[kdewebdev-site] First draft of www.kdewebdev.org vision statement - feedback requested

[Bill Chmura]

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On Sunday 11 April 2004 01:25 am, Eric Laffoon wrote:
> On Saturday 10 April 2004 9:44 pm, Bill Chmura wrote:
> > Why on earth would redhat ship a beta?  Did they get it from CVS and
> > compile it to include?  Did a user submit it to them as an RPM to
> > include? Does anyone know, because that could be a problem that could be
> > addressed if we knew how.
> >
> > (I am not longer using RH, that was basically the final straw for me)
>
> RH 8.0 was heavily modified. That was their flagship "desktop release"
> where their press release basically said they had discovered the desktop,
> were leading Linux there walked on water and we should all follow. The is
> the release that Bero, their KDE packager, quit over with less than kind
> words for what they did and started Ark-Linux. They also filed a bug report
> on the single click, as if carpel tunnel was more fun (double clicking was
> started because the Xerox/apple mouse had only one button) and launched the
> Bluecurve theme, merging desktops and gutting parts of KDE like the print
> system... since they didn't have CUPS at the time. In short, they had to do
> a lot of modifications to software before they shipped it so they needed it
> months in advance. We wouldn't get patches from them because in their world
> view (read the press releases) we would get the code when they distributed
> RH and why would we run anything else.
>
> I hate to sound like I'm down on them because if you read "Under the Radar"
> you realize what incredible work Bob Young did early on to help the growth
> of Linux. Sadly they proved to be grossly incompetent with desktop software
> and they couldn't sell it for the incredible prices they get for server
> packages. What was truly annoying is that Madrake shipped the same broken
> package several months later. 3.0 final was less than four weeks after
> 3.0pr1.
>
> Unfortunately the less here is that however idealogical distributions start
> out they eventually end up making financial decisions and posturing
> themselves between users and developers. My intention is to posture direct
> interactin with users. For end user software we are better equiped to
> service it and funding us actually develops the software.
>
> Coming back to the solution here... having a site that draws people to
> regular visits increases the chance that we will be able to get our message
> across. the next thing is to get that message out. The clear solution here
> is the following...
> 1) News for all various general news relating to the software like
> releases, new features, success stories, etc...
> 2) Alerts - posted newest first, filterable by severity and distributions
> affected
>
> We have several options like a menu item or a link on the main page that
> goes bold and red when the incident rates are high. We can also have an
> email subscription to alert messages too.

Early on there was talk of the site adapting to a user, which implies some 
sort of user registration.  Part of the registration could be tracking what 
O/S and desktop they run.  When an issue like this comes up, emails could go 
out to them perhaps something like:

"Hi, since your running RedHat, we just wanted to warn you that with Redhat 9, 
they are shipping a bad version of Quanta that does horrible horrible things 
to your projects.  When you upgrade we recommend, you get Quanta from..."

It sounds like it would be a lot of work, but with the right interface it 
should be no more than someone clicking on a few things to select who to get 
it and then entering a message.  









- -- 

Bill Chmura

w. http://www.fistfullofcode.com
w. http://www.explosivo.com

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"No matter what, never, ever, ever, ever tell your girl friend she is looking 
a little puffy."
- -Ancient chinese proverb

"Some people go to bed with Lucifer, then they cry when they don't greet the 
day with God"
- -Monster Magnet

Without good motivation, science and technology, instead of helping, bring 
more fear and threaten global destruction. Compassionate thought is very 
important for humankind.
- -His Holiness the Dalai Lama

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