On Wednesday, April 7, 2010, Martin Schlander wrote:
I for one care a lot about being able to recommend openSUSE to casual users like my mother and father or the casual people in my lug for example.
You are concerned about the quality of some packages, that may damage the image of the distribution. But the image can also be damaged by excessive zeal in package filtering. The following case is from the real life: a Windows user is thinking about migrating to Linux. He asks me if I can recommend openSUSE with some MIDI programs. He is using VMPK and QSynth in Windows among other things. Are they easy to install in openSUSE? I had to answer that neither VMPK nor QSynth are available in openSUSE official repositories. But he can find them in Ubuntu, though. http://packages.ubuntu.com/lucid/qsynth http://packages.ubuntu.com/lucid/vmpk
If these are labeled as development releases by upstream (i.e. you), I'd say it's up to the packager (i.e. you) to decide. Every release is a "development release" for me. If there aren't changes requested or planned for the next release, the application is dead. Let's analyze for instance VMPK: http://vmpk.sourceforge.net
* Do you think these apps are important for their target audience Looks like it may be, 62000 downloads in one year and half. About 80% windows, 7% mac, 13% sources. http://sourceforge.net/project/stats/detail.php?group_id=236429&ugn=vmpk&type=prdownload&mode=alltime&file_id=0
* Is there no stable alternative in the distro offering the same functionality There is an alternative to VMPK in openSUSE: vkeybd, but it offers less functionality. http://software.opensuse.org/search?baseproject=ALL&p=1&q=vkeybd
* Is there a risk that casual users "accidentally" install this and get in trouble and think less of the distribution There is always that risk. I try to fix quickly all critical bugs that have been reported. There is also the problem of sound being the ugly duck.
So, In my opinion it is worth to keep it at KDE4:Community, what do you think?
Also keep in mind I don't have any special say or merit that makes my opinions particularly important. I'm just a useless loudmouth translator trying to have a discussion about something that that makes me a little bit concerned. So you shouldn't be worried by threads that I start :-)
I'm not worried because your comments. I am also concerned about the same things, and your opinion has the same value for me as the opinion of any other member of the KDE community. Regards, Pedro -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-kde+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-kde+help@opensuse.org