Lew Wolfgang wrote:
On 08/19/2010 09:58 PM, Tony Alfrey wrote:
Lew Wolfgang wrote:
On 08/19/2010 09:30 PM, Tony Alfrey wrote:
Now, how about asking Novell to create a new mail list called opensuse-kde3 for all you enthusiasts so that you can have your own sand-box for KDE3? :-)
It's not like the current KDE list is overfull with posts on it.
I must say that I'm amazed with this friction between KED3.5 and 4.x. Any commercial company would give body parts to have a customer base as loyal to KDE3.5 that apparently exists, yet it appears that the open-source model is willing to abandon that loyalty. We've all heard the reasoning for abandoning KDE3.5 for "the new paradigm", and it certainly makes some sense to me, but the fact remains that there are a lot of "customers" that just don't like what they see in KDE 4.x.
What is it about the open-source model that is happy as a clam to simply tell that customer base to fsck off?
Maybe because they're not customers? (in the paying for a service sense)
Well, I don't understand that model. I expect to pay for code that someone writes because otherwise I cannot expect someone to stand by the stuff when it doesn't work. I must say I've not bought SuSE since 9.3 (which I still run) because what I have works for what I do (Eagle printed circuit board app and VariCAD), and I run a Mac for many other things, obviously paid for. I understand the issue about making the source code available, but the bottom line is that I want the stuff to work. I really think that all of those that argue both ways about KDE3.5 versus KDE 4.x need to think very hard about how this argument appears to the general public that might have liked to consider linux and the KDE desktop in general as a Windows alternative. Many many times I say that "the Mac is an example of what linux could be". After all, the Mac OS is freeBSD with a desktop environment on top (a simplistic description). There is none of this angst between Mac OS 10.4 and Mac OS 10.6, for example.
Maybe no angst, but no choice either.
I agree, there is no "choice". But it depends upon what one's objectives are. My objective is to be able to do "stuff"; write some app, make a website, design a PC board, do some CAD modeling, create some engineering drawings. I agree; my objectives are not to make a device driver, or to get the latest nVidia driver to work, or to struggle with the latest 2.6.x kernel. I have traded "choice" for "getting things done that are important to me". And a critical component of all of that is the old adage: "Time is Money". I'm sorry, but I don't have /any/ time whatsoever to worry about the KDE 3.5 vs. KDE 4.x angst. And it is precisely that angst that says to me "wait until all of this desktop environment silliness subsides before I load up SuSE 11.x, whatever x turns out to be. How much should I pay (in time and angst) for "choice"? Sorry, we've gotten way off topic here; we can let this thread (or my contribution to it) die. -- Tony Alfrey tonyalfrey@earthlink.net "I'd Rather Be Sailing" -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org