Kdenlive Developer Jean-Baptiste Mardelle Has Been Found

jones_supa writes "A month ago there was worry about Kdenlive main developer being missing. Good news guys, Jean-Baptiste Mardelle has been finally reached and is doing fine. In a new mailing list post by Vincent Pinon, he says he managed to find Mardelle's phone number and contacted the longtime KDE developer. It was found out that Mardelle took a break over the summer but then lost motivation in Kdenlive under the burden of the ongoing refactoring of the code. Pinon agreed that there are 'so many things to redo almost from scratch just to get the 'old' functionalities'. The full story can be read from the kdenlive-devel mailing list. After talking with Jean-Baptiste, Vincent has called upon individual developers interested in Kdenlive to come forward. Among the actions called for is putting the Git master code-base back in order, ensuring the code is in good quality, provide new communication about the project, integrate new features like GPU-powered effects and a Qt5 port, and progressively integrate the new Kdenlive design."

girlfriend stops speaking to you...

[Anonymous Coward]

...you assume something horrible has happened to girlfriend.

People like to be left alone a lot more than controlling types hope, and assume their silence must mean the worst.

Re:girlfriend stops speaking to you...

[bill_mcgonigle]

When this was last a Slashdot "story" somebody said, "he's probably busy - here's his phone #, why doesn't somebody give him a call?" So, somebody did that and we get another "story".

The real "story" here is that a lead developer gave up on a project and left without communicating. Perhaps there's a good lesson here about Open Source project governance that.

Re:Classic...

[d33tah]

You forgot that refactoring might decrease the maintenance costs. It's possible that the developer just found it too hard to add any new functionality to the existing codebase and figured that refactoring is the only way to go. Seriously, it's not always enough for a project to work. Actually, it usually isn't.

Re:Classic...

[d33tah]

There's no such thing as proper architecture at the first try. By programming, you explore the problems you have to face. In "The Mythical Man-Month", Fred Brooks says that it's not first or second system that is correctly design, but usually the third. Rewriting is a part of a process.