[tde-users] Project status report - tasks

Hi all, in previous emails we recalled the history of the project and got acquainted with the current infrastructure. Now comes probably the most interesting part - tasks and topics for discussion. Tasks related to the infrastructure and organization of the project will be mentioned here. Discussions about development and source code are taking place on the tde-devels mailing list and on TGW - we will not mention them here now, because they are a different topic. -- Migration of services -- First of all, we need to complete the migration of services from Tim's original infrastructure. We will discuss the individual services that remain to be migrated in separate threads. Here's a quick overview: 1. web server: successfully migrated, several minor tasks remain to be solved. 2. git repository: SCM successfully replaced by Gitea, CGit fully functional. 3. mailing lists: successfully created brand new MLs, archive migrated, users now have time to subscribe to the new MLs and leave the old ones, which will be stopped later on. 4. wiki: successfully migrated, a new TDE skin remains to be created. 5. bugzilla: needs to be migrated or replaced with issues in TGW. 6. weblate: new service on VPS fully operational. 7. automation scripts: up and running and compared to the primary server, all branches are processed, not just the master. 8. crash reports storage service: needs to be migrated and improved, we don't know anything about this service. 9. patchwork: may be canceled, no one uses it, TGW provides much better functionality. 10. primary archive: successfully migrated, reorganized, cleaned up. 11. build service: QuickBuild replaced by reprepro + sbuild, now semi-automated without web interface, need further improvements. 12. etherpad: we should consider copy what we need and move it to TGW wiki. -- Project Legal status + donations -- Subsequently, we need to clarify the ownership of the project, which at the moment belongs to Tim as per CLA document. We shall also discuss about moving from a CLA to a DCO model, since this simplify contributions to the project (and to be fair, DCO has been used so far in most cases already). We will also discuss this as a separate thread. As you can see in the summary in previous e-mail, currently the project lives only thanks to donations from TDE team members. The donation link on the web is linked to Tim's account. Therefore, we have no idea what donation comes there and how they are used. Tim usually mentioned that donations are very low and that they are not enough for Tim's original infrastructure. We have no other information about these donations. In any case, at present, the TDE team does not have any project funding. Although it may be unbelievable, it is so - the project has no cash at its disposal. It all depends on the efforts of TDE team members and volunteers. Once we have clarified the rights to the project, we can discuss how to create the legal status of the project and how to go about accepting donations and hopefully make the TDE infrastructure more resilient. We will also discuss this as a separate thread. Once we have resolved the legal status and donations, we can return to the discussion of project promotion and merchandise. After all, it was a strong discussion that initiated this project status report. You can believe that I would also like to have a polo shirt, t-shirt and other things with the promotion of the TDE project. -- Renaming and moving into main distros -- Another challenging task for discussion is the very sensitive topic of renaming. As you know, many empirical renaming of KDE => TDE, K => TDE has already been done. A more significant renaming of Krita => Chalk was also made. In any case, there are many other programs and libraries that would cause a collision if TDE was installed in the usual /usr path instead of a separate /opt/trinity. I know that this is a sensitive topic, that this will not be of any benefit to our current users, and that it will require a lot of effort. We normally put it off until later, because we always have a lot of other and more useful work. However, we have to keep in mind that if we want to allow installation into /usr and thus also integration into distributions, we will sooner or later have to do the renaming. -- Wayland -- Another important topic that we will sooner or later be forced to deal with is called Wayland. It is difficult to consider this a successful project, because even after 12 years from the beginning of development, there are doubts about the readiness for production use. This begs the question of whether Wayland causes more problems than he solves. However, it is clear that there is a lot of pressure to enforce it "no matter what it costs" and so it may come a time when we need to adapt to it and add integration in TDE. -- Migration to Python3 -- In addition to the renaming and wayland tasks, where we think it will be something on a long term horizon, there is one global task that is already relevant at this time - the migration of the existing python2 code to python3, due to the imminent demise of python 2 from major distributions. Fortunately, this is not directly related to core modules (tdeedu seems to be ready for python3), but it will be important to make an effort to do so. This was the last part of the project status report. Subsequently, we will open discussions, as mentioned. If you have any other ideas regarding the status of the project, infrastructure, global tasks, do not hesitate to respond, or open a separate thread for discussion. I am glad that, thanks to the joint efforts of all of us, we can consider the status of the project to be good. Thanks to everyone - TDE team, translators, users and donors. Cheers -- Slávek