hi everyone ...
first off, congratulations on a new release!
the way i see Trinity, it is the continuation of work on the 3.5 codebase. nobody else is doing it, nobody else seems willing to do it outside of Trinity and there are people who want to use it. these are all great things and a strength of free and open source software.
as such, i see Trinity doing a service by giving those who wish to continue using KDE 3.x the ability to do so without facing software obsolence through bit rot. this makes those folks happier, and prevents them from feeling like their only remaining response is to behave poorly towards those working on the 4.x codebases. it's win-win in the truest sense of the word.
but i'm not going to whitewash things either: there are those who use Trinity who really dislike 4.x and those in the KDE community who see Trinity as a safe haven for people who have (or continue to) behave poorly. this is beyond unfortunate since Trinity and the KDE Platform and Workspaces 4.x both provide good things to the same group of people: those who use KDE software. so i'd like to see the remaining negativity put behind us so all of us working on KDE code can co-exist in good spirit, happy in the knowledge that everyone is getting what they want and doing so in the spirit of true freedom. i hope you feel similarly.
this was the spirit in which we encouraged people to work on the 3.x code if they wanted to and, unlike some other communities who have in recent times openly berated and made fun of people who wanted to do similar things for their software, have been supporters and agreed with the goals you have.
so when i see the announcements on sites starting with quotes like this:
"Disappointed with KDE 4's performance and other shortcomings, Timothy Pearson continued KDE 3.5 development under the name Trinity."
i cringe a little inside because that does nothing but stir up hornets' nests.
when i read this in the announcement to the mailing list:
"Why upgrade from KDE3.5.10, the latest release available from KDE e.V.? Simply put, Trinity is faster, more secure, and far more feature rich than 3.5.10 ever was!" (http://trinity-devel.pearsoncomputing.net/?0::3271)
i feel sad because Trinity should really not be trying to stand out as a _competitor_ to 3.5.10 but as the continuation of that code base. (btw, KDE e.V. never puts out KDE releases; the community of participants and contirbutors does that.)
by positioning Trinity as a competitor when no such competition exists only serves to strengthen us/them lines that simply do not exist in reality.
personally, i'm tired of the needless divisions in F/OSS that arise because people can not simply live and let live, because we for some reason feel the need to constantly tear each other down in an attempt to make our own efforts seem more presentable and respectable. what rubbish. Trinity, as the continuation of the 3.5 codebase, stands on its own feet alongside Plasma Desktop and the rest of the 4.x products. we should therefore also stand as allies and friends. we should also stand for what we are, not for what (or who) we are not.
as the developers, and therefore leaders of the Trinity project, please consider this when working on and then publicizing your next release.
i appreciate your time and patience if you've read this far :)
<snip>
so i'd like to see the remaining negativity put behind us so all of us working on KDE code can co-exist in good spirit, happy in the knowledge that everyone is getting what they want and doing so in the spirit of true freedom. i hope you feel similarly.
I do, and I hope others who work on and use Trinity do as well. I have tried to go out of my way to make sure that KDE4 and Trinity users are simply treated as desiring a different feature set, and that KDE4 has workloads that are well suited for it, just as Trinity, Gnome, XFCE, and others do. Diversity here is a good thing! :-)
this was the spirit in which we encouraged people to work on the 3.x code if they wanted to and, unlike some other communities who have in recent times openly berated and made fun of people who wanted to do similar things for their software, have been supporters and agreed with the goals you have.
so when i see the announcements on sites starting with quotes like this:
"Disappointed with KDE 4's performance and other shortcomings, Timothy Pearson continued KDE 3.5 development under the name Trinity."
I didn't write that, nor do I know of anyone here that did. A better statement would be "Desiring a different interface than other Linux desktop environments provide, ....".
i cringe a little inside because that does nothing but stir up hornets' nests.
Agreed. I have appreciated the fact that the KDE4 development team has not tried to tear down the TDE project; the least we should do is return the favor.
when i read this in the announcement to the mailing list:
"Why upgrade from KDE3.5.10, the latest release available from KDE e.V.? Simply put, Trinity is faster, more secure, and far more feature rich than 3.5.10 ever was!" (http://trinity-devel.pearsoncomputing.net/?0::3271)
i feel sad because Trinity should really not be trying to stand out as a _competitor_ to 3.5.10 but as the continuation of that code base. (btw, KDE e.V. never puts out KDE releases; the community of participants and contirbutors does that.)
That statement was the result of attempting to absolve the KDE release managers of any responsibility for our releases, as well as make clear that the TDE project is a full fork of KDE 3.5.10 (which is no longer maintained AFAIK). Sorry if I offended.
by positioning Trinity as a competitor when no such competition exists only serves to strengthen us/them lines that simply do not exist in reality.
personally, i'm tired of the needless divisions in F/OSS that arise because people can not simply live and let live, because we for some reason feel the need to constantly tear each other down in an attempt to make our own efforts seem more presentable and respectable. what rubbish. Trinity, as the continuation of the 3.5 codebase, stands on its own feet alongside Plasma Desktop and the rest of the 4.x products. we should therefore also stand as allies and friends. we should also stand for what we are, not for what (or who) we are not.
Agreed.
as the developers, and therefore leaders of the Trinity project, please consider this when working on and then publicizing your next release.
i appreciate your time and patience if you've read this far :)
No problem. Thanks for taking the time to contact us and put all of this into words.
Timothy Pearson Trinity Desktop Project
Hi Aaron,
Mostly just a user here but I'm glad to hear your stance on Trinity. As you must imagine, probably everyone here is very grateful to you and other contributors who built what eventually became our beloved KDE 3.5. Still, you must understand that the reference to performance is obvious to anyone who bothers to check it. While KDE 4 does new stuff and in a more modern way, there's not denying that it takes up a bigger amount of the system's resources, especially memory. I've measured KDE 3.5.10 at ~80MB including other system dependencies and never less than 400 for a stripped down KDE 4, which is a very heavy weight for people with 512MB and 1GB of RAM in their computers.
I agree with you that positioning Trinity as a competitor to KDE 3.5.10 is not correct but I think no one here has a wrong attitude against KDE 3.5 or KDE 4. When people complain - from what I've gathered - it's mostly that it is too slow compared to what they are used to and they don't want or need extra functionality or "bling". That is also my opinion about KDE 4, although I have noticed improvements in more recent versions.
I'm personally hoping that the developers on both sides can work towards common goals (where attainable) and that both DEs can coexist for years to come, allowing people to use old apps that have been phased out and new ones that are part of KDE 4, 5 or whatever KDE's development team has in store.
Best regards, Tiago Marques
On Wed, Nov 2, 2011 at 10:26 PM, Aaron J. Seigo aseigo@kde.org wrote:
hi everyone ...
first off, congratulations on a new release!
the way i see Trinity, it is the continuation of work on the 3.5 codebase. nobody else is doing it, nobody else seems willing to do it outside of Trinity and there are people who want to use it. these are all great things and a strength of free and open source software.
as such, i see Trinity doing a service by giving those who wish to continue using KDE 3.x the ability to do so without facing software obsolence through bit rot. this makes those folks happier, and prevents them from feeling like their only remaining response is to behave poorly towards those working on the 4.x codebases. it's win-win in the truest sense of the word.
but i'm not going to whitewash things either: there are those who use Trinity who really dislike 4.x and those in the KDE community who see Trinity as a safe haven for people who have (or continue to) behave poorly. this is beyond unfortunate since Trinity and the KDE Platform and Workspaces 4.x both provide good things to the same group of people: those who use KDE software. so i'd like to see the remaining negativity put behind us so all of us working on KDE code can co-exist in good spirit, happy in the knowledge that everyone is getting what they want and doing so in the spirit of true freedom. i hope you feel similarly.
this was the spirit in which we encouraged people to work on the 3.x code if they wanted to and, unlike some other communities who have in recent times openly berated and made fun of people who wanted to do similar things for their software, have been supporters and agreed with the goals you have.
so when i see the announcements on sites starting with quotes like this:
"Disappointed with KDE 4's performance and other shortcomings, Timothy Pearson continued KDE 3.5 development under the name Trinity."
i cringe a little inside because that does nothing but stir up hornets' nests.
when i read this in the announcement to the mailing list:
"Why upgrade from KDE3.5.10, the latest release available from KDE e.V.? Simply put, Trinity is faster, more secure, and far more feature rich than 3.5.10 ever was!" (http://trinity-devel.pearsoncomputing.net/?0::3271)
i feel sad because Trinity should really not be trying to stand out as a _competitor_ to 3.5.10 but as the continuation of that code base. (btw, KDE e.V. never puts out KDE releases; the community of participants and contirbutors does that.)
by positioning Trinity as a competitor when no such competition exists only serves to strengthen us/them lines that simply do not exist in reality.
personally, i'm tired of the needless divisions in F/OSS that arise because people can not simply live and let live, because we for some reason feel the need to constantly tear each other down in an attempt to make our own efforts seem more presentable and respectable. what rubbish. Trinity, as the continuation of the 3.5 codebase, stands on its own feet alongside Plasma Desktop and the rest of the 4.x products. we should therefore also stand as allies and friends. we should also stand for what we are, not for what (or who) we are not.
as the developers, and therefore leaders of the Trinity project, please consider this when working on and then publicizing your next release.
i appreciate your time and patience if you've read this far :)
-- Aaron J. Seigo humru othro a kohnu se GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43
KDE core developer sponsored by Qt Development Frameworks
Hi Aaron Siego,
I'm the one who submitted the Slashdot story so I think I should reply. Note that I am *not* a Trinity developer and I'm not associated with the Trinity project other than having contributed a few patches to revive the old xparts and kmozilla.
Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
but i'm not going to whitewash things either: there are those who use Trinity who really dislike 4.x and those in the KDE community who see Trinity as a safe haven for people who have (or continue to) behave poorly. this is beyond unfortunate since Trinity and the KDE Platform and Workspaces 4.x both provide good things to the same group of people: those who use KDE software. so i'd like to see the remaining negativity put behind us so all of us working on KDE code can co-exist in good spirit, happy in the knowledge that everyone is getting what they want and doing so in the spirit of true freedom. i hope you feel similarly.
this was the spirit in which we encouraged people to work on the 3.x code if they wanted to and, unlike some other communities who have in recent times openly berated and made fun of people who wanted to do similar things for their software, have been supporters and agreed with the goals you have.
so when i see the announcements on sites starting with quotes like this:
"Disappointed with KDE 4's performance and other shortcomings, Timothy Pearson continued KDE 3.5 development under the name Trinity."
i cringe a little inside because that does nothing but stir up hornets' nests.
My apologies for this. This was my wording and it had a different intention than just bringing up stir. I have talked with multiple people in person and I had seen multiple articles and comments online which stated things like "I used to use KDE, but after I tried KDE 4 I switched to Gnome...". The submission I wrote was mainly meant to reach out to those people.
This is the first time there was a lot of PR around Trinity. Previously the new releases had been more silent and because the Trinity project has a lack of manpower, it seemed like a good idea to make the new release some headline news. This was not done in an ideal way, also due to lack of experience and manpower.
I'm not a PR person, my wording was not the best. I am happy to receive feedback about this such as what Timothy already wrote in his reply. My apologies again, especially towards you as a KDE developer, whose work we're enjoying so much.
when i read this in the announcement to the mailing list:
"Why upgrade from KDE3.5.10, the latest release available from KDE e.V.? Simply put, Trinity is faster, more secure, and far more feature rich than 3.5.10 ever was!" (http://trinity-devel.pearsoncomputing.net/?0::3271)
i feel sad because Trinity should really not be trying to stand out as a _competitor_ to 3.5.10 but as the continuation of that code base. (btw, KDE e.V. never puts out KDE releases; the community of participants and contirbutors does that.)
For this, I guess the same thing is true. The project has a lack of manpower and probably not a huge amount of time and consideration was put into writing the release notes.
In neither case the intention was to present Trinity as competition. If this was interpreted as such, I hope that we can find ways to prevent this in the future. I'm aware that you are considered to be a very good spokesperson and I really appreciate your feedback on this. If you could also help with wording on things like release notes and news items, I'm sure this would be very much appreciated also by the Trinity project.
by positioning Trinity as a competitor when no such competition exists only serves to strengthen us/them lines that simply do not exist in reality.
personally, i'm tired of the needless divisions in F/OSS that arise because people can not simply live and let live, because we for some reason feel the need to constantly tear each other down in an attempt to make our own efforts seem more presentable and respectable. what rubbish. Trinity, as the continuation of the 3.5 codebase, stands on its own feet alongside Plasma Desktop and the rest of the 4.x products. we should therefore also stand as allies and friends. we should also stand for what we are, not for what (or who) we are not.
as the developers, and therefore leaders of the Trinity project, please consider this when working on and then publicizing your next release.
I'm not sure what would be the best way to prevent this issue in the future. As said, what happened was more due to manpower and abilities than due to intention. To me it appeared that KDE e.V. was relatively distant towards the Trinity project other than providing a Subversion branch. Maybe doing such announcements through the KDE site or using the expertise from your side in another way would help closing the gap that seems to exist. The least that could be done maybe is asking you or other people from KDE to read things like release notes or news items before they are published. Do you have any suggestions in this area?
Although technically a bit separated (for now), I really see both the innovative KDE software collection and the traditional Trinity Desktop as two projects for KDE users and having both around will bring more KDE users than ever before. I hope we can get this view across somehow.
Thank you very much both for all your work and for your attention!
Julius Schwartzenberg
hi again :)
i'll just reply to this one email instead of each emai in the thread, though all the replies were, i though, well thought out and interesting. i just don't want to add more distracting noise than absolutely necessary to the devel list here :)
so ...
On Thursday, November 3, 2011 08:38:08 Julius Schwartzenberg wrote:
I have talked with multiple people in person and I had seen multiple articles and comments online which stated things like "I used to use KDE, but after I tried KDE 4 I switched to Gnome...". The submission I wrote was mainly meant to reach out to those people.
yes, i figured as much. on the good news side, many who made that switch have come back to using the Plasma Desktop, esp in the last year as Plasma has matured while GNOME and Ubuntu go through their own growing pains. others have come to use Trinity because it fits them best. many who never used KDE software in the past are doing so now.
so i think we're all achieving that goal of both growing our reach and appeal while also retaining our loyal user base from current and past years. that effort is absolutely worthwhile.
This is the first time there was a lot of PR around Trinity. Previously the new releases had been more silent and because the Trinity project has a lack of manpower, it seemed like a good idea to make the new release some headline news.
sounds like a good plan ..
I'm not a PR person, my wording was not the best. I am happy to receive feedback about this such as what Timothy already wrote in his reply. My apologies again, especially towards you as a KDE developer, whose work we're enjoying so much.
no problem; while a bit regrettable, it's nearly impossible to get things perfect on the first try. more important is how we learn and improve things for the future :)
when i read this in the announcement to the mailing list:
"Why upgrade from KDE3.5.10, the latest release available from KDE e.V.? Simply put, Trinity is faster, more secure, and far more feature rich than 3.5.10 ever was!" (http://trinity-devel.pearsoncomputing.net/?0::3271)
i feel sad because Trinity should really not be trying to stand out as a _competitor_ to 3.5.10 but as the continuation of that code base. (btw,
...
In neither case the intention was to present Trinity as competition. If this was interpreted as such, I hope that we can find ways to prevent this in the future.
i might have written it more along the lines of:
"Trinity 3.5.10 is an exciting upgrade for users of KDE 3.5: it is faster, more secure and more feature rich than any previous KDE 3 release. Trinity allows you to run KDE 3.5 software on modern Linux systems and take advantage of all the strides forward in areas such as network and hardware management that have been made in recent years. Trinity also <fill in 1-2 more benefits>."
(could be made a lot better, that's just off the top of my head before i've had my morning coffee ;)
the idea is to talk more about the benefits of Trinity itself rather than speak in competition language. instead of reminding people that there was a change in maintainership, the reader is focused on benefits they will get and reminded that Trinity is a continuation of a great software product (KDE 3.x)
it's a small thing, perhaps, but it really shapes how people communicate and behave. :)
I'm not sure what would be the best way to prevent this issue in the future. As said, what happened was more due to manpower and abilities than due to intention.
that's almost always the case, and why i decided to reach out directly to those who are involved with Trinity and putting their own blood, sweat and tears into it (and subscribe to Yet Another Mailing List to do so ;). rather than grumble in my little cave or write some blog entry or what-not, if figure it's better to see what's up and work on improving things.
To me it appeared that KDE e.V. was relatively distant towards the Trinity project other than providing a Subversion branch.
there's a mix of reasons for that:
* some don't care too much as they are very focussed on the 4.x code
* some are wary about people who focus on 3.x because of the amount of negative feedback that was leveled at them from "ardent supporters" of KDE 3.x.
* some were/are unsure what it means and how well it can work to give "our baby" (KDE 3) over to another team of people (Trinity) to maintain and improve.
given than Trinity is working out pretty well, these attitudes can and will soften. it's part of the process.
imho, the main thing we need to do is to stop giving people excuses to focus on KDE 4.x code when Trinity makes a release. the article on osnews.com (which was not written by any of you, i know! :) was particularly sad as Trinity became an excuse for the author to repeat misinformation about KWin 4. nobody wins there as Trinity doesn't get to keep the spotlight and misinformation sucks, no matter who it's about.
resolving this issue will allow us to build much strong bridges between the Trinity project and the rest of the KDE community.
Maybe doing such announcements through the KDE site or using the expertise from your side in another way would help closing the gap that seems to exist. The least that could be done maybe is asking you or other people from KDE to read things like release notes or news items before they are published. Do you have any suggestions in this area?
i'd be happy to assist in your next announcements. here's what i can personally offer: as long as you give me enough lead time (1-2 weeks is usually enough) i would be happy to go over your release announcement material and offer feedback (which you can ignore or accept, i give freely without expectations there) as well as work on a story based on that for dot.kde.org that will get accepted for publication.
i'm also on irc.freenode.net (nick: aseigo) most days and read my email like a proper addict ;) so feel free to fire questions, queries, thoughts, etc. my way.
happy hacking,
This is the first time there was a lot of PR around Trinity. Previously the new releases had been more silent and because the Trinity project has a lack of manpower, it seemed like a good idea to make the new release some headline news.
This seems to be the resounding statement for PR. Next time I suggest we have someone "in charge" of writing up and sending out something to give to slashdot, osnews, reddit etc.
Calvin Morrison
This is the first time there was
a lot of PR around Trinity. Previously
the new releases had been more silent and because the
Trinity project
has a lack of manpower, it seemed like a good idea to
make the new
release some headline news.
This seems to be the resounding statement for PR. Next time I suggest we have someone "in charge" of writing up and sending out something to give to slashdot, osnews, reddit etc.
I imagine Tim submits press releases. Or possibly one or two online editors are members of one of the mailing lists and that is how they know.
I have been involved in technical writing for almost three decades. Regardless of how much effort anybody exerts into word smithing, somebody will interpret the words in a manner never intended or imagined. This is the nature of communications. There is no way to avoid that from happening.
A peer review of the web pages and press releases before publication will eliminate most misunderstanding. An easy solution is to prepare the release web pages but keep the links to the pages hidden until the official release. Notify everybody on this list with the links and ask for feedback and comments.
Darrell
This is the first time there was
a lot of PR around Trinity. Previously
the new releases had been more silent and because the
Trinity project
has a lack of manpower, it seemed like a good idea to
make the new
release some headline news.
This seems to be the resounding statement for PR. Next time I suggest we have someone "in charge" of writing up and sending out something to give to slashdot, osnews, reddit etc.
I imagine Tim submits press releases. Or possibly one or two online editors are members of one of the mailing lists and that is how they know.
I have been involved in technical writing for almost three decades. Regardless of how much effort anybody exerts into word smithing, somebody will interpret the words in a manner never intended or imagined. This is the nature of communications. There is no way to avoid that from happening.
A peer review of the web pages and press releases before publication will eliminate most misunderstanding. An easy solution is to prepare the release web pages but keep the links to the pages hidden until the official release. Notify everybody on this list with the links and ask for feedback and comments.
Darrell
Good idea. We already have the infrastructure in place to handle this, it's just a matter of using it!
Tim
-
Aaron J. Seigo -
Calvin Morrison -
Darrell Anderson -
Julius Schwartzenberg -
Tiago Marques -
Timothy Pearson