Announcing the KDE Quality Team Project 389
Quique writes "The KDE Community is pleased to announce the launch of the Quality Team Project, a community of contributors who will serve as a gateway between developers and users in the KDE Project, and as a new way for people to begin contributing. KDE is a very attractive project, offering high quality software and is freely available. There is a lot of people who feel the urge to give something back, but stop in the middle of the way, frustrated by the steep learning curve. The aim of the project is to reduce these barriers by welcoming these potential contributors, and by offering documentation, support, and even guidance if requested. The objective is to support the new contributors, (programmers, documenters, testers, artists...). Have you ever wished to help KDE in some way, but never knew how? Keep reading!"
Bout Time (Score:4, Interesting)
i hope these guys will integrate with kde-redhat (Score:4, Interesting)
Sounds Good (Score:3, Interesting)
Gnome is NOT a KDE alternative (Score:1, Interesting)
1) The file dialog.
KDE 0.x ALPHAs had a better file dialog than gnome! Today, the KDE one is the best file dialgog in existance, with influence from all desktops.
2) More apps!
KDE comes with over 150 Apps in the full install, with applications for all fields, plus its sleak integration with non kde apps (eg gimp, openoffice) make things more consistant.
3) Configureable as hell.
The KDE control center has loads of knobs/dials/sliders and boxes to fiddle with, yet keeps things elegent. In gnome, half the options don't exisit and you are rudley told "use gconf-editor n00b by gnome zealots" (not joking about this, telling the truth gets you a -1, troll and footnotes).
4) I-kandy!
The Kde eye candy is really powerful, with styles such as dotNEt, mosfet liquid, kermamik, Crystal and more. Looking at art.gnome.org [gnome.org] [gnome.org] reveals the same old theme in different colours. Since gnome dosen't provide a colour changing dialog for its widgets most "themes" are just colour changes. The Crystal from CVS is an Aqua killer, your eyes will want to love it.
5) Its development framework rocks.
Take a good look at kioslaves, kparts, dcop, arts and qt and see why KDE is a programmer's dream. Modern c++, wonderful IDE [kdevelop.org] [kdevelop.org], powerful command line scripting. Gnome gives you obsolete c, with a bunch of kludge libraries such as glib, Orbit, bonobo to hack together a application.
6)The defacto choice on Linux. All major Distributions support it by default. This means Mandrake, SuSE, Xandros, ArkLinux, Jamd, Lindows, Slackware, Knoppix, Gentoo and more. How many gnome ones can you mention (Redhat, sure if you like using server distros as your desktop Debian, nope thats the old 1.4 branch Gnoppix, a retarded knoppix rip off.) Most distributions offer gnome as an unsupported alternative.
Also, the only reason why gnome was created in the first place is null and void. Now that Novell has taken over Ximain you can expect VENDOR lock in. Want groupware for linux? Thats $300 a seat.
Get the new Mandrake 9.2 and see the Quality of KDE vs the Sorry state of Gnome 2.4 (and, they STILL haven't fixed that ****ing file dialog), not to mention they REMOVED ALL THE FEATURES. Gnome 2.2 is probably the only gnome version remotley close to kde, that is, KDE 2.0, not the KDE 3.2. I tried the "brokenboring" alpha of it and when it is released this december it will finally put Gnome out of it's misery and kill it off the Linux desktop.
Someone read ESR's rant (Score:5, Interesting)
Nice idea (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Build it, and they won't come.. (Score:5, Interesting)
I have done exactly that kind of shitty grunt work for a number of open source projects, without expecting any credit or whatever. For one reason, the one you stated:
it's that QA step, all the thankless hours of gruntwork, that make the final product what it is
I believe in open source, and am willing to further the cause just to further the cause, not to further my own ego.
I, for one, will join the KDE Quality (Kuality?) Team.
Re:Bout Time (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Shouldn't that be... (Score:5, Interesting)
I had this idea after reading Eric Raymond's "Luxury of Ignorance".
At absolute minimum all open-source projects should have (pet) lamas assigned to them, and a continuously rotating basis (to prevent tainting them with knowledge) and their whining should be taken as the word of authority...
I seriously doubt this will change anything (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Bout Time (Score:5, Interesting)
It is my experience also from the IRC channel that the KDE developers are great guys and girls -- a few of them even hang out and help users with their stupid problems (ok, s/users/me/, s/their/my/
Re:Build it, and they won't come.. (Score:3, Interesting)
To each his own. I personally consider the art work the hardest and most boring job that KDE has. Fortunatly someone (several in fact) is willing to do that work.
For that matter someone in the last couple days has just steped up to make some nice sounds. Don't know if he will finish the job, but what he has created so far is nice.
KDE tries to keep track of who submitted each fix. I'm sure some things slip through the cracks, but overall if you find a problem with KDE you can point that out latter as something you have done, and we can all go back into the archives and verify it really was you. There are far too many people helping with KDE for all but those who do the most work to get credit. That doesn't mean the credit is lost though.
Re:i hope these guys will integrate with kde-redha (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:i hope these guys will integrate with kde-redha (Score:2, Interesting)
For a social scientist's perspective... (Score:4, Interesting)
Some people might find it interesting...
Re:Bout Time (Score:2, Interesting)
Also, anonymous coward said that anyone can add comments to the bug system, and I indeed did not know that.
Anyway, the point was that there needs to be an interface layer between hard-core developers and people like me who posess enough programming skill to get simple stuff done, but are not developers and want to contribute.
The bugtracking system is somewhat adequate, but people can easily be confused and a better overall experience is achieved when average everyday end-users get to talk to someone that will help them submit bug reports and fix things.
First thing to fix (Score:2, Interesting)
KDE is an awful name, as are:
KOffice
Killustrator
Kougar
Kroupware
Kalle
KTetris
Well, maybe not exactly... (Score:5, Interesting)
Being a 10 year veteran of QA/Testing and holding a CS degree, I have long wondered where QA would fit into OSS. And by "QA" I don't just mean testing, there is a lot more to it than that. Here are some topics that would need to be addressed:
What is the development process? Is it documented?
What types of estimation procedures do you do?
What is the SCM process? Is it documented?
What is the review/inspection process for all artifacts?
Are there software requirements? Are they inspected/reviewed?
Are there development plans/design docs? Are they inspected/reviewed?
Are there code reviews?
What are your defect escape rates?
What is your plan for alpha/beta testing?
What is your release schedule?
I think I could go on, but you get the idea. If you want solid, defect-finding, QA people who can improve your product, you'll be asked questions like these. If you just want someone who will run a few regression tests against your product before you put it on a website, then you are looking for some software testers. I am not saying that all of those things are necessary, but they might be. Maybe all of this stuff is archaic and applies only to the proprietary model, I don't know. I know that is what I have worked in for the last 10 years. I don't know if anyone has asked these questions of an OSS project, or done any research into if they need to be asked.
Re:Build it, and they won't come.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Marketing.
I HAVE tried WinXP and MacOSX and both leave a lot to be desired.
There is just no good substitute for multiple desktops with good session management like KDE has. Also Unix-style copy/paste is much faster and more comfortable than MacOS-style (which was copied by Windows) because you don't have to switch nearly as often between keyboard and mouse. Of course KDE supports both copy/paste schemes, so you are not forced to use Unix-style. Real 3-button support is another thing. For example I can open a folder in the filemanager in a new tab with the MMB, or I can jump to a position on a scrollbar with the MMB, or I can push back a window with the MMB.
But of course, marketing has told you that all those features are "for geeks" only and Windows/MacOS is the best there is - so often that people started to believe it. You don't even need examples, facts or reasons!
KDE doesn't have any usability problems, period. I've seen newbies pull hairs because of the numerous single-click/double-click inconsistencies in Windows (why do I have to single-click an icon on a toolbar but double-click an icon on the desktop? What moron invented that scheme?) which don't exist in KDE, at least not in the default configuration.
I have now presented 5 examples of KDE superiority (multiple desktops, session management, copy-paste, 3-mouse button support and single-click consistency), you have prestented nothing, zero, nada. Probably because you have never used KDE and have no idea what you are talking about.
What indeed is a problem is missing and incomplete documentation. Another is missing Win32 binary compatibility especially for games. That and that alone is keeping Linux/KDE off the masses desktops.
Task allocation! (Score:4, Interesting)
I've tried to manage a project, in a similar way, on a very small scale though (~30 people). Everybody wanted to own the coolest parts of the project. What I eventually ended up doing is tying cool parts with not-so-cool parts. So, if you choose the cool part, you automatically also own the corresponding not-so-cool part.
I'm looking for more ideas. May be some brainstorming would help here.
Re:First thing to fix (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:GNOME has had a quality team for years. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Build it, and they won't come.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Okay, here's an idea. The KDE About dialog is already has a "fill-in-the-blank" API. Why not add a Quality Team field to it? Make this an official part of the libs, and you suddenly get an official suggestion to credit the quality people for your application.
Re:I seriously doubt this will change anything (Score:3, Interesting)
It's done directly inside of the code [kde.org] in KDE however.
This is one of the reasons why the KDE style guide is shorter than GNOME's HIG; most of the GUI design aspects of KDE are enforced automatically while in GNOME, it is reliant on the programmer. I have to admit though, the HIG is great for PR
Re:Well, maybe not exactly... (Score:2, Interesting)
Mozilla and Linux - take heed! (Score:1, Interesting)
God how I wish other open source projects like Mozilla and the Linux desktop would focus on this. I've been following and using both for years but I have no idea who or where to talk to when I create a cool skin or a better help guide, etc.
Giving back shouldn't allow for the pollution of a program but there should be some deviantart or wiki-style free-for-all that then gets narrowed down into a manageable soil of good graphics, plugins, ideas, and more so that core project developers never have to wonder what else can be done.
Here's my solution, in this case a Wiki for Mozilla [infoanarchy.org] and Mozilla FireFox [infoanarchy.org]. Feel free to add!
Re:Pay (Score:3, Interesting)
Red Hat has spent over $700,000,000 buying out a compiler company and a few silly dot coms. They recently sold $500,000,000 in bonds. Their programmers tell me the reason why their software has so many usability problems is that they "can't afford to hire HCI people".
SuSe was bought out for $200,000,000. From what I have heard from other user interaction people, the usability of YaST is an absolute disgrace. Doesn't seem like SuSe is spending money for a usability dept either.
Both of these companies claim to be making desktop software that is perfectly usable and perfectly fit for a grandmother or a secretary. They are both going to try like hell to replace everyone's Windows desktop with Linux. Many of the desktops they are currently looking to replace are those in businesses, where the end-user won't have the "don't want to use it, don't choose it" recourse that most linux zealots claim people have.
Both these companies already spend wads of money hiring people like kernel hackers and web server programmers. To ask these companies to spend equivalent amounts on usability is not, in my opinion, is perfectly justified. If they feel that only "important" technical fields like kernel hacking deserve funding, then should at least have the decency to pay to switch their existing desktop customers back to Windows.
.
Re:First thing to fix (Score:3, Interesting)
MS Outlook,
MS Excel,
MS Access, etc.
WinDVD,
WinAMP
WinRAR
WinZIP,
WinACE
iDVD,
iTunes,
iMovie
iPhoto,
iLife.
OpenOffice,
OpenWriter,
OpenImpress,
OpenCal
Jesus Christ. Its called pushing a brand.
And how the *FUCK* is a giant foot cooler than a giant, shiny, metal K?
Re:Well, maybe not exactly... (Score:5, Interesting)
All of your points are of course valid - for the state of OSS today. I am more interested in the OSS of *tomorrow*. At least my hope for tomorrow - when OSS becomes more prevalent. How will QA/testing fit into OSS vs FOSS? When someone *IS* paying the bills, how will things change?
Additionally, the themes of Superprogrammer vs The Horde" are relevant to understanding why. Having seen a few SEI CMM 5 shops in action, it's clear that to fill the man-hours for all the redudant tasks requires hiring a grade of developer that's frankly sub-par. Programming is the one field where a true 20x productivity differential between two professionals is unremarkable. It seems that the prominent Open Source projects have gotten more attention from generous SuperProgrammers than a typical commercial developement is able to attract.
Of course. But those big projects have to ensure they can survive if their superstar programmer leaves. Or they do it because they are government regulated, or they are building software that could be life or death, and they can't afford to rely on someone's opinion. You have to remember that there is a LOT of software out there, it ain't all word processors and games. These are the applications where I question if open source is the way to go. I don't think it is the be-all-end-all of software development, just like being CMM level 5 isn't either. There is a reality out there, and I think Slashdot users could use a little check every now and then.
KDE needs is own VISUAL BASIC (Score:2, Interesting)
Many not-so-skilled programmers are developing thousands of apps usefull-for-enduser under windows with visual basic.
No one should underevalutate the number of VB-only coders.
Maybe VB is not the most used language in big windows based apps projects, but some programmers begin with VB and eventually learn C and/or C++, ASM, Java.
Even if the big projects arent coded in VB, there is actually a couple of good programs sold by vb coders.
If there was an easy to use and learn language like VB under the linux desktops, the open source community could profit of many more (begginers)coders, which is good.
i dont think it could be an enormous differance for the moment if we think about the linux desktop solution popularity, but it could for sure accelerate this solution visibility at middle-term, which is good.
What do you think about it?
oGALAXYo replies + heavy namecalling! (Score:1, Interesting)
In the past years there have been very ugly people showing up working on GNOME, well most of the people are indeed very fine persons but a few people are really people one should avoid.
Most of the problems began around 2 years ago or so where I wrote Atlantis Webbrowser for GNOME and had to deal with a handful of people who were totally disagreeing with my way of licensing it.
The first to show up making very big trouble were Iain Holmes (known as Iain on IRC) who publicly made a huge mess out of it on gnomesupport.org giving really shitty comments about it and so on.
I was really offended by him and that was one reason why I temporarely left GNOME (after a few years of actively contributing to it). In the meanwhile I participated to KDE and I found a lot of new cool friends there. But Iain and a few others (Mike Hearn, Jeff Waugh, Iain Holmes, Thomas Vander Stichle) (also known as the GANG in GNOME, a bunch of people who glue together like pattex) have been following my steps on KDE and continued made a mess whenever I wrote something on public places. You can be sure that I didn't had a big opinion about GNOME that time due to all these people who were permanently complaining.
One day a Textfile showed up called Armageddon GNOME or something like that. I was not responsible for writing it but then this text somehow shown up on gnomesupport and gnomedesktop (I found out about it months later) where I was publicly namecalled by people like Iain Holmes, Thomas Vander Stichle and Jeff Waugh. They didn't even took the time contacting me asking me whether I was responsible for that mess or not. They simply started to write my name under every comment that gave negative feedback about GNOME be it written by someone from italy, japan, germany, uk, australia it doesn't even matter.
You can be sure that it took me quite a lot of time fixing all these issues by contacting STRO from gnomedesktop.org and gnomesupport.org to have these things corrected (well he simply deleted the messages or replaced my name with X'es) (See attachment).
I then came back to GNOME because I wanted to forget all the problems these few dumb people caused on my name but it was hard to get through all this because these few people were responsible for the huge damage they caused on my name. Other people who never heard about me started making foolish jokes or simply jumped on the wagoon for no reason. Anyways I ignored it and continued participating to GNOME.
Different Scenario. Over the years I was working on CVSGnome and Jeff Waugh the guy who maintains GARNOME (but never ever written anything) is known to be a hard ass in the GNOME world. All he did in the past was slandering people. Pissing people like Alex Duggan (Aldug), Roman Beigelbock (Star) and Dr. Frickle (someone from IBM) totally off. The results we see today, Dr. Frickle left GNOME (a long years contributor) and Roman Beigelbock (Star) simply left GNOME some weeks ago because he couldn't stand all the stress anymore. Furthermore is Jeff a Hardheaded person who under really strange circumstances got a position in the Board (The GNOME Board and the Release coordinator Board). Maybe he managed it because of his better english since we here in germany are not all familar of best english. Anyways when I wrote CVSGnome Jeff did everything to simply IGNORE CVSGnome, have it leave out of announcements, ignored my requests (even via email) to have CVSGnome included etc. Sure he saw some sort of 'competition' project into it. Not to forget that I for my own have written CVSGnome from scratch while he has done nothing special.
To say the truth, besides dictating people, commenting every freaking email he has done NOTHING for gnome. there is just to much hype around him
Re:Gnome is NOT a KDE alternative (Score:2, Interesting)
See this screenshot [ximian.com] for the fileselector for GNOME 2.6.
And about the KDE file selector: horizontal scrolling is a bug, not a feature. Even if it is configurable, it's still a bug.
2) More apps! KDE comes with over 150 Apps in the full install, with applications for all fields, plus its sleak integration with non kde apps (eg gimp, openoffice) make things more consistant.
Remember, it's a d-e-s-k-t-o-p. And a standard desktop must be shipped with a minimum of apps (one for every task), just to keep it simple. A whole application suite is something different, something that scares off most people. GNOME's got Epiphany for web-browsing, and if you're a power user you can install Galeon. It's got Gedit because you'll use Vim or Emacs or some IDE anyway if you're serious about editing.
3) Configureable as hell. The KDE control center has loads of knobs/dials/sliders and boxes to fiddle with, yet keeps things elegent. In gnome, half the options don't exisit and you are rudley told "use gconf-editor n00b by gnome zealots" (not joking about this, telling the truth gets you a -1, troll and footnotes).
Or: Not enough knowledge to know what's good? GNOME doesn't have all these options, but I don't need them because the default is just usable. In return I get menu's that are clean and easy to read, speeding up my experience with the desktop. Even if I had taken the time to fully configure KDE, that wouldn't take the overload of options away.
4) I-kandy! The Kde eye candy is really powerful, with styles such as dotNEt, mosfet liquid, kermamik, Crystal and more. Looking at art.gnome.org [gnome.org] reveals the same old theme in different colours. Since gnome dosen't provide a colour changing dialog for its widgets most "themes" are just colour changes. The Crystal from CVS is an Aqua killer, your eyes will want to love it.
My eyes hate crystal-like themes with too many colours, but that's personal. Like I implied before, I like a desktop to be really on the background, not overwhelming me with options and colors and styles and configurabilities. I install a desktop to run applications, not to run the desktop itself. And btw, when I tried KDE 3.2 last week, I saw the same old icons as KDE 1.x for the control-center, and I could still choose between two old KDE1 themes (but that didn't work anymore afaik)
Not 100% classic Quality Assurance team? (Score:2, Interesting)
First, they were not sure about the name at all. They needed some "department" that will improve communication between users and developers. Some sort of people who know both sides, but who are not programmers. And they did not know how to call it. As I read now, they choose Q.T.
For an OSS project, KDE is really well documented, you may really easily contact their programmers, support community seems to be nice and usefull; this should be "final touch".
This team reminds me to my last position in my old company - I was kinda liaison officer between two teams. My team needed some stuff from them, and we needed someone to force them to make it work. It is much easier to have someone who is familiar with both products, than to depend on existing QA dept (maybe it was problem that we had poor QA team).
Anyway, this new team seems like great idea. No matter that I like programming, it would be really hard to me to become so familiar with Qt/KDE enough to be usefull KDE programmer. But even at this stage, I believe that I already could be KDE QT member. So, there must be other people like me.
Thus, KDE will be even better.