people who do not like the current direction are all somehow inflamatory or boneheads. And as far as Seigo’s respsonses, it will basically be so long as to take over your blog, but even some skimming through his entries on panel autohiding will give you a sense of what I am talking about. There are standard responses “It is not working for you? It is working for me, something is wrong with you.” or “It is not working because of nvidia, not our fault” or “it is not working because distros are giving us a bad name” or “distros are backporting features and leading to bugs.” All these are well documented on his blog with even some distro representatives providing contrary opinions to his. You should spend some time reading them.
The nVidia thing is the biggest joke of all, because XFCE 4.6 does compositing without prop. drivers, Slitaz with openbox does compositing, but if KDE chooses to take a risky path and fails, instead of owning up, everything is lumped on another source.
3. Chani did not apologize. Her words were somethign to the effect that she should be more polite but it is hard to do so since people just keep complaining. So, I would keep my fancy Latin/Italian or whatever that is to myself.
No one disputed goals will take time. Did you even take time to read my post? I said when 4.0 was released there was talk about new direction and new pillars and new way of doing things. However, the last year has been spent achieving “feature parity” with a 4 year old DE. That is not progress my friend, that is backpedaling on principles.
No one is feeling a sense of entitlement. There are two things that you are missing. There was a product(3.5) that Just worked ™. 4.2.1 after 13 months is barely able to Just work ™. In the same timespan other DEs and OSs have not been sitting by the wayside waiting for KDE to catch up but have been improving by leaps and bounds. So a good comparison would be one with other contemporary desktops whether on Linux or otherwise.
And secondly, since you havent read my earlier posting, I will quote again, from your very own Jos Poortvliet, “Unfortunately it is not progress which impresses people, it is Present Results. And while KDE 4.2.1 is a compelling DE, it has about as many disadvantages as it has advantages over competing solutions (gnome, XFCE but also to a lesser extend Win and Mac).”
It might be magical to people who were in KDE 3.5 to see something with transparencies like 4.3, but if one opens ones eyes to the world outside, transparencies have been so overused in OSX and Windows Vista Aero and Windows 7 that it seems cliched and plagiarized now. The new breed of Linux users on netbooks etc are not the usual fanatics from the 90s that are in awe of these things. They want something that Just works ™.
Again, I bow down to thee, for “allowing” my post on your blog. You are indeed kind, ever loving and benevolent to allow dissent. /sarcasm
@Jammer:
First of all, developers aren’t necessary artists, and artists don’t have to know programming. It seems that one of KDE4′s weak points is that it simply looks too good – why else is everyone complaining about the nice appearance? Eye-candy that doesn’t get in the way is a good thing in my book.
Let the artists do what they enjoy doing. After all, they contribute much more to KDE than the average user complaining about missing functionality. I myself belong to the latter group. But if there’s something you miss, you should file a bug (or add your vote if someone already created one) instead of stating “It’s style over function”.
I’ve ignored I Love’s posts until now, because I don’t think it’s worth my time replying to someone whose intention obviously isn’t to improve KDE. But this time I’m going to make a little exception:
> If you remember the KDE 4.0 release, the KDE team (and I think Seigo in particular) went about trying to convince us that since it was a new beginning, spending forever trying to recreate KDE3.5 in Qt4 was a waste of time, and so they did not do it. Now with KDE 4.2 the same people are telling us that they spent a whole year recreating KDE 3.5 in Qt4 and so we should be greateful. Do you see the contradiction?
As far as I recall, Aaron said that porting Kicker to Qt4 would take a lot of time and effort, so they started from scratch with Plasma instead. This wasn’t the only reason though, which I Love should know if s/he has listened to Aaron’s speech.
Needless to say, the desktop in KDE 4.0/4.1 wasn’t as complete and mature as the one in KDE 3.5. People started to complain about missing their favorite feature, so the Plasma team worked hard to reimplant most features from KDE 3.5. Porting != reimplant.
This is how I see things, and I don’t see the contradiction.
Note that I’m just another KDE user, I’m not related to the KDE team in any way (although I wish I could help by contributing code).
@I Love: I suggest that you don’t waste your time to reply to this post, since I’m not going to spend more time here. You’re welcome to call me a coward if you wish, but I rather spend some time to learn more C++ than hang around here and argue with people on the Internet.
:)
I love the condescending “If you have problems you should code or file bugs” attitude. Does anyone realize people who are pointing these faults out for free are themselves doing a favor by doing free consulting? So Luca, and Hans, I would refrain from that “below the belt” attack, whenever there is nothing else relevant to be said on your part.
Well, I *did* contribute although in a little form, and I’m not coding (yet): the Plasma FAQ, some mentoring on the KDE Forums… it’s not too hard to start.
As for the rest, I think the discussion is going nowhere. So comments are closed.