Re: Are interoperability issues bugs?

On Tuesday 14 July 2009, Dotan Cohen wrote:
> >> Thank you, Boudewijn. Considering your words, would it be acceptable
> >> for me to open documents in the current 2.0 release and file bugs on
> >> reproducible display issues, except font rendering?
> >
> > Yes, definitely, if you can attach the test documents.
>
> Terrific, then I will reduce to test cases and attach. Thanks!
>

And thank you -- because that kind of feedback is the most important sort!

> >> Then why is it called 2.0? I thought that x.0 means "ready for end
> >> users".
> >
> > Well, it also means "all source compatibility with the previous platform
> > has been broken, but it's ready to develop new applications on again".
> > For us, it was the clear watershed between "we can do anything to this
> > code, we don't care about anyone who uses the code except for us" and "if
> > you develop a new plugin, we're committed to supporting you from now on".
> > We were pretty careful in making that clear in the release announcement.
>
> I see, it is a developers term then. What is the accepted end-user's
> term for "this is ready for production use"? I understand that you
> clarify in the release notes, but to be honest if I were to read the
> release notes of all the software that I use I would never get any
> real work done. What is the code-word / version number for "ready for
> users"? Is this a KDE-wide term (there were similar problems with KDE
> 4.0 not being ready for end users)? Note that I am not trying to start
> a flame war, even though I know the flamability of the subject, but
> rather trying to judge if I can use software that uses nonstandard
> terminology. I don't want to get myself into any problems because I
> thought that term XYZ, which is acepted to mean ABC in most software,
> actually means DEF in Koffice / KDE. That said, I am a happy KDE 4.3
> RC2 user.

Well... We have tried to keep a really low profile with KOffice 2.0, 
intentionally not sending the announcement to the usual channels, and we were 
very clear in the announcement itself, as well as towards the distributions: 
we have asked all of them not to make KOffice 2.0 their new default. So, 
basically, we were hoping that KOffice 2.0 would simply not reach the non-
developer public, while still reaching the developers. That didn't completely 
workout -- we had -- quite nice -- reviews on tuxradar and linuxjournals, but 
on the whole, most people approaching us knew of the difference.

It's a hard problem, caused by having two audiences at the same time. I don't 
think we have a perfect solution, but once we think KOffice 2 is ready (and if 
it will reach that stage, it will to a large measure be because of people like 
you helping us with bug reports!), we'll certainly have a big splash :-).

-- 
Boudewijn Rempt | http://www.valdyas.org
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