Kevin, I hope to meet you one day in Vienna or here in Brno again :). Thanks for everything (and your - I'll come to Brno and show you how to do it - in your words ;-). Btw. I still think Plasma 5 is the best "KDE" version ever (with small glitches). No flame, I enjoy using it. Jaroslav On Thu, Oct 29, 2015 at 5:00 PM, Kevin Kofler <kevin.kofler@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Hi, > > in recent times, I have been increasingly unable and unwilling to adequately > (co)maintain the huge set of packages known as the KDE Software Compilation > (i.e., the union of the KDE Plasma Workspaces, KDE Frameworks and KDE > Applications release sets), which I will refer to as "KDE SC" in this mail. > > * unable because: > - the set of packages keeps growing and growing (mainly due to splitting of > existing packages). The KDE SC used to be about a dozen packages. When a new > release came out, it could be updated to manually (without any scripts) by > one person in about a day. These days, we are talking about hundreds of > packages. (I am supposedly comaintaining over 300 packages at the moment.) > Those packages are impossible to deal with without scripts, and even those > scripts take hours to run (and require some amount of babysitting because > things such as rebasing patches cannot always be automated). The same > phenomenon also affects Qt, at a slightly smaller scale. Back in the day, I > felt confident about having a global view on the KDE SC packages. This is no > longer the case. > - I am having an increasingly hard time keeping up with the latest evolutions > that the KDE Project releases. Right now, I am still running Plasma 4 and am > highly unfamiliar with Plasma 5. This means I am out of touch with the > issues our users are reporting and also have only limited ability to test > any fixes. > - big parts of the KDE Plasma Workspaces are now written in QML, a language I > am also not very familiar with. > - for varying reasons (job, etc.), I have found myself having nowhere near > enough time to dedicate to KDE SC packaging lately. I am drowning under > bugmail, and have found myself unable to even READ all of it at times, let > alone act on it. The poor quality of KMail 2 (see below) is not helping, and > neither will the F23 release that accidentally defaults to ABRT instead of > DrKonqi (see below). I am basically the only true volunteer left in the SIG, > and the time I can invest in Fedora packaging is finite. > > * unwilling because: > - the way the Fedora Project has been treating KDE since Fedora 21 (when > "Fedora.Next" was introduced) makes me feel like a second-class citizen > in the Fedora community. After years of fighting for equal treatment of KDE > in Fedora, Fedora.Next with its "Fedora is now more focused" (on GNOME) > message was a major setback and a huge disappointment. (Another symptom of > this evolution is how the PackageKit backend was rewritten with only the > exact feature set GNOME Software happens to need, leaving Apper utterly > broken.) > - the evergrowing package set (see above) is making it increasingly painful > and boring to maintain KDE SC packages. > - the Akonadi/KMail stack has been a huge pain to use, due to major serious > issues, both performance and reliability issues. Upstream has been either > unwilling or unable to do anything about the problem, none of the fixes so > far really helped in any way. I am unwilling to have anything further to do > with this abomination of software. > - while I have not experienced it personally yet, the quality of KDE Plasma 5 > is also reported to be very disappointing; the promise from KDE 4.0 times > that "KDE 5" (as it was referred to at the time) would be an evolutionary > rather than a revolutionary release was not followed through. > - the Fedora 23 KDE Spin (which is now final or almost final) is easily the > worst KDE Spin we have ever released: > . Firefox, a non-KDE and even non-Qt application, is the default browser. It > does not integrate into the Plasma desktop in any way. > . Due to an oversight, DrKonqi is missing, and thus ABRT (another non-KDE > application) is the default crash handler. ABRT reports all the crashes to > us downstream packagers instead of upstream where the crash reports > belong. And experience has shown that the ABRT fire&forget reporters are > unwilling to upstream the bug reports manually, if they even read our > replies at all (and that's if we even manage to reply to all the bugs to > begin with). > Both of these are complete no-gos where I have said from day one that those > are not acceptable. The Firefox fiasco was a deliberate decision, the ABRT > fiasco could have been avoided if DrKonqi had not been made optional against > my recommendation, and/or if people had actually tested that the KDE Spin > uses the KDE crash handler. I do not want to be held responsible for these > decisions I did not approve of. > > As a result, I AM HEREBY STEPPING DOWN FROM THE KDE SIG AND FROM > (CO)MAINTAINERSHIP OF KDE SC PACKAGES. > > In particular, effective NOW: > * I hereby request to be removed from the group::kde-sig group. > * I will withdraw my comaintainership (including watchbugzilla and > watchcommits!) of Qt and of all packages in the KDE SC, EXCEPT: > - the packages for which I am upstream: kompare, libkomparediff2 > - compatibility packages: qt3, kdelibs3, qt(4), kdelibs(4), kdewebdev (3), > kdegames3 > * I may also withdraw comaintainership of, or orphan where I am the point of > contact, any packages that I am maintaining because the KDE SC depends on it, > and possibly selected other KDE-related packages. > * I am stepping down from being a voting member in the KDE SIG. I leave it to > the remaining members to nominate a replacement or reduce the member count. > * I am stepping down as a moderator of the fedora-kde mailing list. I already > cleared the moderation flag of the one person I have put on moderation. This > list moderation is an additional duty that I just do not have time for. > * I am stepping down as an operator of the #fedora-kde IRC chan. (You should > also remove the operator privileges from tigcc_bot. It does not need them, it > was only symbolic.) > * I will no longer consider it my duty to attend KDE SIG meetings, though I may > attend some meetings as an interested user. In particular, I will no longer > lead any meetings and I will not try to herd people into attending (the > necessity of which has always been annoying me). > > I will KEEP (until further notice): > * my Fedora packager status, > * my provenpackager privileges in Fedora, > * my packager sponsor privileges in Fedora, > * (co)maintainership of a reasonable number of packages that I can actually > scale to (i.e., NOT the current 300-400), including: > - as mentioned above, the Kompare stack and the compatibility packages, > - KDE-related packages outside of the KDE SC (though possibly fewer than now), > - the Calamares installer, > - some non-KDE packages, > * taking care of the compatibility libraries that make existing applications > work (the Qt3/kdelibs3 stack right now, the Qt4/kdelibs4 stack if and when > needed) and of legacy applications themselves, > * developing Kannolo (what the Fedora KDE Spin SHOULD be), to which I hope being > able to devote more time than now, > * maintainership of Kompare upstream (for now), unless another maintainer with > more time can finally be found, > * using and promoting (to the current extent) Fedora with KDE (be it the KDE > Spin or Kannolo). > > I am sorry, but after 8 years of volunteering and ending up with almost 400 > packages to take care of, I just have to scale down. It was fun while it lasted. > I wish the remaining KDE SIG members good luck for the future. > > Kind regards, > Kevin Kofler > > _______________________________________________ > kde mailing list > kde@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/kde > New to KDE4? - get help from http://userbase.kde.org -- Jaroslav Řezník <jreznik@xxxxxxxxxx> Engineering Program Manager Office: +420 532 294 645 Mobile: +420 602 797 774 PIN: REZZABBM Red Hat, Inc. http://www.redhat.com/ _______________________________________________ kde mailing list kde@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/kde New to KDE4? - get help from http://userbase.kde.org
