Re: [trinity-devel] Appeal for freedom of speech

Ilya, I am a bystander in this conversation. Please forgive me if I misperceive anything transpiring. If I understand correctly, you want to maintain KDE 3.5.10 for your distro. If I understand correctly, you want to know whether the Trinity developers will maintain the Trinity Desktop as an upstream source for patches that can be applied to KDE 3.5.10. I understand the desire to keep KDE 3.5.10 alive. I am using 3.5.10 on Slackware 13.1, rebuilt and heavily patched by my own effort, but I am chomping at the bit to move to Trinity. There are two reasons I want to move to Trinity. One, finding patches for 3.5.10 has become challenging and discouraging. I'm not a C++ developer. I get lost fast when I try to play the patching game. Every time GCC or libpng changes seems there a bunch of patches that need to be made to KDE 3.5.10. The same patches need to be made to Trinity, but there are more people supporting the effort. From what I gather there are some other people trying to maintain 3.5.10. I admire anyone who can keep 3.5.10 patched to run on more recent releases of any distro. But trying to do that on my own is exasperating. The second reason I want to move to Trinity is overall improvements. I am one of those people who thought KDE 3.5.10 was almost "just right." I think if the original KDE developers had pushed hard for a significant bug quashing effort and released a 3.5.11 that many people would have perceived the KDE 4 initial release with much more forgiveness. But that is neither here or now. The Trinity developers had done all of that and more. I believe there is plenty of room for KDE 4 and Trinity. I want very much to see the two communities live in peace. Concurrently patching Trinity and KDE 3.5.10 is a major task, especially now that Trinity uses the tqtinterface. I have tried many times to apply Trinity patches to 3.5.10. I get lost very fast and give up. I presume a person skilled in C++ can convert Trinity patches to merge into KDE 3.5.10, but only each person can decide whether the effort is worth the time. The Trinity developers have said they won't provide upstream support for KDE 3.5.10. For good reasons --- primarily the work involved. Yet there is nothing stopping anybody from doing what I just described and converting Trinity patches to 3.5.10. There won't be any official support, of course. Second, the Trinity team is focused on developing Trinity as a stand alone project. One that keeps the old 3.5.10 style of desktops alive, but nonetheless moves forward to improve that environment. The Trinity goals do not include maintaining 3.5.10. I don't see why anybody who wants to maintain 3.5.10 can or should find fault with the Trinity developers. I don't have the skills or knowledge to know what you need to maintain 3.5.10. If you prefer 3.5.10 over Trinity, then like any free/libre software project, you are free to continue that code and find contributors. You are free to modify Trinity patches to fit 3.5.10. Some people in the KDE 4 community complain that the effort provided to develop and maintain Trinity is wasted effort and such efforts should be contributed to KDE 4. I disagree but that is not important to this conversation. You probably are feeling the same way about 3.5.10 with respect to Trinity. Yet Trinity is a much improved 3.5.10 and then some. Whereas I can see the usability and design differences between KDE 4 and Trinity, I don't see any between 3.5.10 and Trinity. I see Trinity as the better option. I admit there are about a half dozen bugs I need quashed before I will move from 3.5.10 to Trinity. I am expecting those bugs to receive attention in the upcoming months before 3.5.14 is released. Certainly I will be making sufficient noise for those bugs to be resolved. :) Yet I still support the project and even as I write this text, I am building Trinity packages for Slackware. I will make them available to the Slackware community and will use the packages to help test. I'm wondering whether than expend energy maintaining 3.5.10 and spreading false information about the Trinity project, why not focus on maintaining Trinity for your distro? That is what I am doing with Slackware. There are not many known Trinity or 3.5.10 users in the Slackware community, but there probably are enough that if Trinity gains good publicity and traction that picture might change. A public threat to spread false information does little for your own credibility. People who attempt that typically suffer more than those they accuse. Please reconsider your position and actions. :) Darrell