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

[Eric Laffoon]

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On Saturday 10 April 2004 11:23 pm, David Joham wrote:
> > 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.
>
> It's at this point in the project where the project manager's job is to
> point to the current vision statement again and plainly say the magic
> word...
>
>
> "Later"
>
> :)

Certainly... but it is something I've been pondering... for later. ;-)

Haveing a registration number opens some interesting doors, though I'm not 
sure we want to walk through all of them. Some will probably be of some use.
* fits in with resource tracking - one idea I've had is to use a weighted 
system looking at number and merit of submissions to develop a scale of trust 
to ease administrative effort
* potential to look at leveraged numbers for working with selected advertisers 
to fund development - not a slam dunk but interesting
* enable more accurate user base estimation
* possible uses for leveraging standards based development with large enough 
numbers
* possible use for getting developers of free and commercial software to 
develop support products

This of course goes with the obvious, but the small flaw in Bill's suggestion 
is that people do switch distros...
>
> I do think it's a good idea for information of this type to be in the main
> www.kdewebdev.org site and on any relevent <tool>.kdewebdev.org site as
> well. Our current vision statment includes a news area which will trap
> items such as this.
>
> I need to think about the concept of the distros pulling bad CVS copies.
> There may be ways to mitigate this problem. Being included with KDE is a
> huge step, but there are other ways to ensure quality code is included with
> distros as well. I'll ponder this...

The sad fact is that we cannot count on distributions having common ground all 
the time. In fact there is some potential conflict. In the case of Mandrake 
they have their user's club which generates funds and for which they need to 
produce software on a schedule. Hats off to them, I think they are a great 
distribution and one of the best for new users but business is business and 
sometimes software doesn't work on business' schedule. Our common benefit on 
their being forced to operate on a financial concern is coincidental. Of 
greater irony, we too need funding to develop software, but the very nature 
of a distribution is to function as an intercessor. We see nothing from them 
except an occasional commit from Laurent Montel.

The fundamental problem here is that most distributions don't have the time to 
actually be involved in the actual software that is 99% of what they 
distribute. They cannot generally justify the expense to interact with us, 
which is how quality is assured. Operating within these givens makes things a 
little clearer. Ironically we've had free distributions, Debian and Gentoo, 
actually have their KDE packagers on our developer list listening in. Food 
for thought. The biggest problem though when a distribution is at the center 
of an incident here is that the user has a relationship with them and an 
inherent trust in their work, which as I explained can't possibly measure up 
to the task because of manpower. People have suggested *we* should set up 
distribution liaisons, an idea I find utterly ridiculous. After all we are 
developing the software that they are making money packaging... Shouldn't 
they be responsible since it's effectively their core product that they *do* 
collect money for?

The web site is the key. By creating something truly useful that people 
frequent and that can disburse information in an effective manner we develop 
our own relationship with users, as we should. We are a suite of highly 
specialized end user applications that we can best support after all. By 
advancing this though a good site we do the only thing we can... we hold 
their feet to the fire. If users can quickly, easily and clearly ascertain 
their problems are distribution related this holds the distribution's feet to 
the fire *not* to make decisions adverse to users for financial reasons 
because users now have advocacy and information from end user applications.

The only way to correct these problems is with a system that enforces 
accountability and distributes information to correct problems. The ultimate 
ideal is that distributions get on board and work to provide packages we can 
link to in order to correct problems. ;-)
- -- 
Eric Laffoon - Quanta+ Team Leader 
http://kdewebdev.org  eric at kdewebdev.org
Mailing list - http://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/quanta
GPG Fingerprint: 48FB 218D 747F A54A 319D EE98 4A25 794E A453 004B
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