On Saturday 12 November 2011 01:06:57 Timothy Pearson wrote: Hi Tim, Criticism of any kind (constructive or not) is a very important component of freedom. It's just freedom of speech, if you do not like his ideas just ignore it. As a person who lived under comunism I'm very sensitive to any kind of censorship (which is useless anyway in this case, because he can express his opinions elsewhere). For this reason I hope you will change your mind and unban Ilya. Thank you. [...] -- Serghei

And as an addendum I should probably post the reason that he was even temporarily removed. Remember that these lists are public and archived, and also that sometimes people read the lists (e.g. via Google) before deciding to use a project. That means that if we do not deal with baseless accusations against the project they WILL pile up and cause us to lose users, developers, and over time may accumulate enough to kill the project entirely. On the other hand, if our developers spend all of their time debunking said accusations properly, rationally, and logically, there will be no time left to fix bugs and improve the project, thus killing it from another angle. My gut instinct was to remove the source of the baseless accusations. As that is not an option at this point, we will need to set up a triage system for dealing with such things. I cannot handle it alone; just dealing with this and debunking the binary compatibility "problem" has sucked up a lot of time that should have been spent on the move to GIT. Be aware that while I will not be "censoring" the list, just ignoring baseless criticism does NOT mean it just goes away. In fact, many people will read the criticism and take our silence as confirmation that it is correct. Tim

On Saturday 12 November 2011 23:53:26 Kate Draven wrote: Please tell me, is this a baseless criticism or not? "KDE3 I can understand, as it is technically dead." "KDE:KDE3 is still stuck on 3.5.10, and therefore does not impact us." "You "fixed" the HAL dependency by removing much of the functionality " "You are not allowed to continue using the KDE trademark" "At worst, it could be considered trademark infringement and subject you to civil and/or criminal liability." This bullshit is by Robert Xu and Pearson. So it was you who started the baseless accusations. By the way, public libel is also a criminal offense in this country. I monitor your patches and include anything useful in KDE:KDE3 (and not only from Trinity). Thus if KDE:KDE3 as you claim is dead, outdated and not maintained, then Trinity is also. I was just responding to your offenses. There is no single security patch or other bug fix in Trinity that is not (or cannot) be taken to KDE:KDE3 (except those Ubuntu and cmake-specific). ==================== Well, actually I thought we were doing common deal, but Pearson's reasoning seems incompatible with such approach. He accused me of stealing users, intending to overtake leadership and other things I was never intended to. He already banned me long ago from all Trinity mailing lists except -devel. I thought he was sorry about this, but now it seems this behavior is persistent and progressing. He takes my patch one day and shuts my mouth the other day. That said I now regret that I ever contributed any patches to Trinity. ==================== Okay. This means you do not want to be upstream for KDE3, contrary to what you claimed before. You're only upstream for Trinity. ==================== To conclude, I will spread the word about Trinity and its unbalanced leader.

On Sunday 13 November 2011 00:29:39 Timothy Pearson wrote: This is not true. I contributed these patches: http://www.trinitydesktop.org/patches/1317502993:5402bbfde73f33c76f17a72bcd… http://www.trinitydesktop.org/patches/1315109543:90c6afc471fdb1a7761a1fab50… http://www.trinitydesktop.org/patches/1304806557:e789477ef1d0a99f7795890210… http://www.trinitydesktop.org/patches/1299984139:790391e3a90a709160301953e4… http://www.trinitydesktop.org/patches/1298313909:f0023a8307d74fa72542482143… http://www.trinitydesktop.org/patches/1297797316:cc0ad49c75d6cf6b4e63eb8c60… and a fix to this bug: http://bugs.pearsoncomputing.net/show_bug.cgi?id=139 As can be seen from the patch, it does not remove any functionality, just the opposite, it enables and repairs a large part of code previously commented out and repairs other minor issues.

The common theme is that they are relatively trivial, and especially that last one no claim of ownership can really be attached, as the latest versions of GCC will demand that exact fix. Tim

I should clarify that I am not ungrateful for the patches that you have brought to our attention. In fact I think all of us appreciate those patches that you have submitted, as they brought minor issues to our attention that may have not been noticed otherwise. Since I cannot find the patch that I was referring to in a reasonable amount of time I will retract my statement regarding HAL. It is possible that another person attempted to submit such a patch and I got it confused over time. However as far as I can tell we are both taking a different approach to keeping the KDE3 interface alive. Your approach does not work for this project and our approach won't work for you, so the best thing is to keep exchanging small patches between the projects where the underlying code remains similar. I am open to doing this, and even provide the patch list on the Website to make it easier for people such as yourself to cherry-pick specific patches. I hope you will reciprocate in kind. I think all of us would appreciate it if you do not come on the list with accusatory statements regarding articles you found on the Internet. From what I can tell this is what started this whole mess, and it could have easily been avoided by asking some simple, polite questions about our binary compatibility policy, rather than making it sound like we have a terminal flaw in how we are handling the code and demanding an answer. I realize that English is not your native language, however you do need to be careful with the tone that is set in what you write, as native English speakers pick up on an accusatory tone rather quickly. Tim

On Sunday 13 November 2011 01:47:25 Julius Schwartzenberg wrote: Yes. Thank you.

On Sunday 13 November 2011 01:47:25 Julius Schwartzenberg wrote: And what I read from the replies by Robert and Pearson was that all bad things are related to KDE:KDE3 and the criticism does not affect Trinity. KDE:KDE3 is insecure, unmaintained and outdated while Trinity is new, secure, patched etc, let's spit and bite KDE:KDE3, and we will be in all white.

Here are my thoughts on KDE:KDE3: 1.) I am personally gad that it still exists, as we do not have OpenSUSE-specific packages available 2.) It is not a "new upstream" for a KDE3 continuation project, as it is heavily patched for OpenSUSE and does not have a central source repository, or any of the infrastructure required for a FOSS project to grow. For example, one large problem is that there is no clear way to inspect your patched source tree, including all changes made to it, to look for potential issues or to understand what exactly your patches are doing. 3.) Keeping 2) in mind, a clear upstream project such as TDE does make KDE:KDE3 somewhat obsolete from a certain perspective. I understand where you are coming from because I used to be there myself many years ago, but quickly grew tired of KDE3.5.10's limitations and having to hack around them with patches. This is why I created the infrastructure in use today by the TDE project: to encourage improvements to the KDE3 source code. Providing a central, up-to-date and easily readable/modifiable source tree is crucial for creating a thriving project. No developer will seriously consider a project that keeps old source files in tarballs, then applies hundreds of patches to them every time something is built, as "alive" or as something he or she should like to get involved with. In a similar vein, I have even had people say that they will not develop for TDE because we used SVN and not GIT, as SVN is somewhat more limited for a lone wolf developer. I am not trying to erase your repository or anything even close to it. I am simply asking that you acknowledge TDE as the upstream source for future development, and possibly work towards getting TDE building on OpenSUSE, instead of maintaining a fleet of patches for a product that was released over 5 years ago. In the end it is your choice; I hope you read the advice offered above in the kindly spirit that it was given in. Tim

On this note I urge users not to install anything from the KDE:KDE3 repository, as there is no peer review whatsoever of the overall cobbled-together codebase that Ilya is building binaries from. This is not safe, not good practice, and I really have no idea how long KDE:KDE3 will survive cut off from the rest of the FOSS community. You will likely not receive updates or new features from upstream projects such as TDE. I would in fact encourage those who cannot use TDE to use XFCE, KDE4, or Gnome, as these are much safer alternatives with central, publicly viewable source repositories. This is the exact attitude that prompted me to ban you earlier. Obviously that is not an option, but it appears nothing has changed. Tim

On Sunday 13 November 2011 03:08:26 Keith Daniels wrote: This may explain why Pearson is so paranoid.

I did not even want to grace this comment with a reply, but you are insinuating such a high level of unprofessional conduct that I must defend myself in some fashion. You are completely incorrect. Perhaps you think this is how FOSS projects should be run, I really have no idea. Just be aware that the TDE project has been operating at a *net loss* ever since its inception. It exists purely because I (and many others) believe the KDE3 codebase should not have been thrown aside so carelessly many years ago, and I continue to believe that its interface has relevance today. Any other motives are baseless speculation on your part, and your insinuations amount to a personal attack on my integrity. You do yourself more harm than I. Timothy Pearson Trinity Desktop Porject

On Sunday 13 November 2011 03:16:46 L0ner sh4dou wrote: It was never about which is better/upstream/updated.

On Sunday 13 November 2011 15:46:09 Julius Schwartzenberg wrote: This does not mean they should mock in shit any other project.

On Sunday 13 November 2011 15:46:09 Julius Schwartzenberg wrote: Pearson has ill memory it seems. He quickly forgot all I did for Trinity to the extent to claim I contributed nothing. I think I did more than just be considered "a source of headache". This strange property of Timothy's memory is impressing. Not long ago he assigned to me a bugreport to make knetworkmanager compatible with new API (after accepting a first patch from openSUSE's KDE:KDE3). The last discussion in that bugreport http://bugs.pearsoncomputing.net/show_bug.cgi?id=521 happened one day ago, after Timothy already banned me. He also could not forget other patches I did such as fixed taskbar, which he commited to the SVN himself. http://trinity-devel.pearsoncomputing.net/?0::1049 And the latter day he claims I did not submit anything to Trinity: http://trinity-devel.pearsoncomputing.net/?0::3488 http://trinity-devel.pearsoncomputing.net/?0::1052 This is just hilarious. I wonder whether he is just mentally ill or has amnesia. And this is not first time Pearson shows this kind of behavior and easily forgets anything done by a developer.

On Sunday 13 November 2011 19:59:20 Julius Schwartzenberg wrote: Of course it is strange to be assigned a bug and at the same time be banned, is not it? If you want developers, you do not ban them.

On Sunday 13 November 2011 20:19:58 Calvin Morrison wrote: I was banned then I closed the bugreport or you expect people to contribute even under ban? Even more, Pearson banned me from all other Trinity mailing lists besides -devel long time ago and still he has courage to assign me bugs and expect my help. Not to say that he has claimed in his post that I contributed nothing to Trinity despite he himself accepter numerous my patches, including in knetwoirkmanager which made it build with NM 0.9. Your Trinity just parasitize on other projects and at the same time Pearson does not express gratitude but just mocks us in shit. I cannot remember a single patch of Trinity that is undoubtfully useful except those patches which were accepted to Trinity from Chakra.

On Sunday 13 November 2011 20:33:10 Calvin Morrison wrote: This is my intention. But I want to reserve right to intervene in any discussion that contains slander .

On Sunday 13 November 2011 04:47:39 you wrote: Again incorrect link. I was actually referring to this patch: http://trinity-devel.pearsoncomputing.net/?0::2560 Possibly Pearson did not include it.

On Sunday 13 November 2011 00:55:46 Timothy Pearson wrote: It uses /media only in the block of code that was previously disabled completely. I do not know about such patch. Is is not by me for sure. Even if I plan I will not make you know.

Ilya Chernykh wrote: No, Ubuntu also removed HAL I understand. I think Trinity for newer Ubuntu's actually includes HAL itself for this reason.

On Sunday 13 November 2011 01:33:37 Julius Schwartzenberg wrote: This just confirms that Trinity remains Ubuntu-oriented.

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