KOffice downgrade?

Tue Oct 6 12:26:52 UTC 2009

On Tuesday 06 October 2009 04:31:10 Ryan Rix wrote:
> Jaroslav Reznik wrote:
> > they
> > are still strongly against shipping in stable distro.
> 
> Here are my two cents on this issue and are, in general mostly invalid
> because I am quite frankly unable to use koffice2 on my netbook because it
> doesn't really 'play nice' on such a small screen.
> 
> Freedom, Friends, Features, First.
> 
> These are the project's foundations[1] and we should be striving to keep
> with these goals at all time. Of course, both 'sides' of this debate could
> take those goals and use them for their arguments.
> 
> [1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Foundations
> 
> ==Features==
> "Features represents our commitment to excellence. The Fedora community
> creates many of the technical features that have made Linux powerful,
> flexible, and usable for a wide spectrum of  millions of users,
> administrators, and developers worldwide. We recognize the status quo is
> worth changing when the potential gain is to empower additional end-users,
> or create a more flexible and powerful environment for building new
> solutions on the free software we provide. We also believe that these
> changes are best developed in direct concert with the  upstream software
> communities whose work is part of the Fedora distribution. We work with the
> upstream in cases where we find opportunities for improvement, so all free
> software users benefit -- regardless of their distribution of choice. Our
> feature development is always done openly and transparently, and anyone may
> participate."
> 
> ===Key points to take away===
> *"We recognize the status quo is worth changing when the potential is to
> empower additional end-users, or create a more flexible and powerful
> environment"
> *"We also believe that these changes are best developed in direct concert
> with upstream software communities"
> 
> ===Questions to ask===
> *Will koffice2 create a more flexible and powerful environment?
> **Koffice2.1b has a ton of new features and a framework for the future of
> the application. It's more customisable and flexible already than 1.6 was
>  if not as stable.
> 
> *Will shipping koffice1.6 create a more flexible and powerful environment?
> **We are shipping Qt3 and kdelibs3 if we chose to do this. This means there
> is less room on our live cd for awesome applications. This makes it harder
> for users who may not have the ability to install new software (no/slow
> internet, etc)
> 
> *What will be better in the long run for upstream: Keeping the status quo
>  to lower the risk of creating a bad image, or work with them to provide
>  bug reports, fixes and feedback?
> **This is for the steering committee to decide (even though it already has;
> i guess I should have written this last week) We were one of the few
>  distros that shipped kde 4.0.2 for better or worse, along with OpenSuSE
>  11. KDE 4.0.2 was just as rough a cut, arguably, as Koffice2.1b is, if
>  even a little more raw. Personally, I believe that upstream would benefit
>  more in this case with Koffice2.1b, as it would give them, as I asked
>  above, more bug reports, fixes and feedback.
> 
> *What will be better for users in the long run?
> **This is more contentious. On the one hand there is the now: What will
>  help the user out now? Koffice1.6 is more stable and 'better' in this
>  respect -- you won't be halfway through your masters project when a
>  Koffice bug munges the entire thing. On the other hand, us helping out
>  upstream in the long run will be better for users of the software in the
>  future because upstream will be able to improve on the software more. No
>  users == no ambition, but fixes and improvement.
> 
> == First ==
> "First represents our commitment to innovation. We are not content to let
> others do all the heavy lifting on our behalf; we provide the latest in
> stable and robust, useful, and powerful free software in our Fedora
> distribution. An examination of the latest Fedora platform at any point in
> time shows the future direction of the operating system as it is
>  experienced by everyone from the home desktop user to the enterprise
>  business customer. Our  rapid release cycle is a major enabling factor in
>  our ability to innovate. We recognize that there is also a place for
>  long-term stability in the Linux ecosystem, and that there are a variety
>  of community-oriented and business-oriented Linux distributions available
>  to serve that need. However, the Fedora Project's goal of advancing free
>  software dictates that the Fedora Project itself pursue a strategy that
>  preserves the forward momentum of our technical, collateral, and
>  community-building progress. Fedora always aims to provide the future,
>  first."
> 
> === Key points to take away ===
> *First represents our commitment to innovation.
> *we provide the latest in stable and robust, useful, and powerful free
> software in our Fedora distribution.
> *An examination of the latest Fedora platform at any point in time shows
>  the future direction of the operating system as it is experienced by
>  everyone from the home desktop user to the enterprise business customer.
> *We recognize that there is also a place for long-term stability in the
> Linux ecosystem, and that there are a variety of community-oriented and
> business-oriented Linux distributions available to serve that need.
> *need. However, the Fedora Project's goal of advancing free software
> dictates that the Fedora Project itself pursue a strategy that preserves
>  the forward momentum of our technical, collateral, and community-building
>  progress. Fedora always aims to provide the future, first.
> (I realize I basically posted that entire paragraph)
> 
> === Questions to ask ===
> *Do we follow First or not?
> 
> I realize that it's probably too late to change this decision, and i'm
> basically just rambling off on a mediawiki formatted waste of your time
> (sorry, i've been hacking on a wiki all afternoon), but I think that the
> goals of Fedora sometimes may mean going against what upstream says is
> correct for a 'stable' distro and will support both users and developers
> better in the long term.
> 
My £0.02 (and I wouldn't be surprised to find that Fefora folk are already 
thinking this way) - forget KOffice on the live CD.  Keep KOffice 1.6 easily 
available on the repos.  Keep KOffice 2 on the unstable repos so that those of 
us with the interest in helping its development can use it.  That should give 
us the best of both worlds, IMO.

Anne
-- 
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