Will Fedora 10 Contain KDE 3.5.10 or Not?

[Paul W. Frields]

On Tue, 2008-08-05 at 15:00 -0500, Rex Dieter wrote:
> Jesse Keating wrote:
> > Fun email in my inbox.  Would the KDE sig care to respond?
> 
> I'll send something better privately, but here's the gist of it...
> 
> > -------- Forwarded Message --------
> > From: ...
> > To: jkeating at redhat.com
> > Subject: Question: Will Fedora 10 Contain KDE 3.5.10 or Not?
> ...
> > I would appreciate an answer to a question: will Fedora 10 include KDE
> > 3.5.10?? ...
> 
> I've heard that question a lot...
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/KDE/KDE4FAQ
> 
>  > KDE 3.5.10 should be included as a "feature" in Fedora 10
> 
> Fact is, it might be a fun project to make a KDE3 desktop that installs 
> and functions parallel to other DE's in Fedora (including KDE4).  But, 
> that's not something that the Fedora KDE SIG is currently interested in 
> pursuing.  Simply put, the KDE SIG is focussing all efforts on KDE4.  We 
> will happily provide helpful advice and encouragement, but it needs to 
> be someone else who puts in the hard work, time, effort to make it happen.

You make a great point Rex -- this is actually an *opportunity* for
interested community members to roll up their sleeves and get involved.
Isn't that, in fact, how the KDE SIG got started in the first place? :-)

I was contacted not too long ago for a statement about KDE 4 in Fedora
9, and the criticism its developers have received for the changes
they've made to the platform.  Unfortunately, none of my statement was
used in the article.  (Too long-winded?)  But here's what I said:

'''
I'm very proud of the contributors that made KDE 4 a reality in Fedora
9.  The KDE team consists of volunteers and Red Hat engineers, who all
pitched in to make this happen.  They scoped the work, developed
packages, filed and fixed bugs upstream, and talked to the community
openly about the process all along the way.  Of course, they're
continuing that work in Fedora 9 and in our development branch for
Fedora 10.  KDE's status in the Fedora distribution has come a very long
way, and these contributors are largely responsible for that progress.

Fedora, as a project, is firmly devoted to advancing the state of free
and open source software.  As part of that mission, every six months or
so we issue a new release of our distribution that promotes leading-edge
technologies like KDE 4.  By pushing innovations out to wider audiences,
we are directly benefiting the upstream communities that produce them.
The technologies thereby gain broader audiences, garner more feedback,
and improve more quickly.  In other words, we try to leverage the power,
promote the ideals, and live the spirit of free and open source
software.[1]

According to TrollTech's site, the QT3 toolkit reached its maintenance
end of life on July 1, 2007.[2]  If we had dropped back to another KDE
3.x release in Fedora 9, it would have meant delivering to users and
developers a platform built on old, unmaintained libraries.[3]  Because
in general we don't do major updates midway through a release, by the
time Fedora 9 reaches the end of its maintenance period around July
2009, these libraries would have been stale for nearly two years.  It
was in far more in keeping with Fedora's mission and strategy to have
users and developers experiencing and building on the next generation
KDE 4 platform.

As with any new technology, we fully expect there to be some wrinkles
that need smoothing.  And Fedora's community of contribution -- as
opposed to just consumption -- is designed to help with that smoothing
process.  Delivering KDE 4 was a purposeful move designed to aid the
upstream community by putting their new technology in front of FOSS
enthusiasts and developers who can help make it better.  The process for
getting involved in the FOSS ecosystem in Fedora has never been easier,
so people using and developing on KDE 4 can have a very direct impact on
the progress of the platform.  And with the rapid advances toward KDE
4.1, we believe that was an absolutely winning strategy, and in keeping
with our project goals.

= = =
[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Overview 
[2] http://trolltech.com/products/qt/learnmore/licensing-pricing/lifecycle 
[3] http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-core-devel&m=118070931912272&w=2 
'''

Hope this helps clarify things.

-- 
Paul W. Frields
  gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233  5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717
  http://paul.frields.org/   -  -   http://pfrields.fedorapeople.org/
  irc.freenode.net: stickster @ #fedora-docs, #fedora-devel, #fredlug
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