Hi!
This is an extensive objection by a KDE4 developer against marketing and promoting KDE3 and/or Trinity.
I would like to see what can you say in response as it seems he expresses quite common sentiments of distributions developers towards KDE3.
He also links an extensive article in German in a respectable Linux journal named "Trinity - desktop with no future ". The machine translation is here:
http://translate.google.ru/translate?hl=ru&sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A...
On Fri, Nov 11, 2011 at 12:19, Ilya Chernykh anixxsus@gmail.com wrote:
Hi!
This is an extensive objection by a KDE4 developer against marketing and promoting KDE3 and/or Trinity.
I would like to see what can you say in response as it seems he expresses quite common sentiments of distributions developers towards KDE3.
KDE3 I can understand, as it is technically dead. Trinity, however, is not.
- Quality and security. Despite the KDE:KDE3 maintainer's high degree of
activity in packaging every KDE 3 app out there and adapting the KDE 3 platform to build on current distributions, it is a mistake to equate this with sufficient maintenance to ensure adequate code quality to include this in our distribution. The KDE 3 and Qt 3 codebases are massive, include code in all the worst places to have a vulnerability, have been essentially unmaintained for over 2 years now, and *include many known bugs and vulnerabilities that have only been fixed in the 4 releases*.
This is nothing to do with Trinity.
Assurances that the project is now maintained upstream by the Trinity project are hollow; the Trinity group is only a handful of people, none of whom are the original maintainers or developers of the code, and most of their effort is spent on writing a Qt4 compatibility layer and in porting the build system to cmake, not maintenance. In any case, the packages in KDE:KDE3 are based on 3.5.10 and only include some changes from the Trinity project's fork, which is now 3.5.12.
While this may be partially true, we are getting more help everyday. The focus has currently shifted off a Qt4 compatibility layer to maintenance and cmake, because not only is cmake vital to fixing build problems, but that actually counts as maintenance. Also, we have gotten Trinity to build on more recent environments, and plan to allow it to do so for the future. We will always continue fixing bugs, and patching up security holes. We will always welcome outside help to this task, which has been gladly accepted.
The Qt4 compatibility layer is not top priority.
KDE:KDE3 is still stuck on 3.5.10, and therefore does not impact us. It was your decision to keep it there.
openSUSE Factory maintainers made an error of judgement to resume including KDE 3 packages while they demonstrably fulfil the latter 3 of our drop criteria [2], and marketing should not join them in this.
This is regarding KDE:KDE3, so I will not comment on this. As for Trinity, however, they do fulfill criteria.
It fulfills the latter three criteria well, so it works. And openSUSE's Security Team can work with us.
On Saturday 12 November 2011 00:10:22 Robert Xu wrote:
This is an extensive objection by a KDE4 developer against marketing and promoting KDE3 and/or Trinity.
I would like to see what can you say in response as it seems he expresses quite common sentiments of distributions developers towards KDE3.
KDE3 I can understand, as it is technically dead. Trinity, however, is not.
Trinity is KDE3. You did not anything special yet to say Trinity is not KDE3. Porting to cmake does not suffice.
- Quality and security. Despite the KDE:KDE3 maintainer's high degree of
activity in packaging every KDE 3 app out there and adapting the KDE 3 platform to build on current distributions, it is a mistake to equate this with sufficient maintenance to ensure adequate code quality to include this in our distribution. The KDE 3 and Qt 3 codebases are massive, include code in all the worst places to have a vulnerability, have been essentially unmaintained for over 2 years now, and *include many known bugs and vulnerabilities that have only been fixed in the 4 releases*.
This is nothing to do with Trinity.
You are saying like if Trinity was not using Qt3 and KDE3 codebase.
Assurances that the project is now maintained upstream by the Trinity project are hollow; the Trinity group is only a handful of people, none of whom are the original maintainers or developers of the code, and most of their effort is spent on writing a Qt4 compatibility layer and in porting the build system to cmake, not maintenance. In any case, the packages in KDE:KDE3 are based on 3.5.10 and only include some changes from the Trinity project's fork, which is now 3.5.12.
While this may be partially true, we are getting more help everyday. The focus has currently shifted off a Qt4 compatibility layer to maintenance and cmake, because not only is cmake vital to fixing build problems, but that actually counts as maintenance. Also, we have gotten Trinity to build on more recent environments,
This is not specific for Trinity. It is known that fixing build is not that difficult.
and plan to allow it to do so for the future. We will always continue fixing bugs, and patching up security holes.
Can you please point to some security holes closed so I could use them for arguing?
We will always welcome outside help to this task, which has been gladly accepted.
The Qt4 compatibility layer is not top priority.
KDE:KDE3 is still stuck on 3.5.10, and therefore does not impact us. It was your decision to keep it there.
Ok, I will up the version to 3.6 so "not to stuck with 3.5.10".
openSUSE Factory maintainers made an error of judgement to resume including KDE 3 packages while they demonstrably fulfil the latter 3 of our drop criteria [2], and marketing should not join them in this.
This is regarding KDE:KDE3, so I will not comment on this. As for Trinity, however, they do fulfill criteria.
Look, KDE:KDE3 has MUCH more patches than your Trinity has if you are inclined to compare and attack us. Trinity still depends on deprecated HAL, for example.
If KDE:KDE3 does not fulfill the criteria, then Trinity does not fulfill either.
It fulfills the latter three criteria well, so it works. And openSUSE's Security Team can work with us.
<snip>
KDE3 I can understand, as it is technically dead. Trinity, however, is not.
Trinity is KDE3. You did not anything special yet to say Trinity is not KDE3. Porting to cmake does not suffice.
Sometime try reading our patch list--it's right on the TDE homepage under "Patches". Then come back with specific questions based on your newfound knowledge.
<snip>
Assurances that the project is now maintained upstream by the Trinity
project
are hollow; the Trinity group is only a handful of people, none of
whom are
the original maintainers or developers of the code, and most of their
effort
is spent on writing a Qt4 compatibility layer and in porting the build
system
to cmake, not maintenance. In any case, the packages in KDE:KDE3 are
based on
3.5.10 and only include some changes from the Trinity project's fork,
which is
now 3.5.12.
I must ask you officially to stop "representing" the Trinity project when you are not (and have never been) authorized to do so. You are apparently doing great damage to this project and if it continues I will be forced to publicly deal with your incorrect claims.
The Qt4 compatibility layer is not top priority.
KDE:KDE3 is still stuck on 3.5.10, and therefore does not impact us. It was your decision to keep it there.
Ok, I will up the version to 3.6 so "not to stuck with 3.5.10".
And what justifies such a version bump? <snip>
Look, KDE:KDE3 has MUCH more patches than your Trinity has if you are inclined to compare and attack us. Trinity still depends on deprecated HAL, for example.
You "fixed" the HAL dependency by removing much of the functionality that relied on HAL! That is a terrible way to handle an open source project. What's next, removing the desktop entirely because it relies on Qt3?!?
If KDE:KDE3 does not fulfill the criteria, then Trinity does not fulfill either.
You are making baseless accusations here. Either stop this behaviour immediately or I will ban you from these lists with a public explanation of both your trolling behavior and the KDE:KDE3 repository's serious problems.
Timothy Pearson Trinity Desktop Project
On Saturday 12 November 2011 01:24:43 Timothy Pearson wrote:
Trinity is KDE3. You did not anything special yet to say Trinity is not KDE3. Porting to cmake does not suffice.
Sometime try reading our patch list--it's right on the TDE homepage under "Patches". Then come back with specific questions based on your newfound knowledge.
You must concede that the changes do not suffice to claim Trinity is not technically KDE3 any more.
Assurances that the project is now maintained upstream by the Trinity
project
are hollow; the Trinity group is only a handful of people, none of
whom are
the original maintainers or developers of the code, and most of their
effort
is spent on writing a Qt4 compatibility layer and in porting the build
system
to cmake, not maintenance. In any case, the packages in KDE:KDE3 are
based on
3.5.10 and only include some changes from the Trinity project's fork,
which is
now 3.5.12.
I must ask you officially to stop "representing" the Trinity project when you are not (and have never been) authorized to do so.
Where I represented Trinity?
You are apparently doing great damage to this project and if it continues I will be forced to publicly deal with your incorrect claims.
No need. I will announce myself that Trinity rejected cooperation.
Look, KDE:KDE3 has MUCH more patches than your Trinity has if you are inclined to compare and attack us. Trinity still depends on deprecated HAL, for example.
You "fixed" the HAL dependency by removing much of the functionality that relied on HAL! That is a terrible way to handle an open source project. What's next, removing the desktop entirely because it relies on Qt3?!?
Not that much. Which functionality has been removed?
(I actually do not want to defend my work here, I even do not want you to use my patch, write your own, best one).
If KDE:KDE3 does not fulfill the criteria, then Trinity does not fulfill either.
You are making baseless accusations here. Either stop this behaviour immediately or I will ban you from these lists with a public explanation of both your trolling behavior and the KDE:KDE3 repository's serious problems.
Then I will puvblicly explain your Trinity's serious problems :-)
<snip>
You must concede that the changes do not suffice to claim Trinity is not technically KDE3 any more.
No I do not. Apparently you cannot read English very well, so I will explain it simply: 1.) Trinity has a different set of goals than KDE4 or your KDE:KDE3 repository. 2.) We have been reaching those goals through changes to the TDE source code. 3.) TDE has features and bugfixes that are not present in KDE4 or your KDE:KDE3 repository. 4.) You are not allowed to continue using the KDE trademark while claiming your product is superior to the latest versions of KDE (KDE version 4.8 IIRC). At the very least this is bad practice; it looks as if you are attempting to fragment the KDE developer community, and you are causing ill will between any KDE3 derivative projects and the KDE community. At worst, it could be considered trademark infringement and subject you to civil and/or criminal liability.
Where I represented Trinity?
Apparently you wrote a letter to OpenSUSE trying to lump TDE in with your KDE:KDE3 repository, which the OpenSUSE developers (rightly) rejected as false.
You are making baseless accusations here. Either stop this behaviour immediately or I will ban you from these lists with a public explanation of both your trolling behavior and the KDE:KDE3 repository's serious problems.
Then I will puvblicly explain your Trinity's serious problems :-)
Is this supposed to frighten me? I have been dealing with baseless accusations against the TDE project ever since I founded it over 3 years ago--yours would be no different.
Timothy Pearson Trinity Desktop Project
Hi,
Ilya Chernykh wrote:
Hi!
This is an extensive objection by a KDE4 developer against marketing and promoting KDE3 and/or Trinity.
I would like to see what can you say in response as it seems he expresses quite common sentiments of distributions developers towards KDE3.
He also links an extensive article in German in a respectable Linux journal named "Trinity - desktop with no future ". The machine translation is here:
http://translate.google.ru/translate?hl=ru&sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A...
It seems in the other thread there were some miscommunications and opinions which are not really relevant for the original question.
Ilya's question about a response to the above article is a valid one and this is also exactly what we have already been discussing on both IRC and Etherpad. Although some of the issues may only apply to Trinity and not KDE3 in OpenSUSE, I think it would be good to share what we have been writing so far.
There are two main points of criticism in the article: - lack of developers - binary incompatibility
While writing about the second, it turned out this was closely linked to the first. Here is the page on which we've been discussing these issues: http://trinity.etherpad.trinitydesktop.org/19
Most of the technical things are written by Timothy, I'm not very knowledgeable in this area. Ilya, if you would be able to read this page an give your technical feedback on the text, this would be really appreciated.
This does not address all the issues from Will Stephenson's mail yet, but it should address the main points from the above article.
Julius
-
Ilya Chernykh -
Julius Schwartzenberg -
Robert Xu -
Timothy Pearson