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reading the Ars comments, there still seems to be plenty of willful misunderstanding going on.

Meh, in the end some people may be motivated to do something useful and the rest will have moved onto to the next topic de jure to whinge about, usually at a volume reversely proportional to any contributions they make.

The controversy over the maturity of KDE 4.0.0 challenges the dynamics of the free software community. It's an expectations gap caused by a cultural shift within the community that deserves some consideration.

The "enthusiast" class has become far less tolerant of immature code than it has been in the past. The same type of user that used to be willing to jump through some hoops and shake out some bugs in order to try out the latest and greatest now expects nothing less than a finished product.

That's why every thread on this issue devolves into a discussion of numbering and naming conventions. Enthusiasts no longer have any patience for rough edges, they don't want to touch it until it's "done", and they don't want to hear any excuses from the developers.

I worry that our community of peers is decaying into a mixture of producers and consumers. Enthusiasts don't want to see themselves as partners with the developers, and the developers don't want to see themselves as service providers to the enthusiasts.

All software, both free and proprietary, goes through a continuous maturation process. The free software ecosystem was built on the assumption that, from the perspective of any given project, the community is layered like an onion. The core developers are in the middle, followed by project contributors, distributors, third-party developers, enthusiasts, and end-users.

The theory is that, as the software matures, it can be exposed to more layers of the onion. But in the case of KDE 4.0.0, one or more of the follow happened: 1) it got exposed to enthusiasts before it was ready, 2) enthusiasts had unreasonable expectations, or 3) the project failed to make the distinction between enthusiasts and end-users.

What is in a name? Could the expectations gap have been addressed simply by selecting more conservative names for KDE 4.0.0 and the releases that preceded it, or is the problem deeper than that?

Is it still possible to release software with rough edges and expect a productive response from the enthusiast community? Do enthusiasts understand and accept their role within the community? Do enthusiasts and end-users self-identify as such, and are they comfortable with those identities?

Just like an economy collapses for lack of a strong middle class, the free software community will collapse for lack of a vibrant enthusiast class with enough skills and patience to help steward fresh code to maturity. If developers begin to doubt that there is a middle class in the free software community willing to contribute some effort toward a better future, then they will be reluctant to ever challenge "the big friggin' wall".

For those of you who don't follow American politics, the major narrative right now is about how "change" happens. Some think it comes from shrewd work behind the scenes, some from a spirited fight against the opposition, and others from rallying people around a compelling vision.

In my view, the engine behind the growth of free software has been the latter, an idealistic and optimistic belief that if we work together in a transparent and inclusive community, then we can turn the conventional wisdom of the software industry on its head and challenge the entrenched interest in the status quo.

The strength of our community and its ability to produce fundamental change (like KDE4) lies in its ability to engage and empower the user in the development and maturation process.

If we reject this role, if we don't care to see how the sausage is made, if we don't want to have anything to do with immature software, if we choose to become passive consumers of finished products, then the status quo will prevail, and our hopes and dreams will be subordinated to the conventional wisdom.

The KDE project has articulated a compelling vision for the future of the free software desktop, and they've delivered a strong foundation for realizing this potential. It's impossible to please everybody with a finished product let alone a work in progress. All I ask of anybody who cares about free software is to either get on board or get out of the way.

It doesn't do any of us any good to criticize a project for reaching for new heights, for daring to set out in a bold new direction. What bothers me the most about KDE4 is that other projects are perceiving this as a referendum on ambitious development. If we reject the premise of substantive change, then we deserve the stagnation that might follow.

The problem isn't that enthusiasts don't want to test. I test every time I have a test machine available (I currently do not because I currently only have one production computer and no spare ones available for testing).

What many of us have been arguing here is that KDE 4.0 is improperly tagged and is actually only at the Beta 1 stage of development with regard to Plasma and KWin. I believe that most of us understand that most of the underlying foundations are feature complete and have stable API's and ABI's in most cases (some frameworks and many applications will not be released until KDE 4.1). However KDE 4.0 is not just a set of frameworks for a desktop environment but also the GUI (in this case Plasma and KWin) for those applications developed by that framework and other frameworks. It is the instability of KWin and Plasma that is the problem not the whole of KDE 4.0. I've only played with KDE 4.0 on a live CD but it proved to be unstable for me, without the effects turned on. Plasma and KWin are not release ready yet they released Beta software with a Production-Ready tag and now the KDE release team is getting a lot of heat for that choice and rightfully so in many people's opinions.

I have nothing but respect for the KDE development team but I feel that they made a mistake in tagging the KDE4 series with a production ready tag at this time. This release has more than a few rough edges. It is barely usable as a beta much less as a production system. What KDE released was a Developer Preview as far as I'm concerned and it should have been tagged as such. This has nothing to do with the fact that it is KDE that did this because I would be just as critical of GNOME, Apple, or Microsoft. I feel like Plasma and Kwin just needed another 2-3 months worth of work and then they could have been appropriately labeled KDE 4.0. I believe that KDE 4.0 will become a usable desktop before KDE 4.1 but they have tarnished their reputation for high quality releases with this release. I think a lot of the problem is that an organization that normally would not do this has and it worries people that they will now be releasing shoddier software in the KDE4 series than we have seen from KDE in the past.

I also don't think that they would have been in danger of entering an E17 style of constant beta development by tagging this by what should be its proper name in an ideal world and that is KDE 4.0 DR1 (Developer Preview 1). Most of us are complaining about the fact that we think those numbers actually do and should mean something. We understand the argument that the KDE release team is making and we think it is a bad argument regardless of who it would have come from. We are sharing our ideals with others who don't agree and that is fine but we are not going to be silenced just because it is inconvenient for certain people. A lot of people feel like they have committed a form of fraudulent marketing by tagging KDE 4 as they have done at this time and I feel that the x.0.0 means certain things and I further feel that KDE 4.0.0 does not meet this standard that I (and apparently many others) use for all software releases. I feel that this fraudulent marketing will be ultimately detrimental to the KDE team's efforts. I prefer KDE over GNOME and Windows and maybe it's just others and my fears that KDE is lowering their standards. I feel like KDE has always had higher standards than other projects, wrongly or rightly, and myself and others fear that those standards are now being lowered.

I will not stop using KDE software because of this but I will not be using KDE4 again until KDE 4.1 is out. I hope that the fallout from this does not hurt KDE 4 in the long run but I'm not going to be silent about what I feel is in effect fraudulent marketing whether the software is FOSS or proprietary, although I guess I feel that FOSS should have higher standards than proprietary software does as this kind of thing is something I would expect from corporations and not free software, IMO.

KDE4 is probably the biggest rewrite in the history of the free software movement. It's completely unprecedented, and as an enthusiast, you have to adjust your expectations accordingly. KDE isn't lowing their standards or releasing shoddy software. They're navigating an extremely difficult transition, and many enthusiasts have not been very understanding.

I think it's fair to say that KDE made a mistake by tagging 4.0.0. But I take a long view on these things, and I'm deeply troubled by the message that the community is sending to other project leaders. The community is saying we will hold major rewrites to a high standard, and we will rip into projects over any tactical errors that may tarnish the initial release.

You're not wrong, but your attitude isn't helping. The conventional wisdom says that rewriting software isn't worth the trouble. You're giving more ammunition to the cynics who tell us it can't be done. KDE took a big risk, and they're taking a lot of flak over a triviality.

It's times like this that make it hard to justify working on free software. I don't make a habit of accusing users of being ungrateful, but I really think that this is a example of how no good deed goes unpunished. This wasn't easy. People have poured their hearts and minds into this monumental undertaking. Maybe outsiders don't understand, but I expected better from free software enthusiasts.

I expected our community to accept KDE 4.0.0 for what it is. It's not mature code, and it wasn't a flawless release, but what KDE has done should be celebrated and rewarded. We want projects to take big risks. We want projects to rewrite their code when it gets long in the tooth. But the community response has been awfully discouraging, and that's a real shame.

Well, uhm, yeah. I will treat a free software project in exactly the same way as a proprietary project. They need to deliver quality product, just like their proprietary counterparts, and if they don't, I will call them on it.

Being a free software project must be quite handy these days. If you do it right, you prove the superiority of the open source model. If you do a major fcuk up, hey, look, don't hold us responsible, we're just open source and we do it for F/free. In psychology, the attribution theory has some interesting things to say about this one.

Being open source does not absolve you from responsibility. Especially not an important and big project like KDE or GNOME.

I think we, the user community, largely do accept 4.0 for what it is. Conversely KDE, and other projects that take bold moves, need to accept that if they release a project with numerous obvious issues the community will call them out on it. The fact that the main way a user interacts with the project is incomplete and unstable is known by both the developers and the early users. It would be hypocritical to praise the underlying architecture when it gives little benefit yet due to the flawed facade.

Sure it has potential, but the community is giving an honest appraisal of the release the KDE did. Segphault was fairly forgiving in his analysis IMHO. He attempted to show the potential while at the same time did not deny the faults. Based on the various articles and attached discussion the response has largely been "cool stuff, let us know when you plan to release something we can use." It does not need feature parity with 3.x, heck it does not even need to be stable. But right now 4.0 offers nothing more than a frustrating test bed for concepts.

I have high hopes that plasma will get sorted out in the next month or so, but till then you can not fault the community for telling the truth.

I thought the intention was to stimulate more user feedback, rather than to"be celebrated and rewarded".

Now they have the feedback they asked for, and I think it would be wrong to reject it.

People aren't critizising KDE4 for trying to reach for new heights or daring to set out in bold new directions. Everything I've read by just about everybody hails them for their choices and vision. Nobody is saying that KDE4 should have set their goals lower. Personally I'm thrilled by the potential KDE4 is showing as are most people.

The only thing they are being critised on is how they handled the release of KDE 4.0. That's it. Stop trying to make the 'fight' about something it isn't.

Hell the only reason most people even bother to critizes is that they care passionatle about how the sausage is made and want to see it made better in the future. Don't make the mistake of thinking that those who critisize the way the realse of KDE4 was handled are 'opponents' of KDE or in any way reject what they are trying to achieve. While I've been critical to KDE4, I'm also a huge fan and think it's the coolest thing that has happened in Open Source software for a long time.

I think you've nailed probably the most important point, and one that is consistently drowned out in the whining over the semantics of versioning.

The dynamics of the OSS ecosphere are changing, and not for the better. There seems to be this assumption now that despite being free in every sense of the word, OSS applications should be held to the same standard as proprietary applications.

Critics will counter, "Well why shouldn't I? I use software to solve a problem, I don't care if it's proprietary or OSS". That deflects from the issue that proprietary software has an development infrastructure funded by license revenue, whereas OSS relies on a development infrastructure funded by the collective investment in time and effort by those that wish to utilize the software.

But we don't have that any more. Any armchair quarterbacking that this should have been tagged as something different utterly misses the mark that this project was developed transparent, in the open, and with development code available along the way. The devs and distros, particularly openSUSE, went to great lengths to make testing packages available for non-developmental users. Why? For testing, feedback and bug reporting.

And what happened? A flurry of responses along the lines of "I'm not touching it until it's released officially". So anyone claiming that releasing it as a "developer release" or "technical preview" or any such nonsense overlooks the fact that they would invariably have been ignored by the userbase at large.

Anybody complaining that the devs somehow let the community down by tagging this release and throwing out the public is sidestepping the issue that they let the devs down by not making an investment of their own precious time to help with the development process.

I doubt anybody that was seriously following the development to this point was shocked or surprised at the "finished" product, because expectations had been set appropriately. Most of the initial negative feedback seemed to be based on nothing at all other than screenshots, and the evolving into a herd mentality of decrying the actions of the KDE team, as if they actually earned a position to complain.

The sad thing is that if the devs had simply left the aging infrastructure, which dates back to 2.0, and instead focused their efforts superficially on wobbly windows and other such shiny baubles, they would have been lauded for making a cutting edge release that would no doubt be yet another Vista-killer(tm) and herald the arrival of the Year-of-the-linux-desktop. I suppose the one benefit is that most of the complainers will happily jump back on the bandwagon now that the foundation is in place and people will start to have more and more shiny baubles for 4.1.

I have no doubts that KDE4 will certainly grow to new heights, and this current tempest in a teacup will blow over and be considered nothing more than short term pain towards long term gain, but the disappointing thing is that maturization of OSS seems to gain a wider userbase without a proportionately increasing base of users willing to commit time and effort to support it. That doesn't bode well for the future.

Heavy sigh.

For those of you who don't follow American politics, the major narrative right now is about how "change" happens. Some think it comes from shrewd work behind the scenes, some from a spirited fight against the opposition, and others from rallying people around a compelling vision.

In my view, the engine behind the growth of free software has been the latter, an idealistic and optimistic belief that if we work together in a transparent and inclusive community, then we can turn the conventional wisdom of the software industry on its head and challenge the entrenched interest in the status quo.

The strength of our community and its ability to produce fundamental change (like KDE4) lies in its ability to engage and empower the user in the development and maturation process.

If we reject this role, if we don't care to see how the sausage is made, if we don't want to have anything to do with immature software, if we choose to become passive consumers of finished products ...

Fine words, Butters. Perhaps you should try politics, too But I suspect you're being extremely optimistic: only a relatively tiny percentage of users is ever going to have the inclination and skills to get involved in seeing how the sausage is made. And as a platform grows and draws in more users who aren't technically inclined, so that percentage will shrink even further. What's important is that those who are interested and who do all the work aren't sat on either by a dumb majority clamouring "I want, I demand, the moon is made of cheese and you will cut me a slice" or by the kind of closed-source corporate outlook that turns consumers into passive victims.

What I haven't heard in this thread is gratitude. Perhaps the unhappy tendency would prefer that KDE didn't exist or, shock horror, that it was pay-for-only on Windows only? Perhaps they'd prefer not to have any opportunity at all to look inside and test stuff? In the circs, complaining about a name seems pretty perverse.

We are very lucky to have KDE, imho, and to judge from his presentation on that video, KDE is very fortunate to have Aaron S and his colleagues. There are some grounds for saying that desktop Linux plateau'd and began to stagnate a little 2-3 years ago now. There's been no big break-out in user figures. Certainly much of the growth in non-Windows stuff since then has been taken by Apple, and Microsoft is shaping up for a post-Vista, Windows 7 world very quickly. KDE 4 is much more important than some folks seem to realize. If desktop Linux doesn't get this very right it could be in real trouble as an alternative that delivers what PC users will by then have come to expect.

Indeed!



I would prefer a weekly column by him here on OSNews. His comments are always so insightful and well written.

I think that's silly. Funds or not, the 4.0.0 indicates to a user that this is the fourth major revision and it's ready for release. KDE is using their production release as a massive beta test because they couldn't get the feedback otherwise; they are deceiving their users and hiding behind the "we told everyone it's not ready for production use" excuse.

I wholeheartedly agree. These are just misleading excuses. You can't claim that it is unfair because they do not have the funds to beta test. I find this quite ironic because one of the claims to promote OSS is that the community at large can work through bugs quicker and more efficiently than closed source. So which is it? Is OSS model just bad, or maybe KDE4 was just released way too soon (me thinks the latter than the former).

And yes, that silly number IS important. By implying that a revision number is too be ignorant simply means that for most all software such as KDE should be ignored period. The whole reason and logic behind it is to let users know what to use, what to test, and what to avoid. This is error number two on their part. You simply can NOT use the argument that makes an assumption that people should just know. It simply does not and can not work that way. Keep in mind for every one person that spends their life reading about this, there may be 2-3 that will be unaware. Not everyone has the time or interest to follow everything in this world. Fact remains there will be people that will stumble upon 4.0 thinking it is a final/ready to use GUI when in fact it is a far from prime time release.

If anything the excuses that are being thrown out are worse than the actual release.

I wholeheartedly agree. These are just misleading excuses. You can't claim that it is unfair because they do not have the funds to beta test. I find this quite ironic because one of the claims to promote OSS is that the community at large can work through bugs quicker and more efficiently than closed source.

Quick! What's the difference between KDE 4.0 and Mac OS X 10.0? ... The KDE developers were honest with what it was?

Not being able to afford large scale beta testing doesn't adversely affect the speed in which bugs are resolved, it affects the number going into the first release.

The truth is large scale OSS products get the majority of their testing done in .0 releases, every single one.
Things aren't much different in the proprietary world. The difference being that you generally get a honest assessment of the state/quality of the product in OSS.

That's a nonsense argument, and you know it. Just because Apple does it, it's ok for the KDE team to do the same? The Apple team sues bloggers and employs wild DRM schemes, does that mean the KDE team can do so too?

Come on, you can do better than that.

if the feature list for 4.0 is complete and there are no show stopper bugs then you release. Release early, release often.

And of course there are differences between a free software project and a commercial one. No one is asking you to pay money for KDE4 and noone is making the distros package it and make it the default DE. The only people who can even get at it are those technical enough and interested enough to know what they are getting into.

That's what svn access, alphas, and betas are for. You are *severely* twisting a CatB catch phrase to suit your purpose by using it in that distorted way. (And when did that become the Bible, anyway?)

Edited 2008-01-22 00:29 UTC

Considering the way that KDE 4.0 is being treated by most distributions, I don't agree. As if this point about KDE 4.0 not being production ready hasn't been made a thousand times on a thousand sites, it is not as if any mainstream distributions are going to try to provide KDE 4.0 as if it is a production-ready environment either. At least, none that I know of.

Frankly, I think it's more like one out of twenty people, at most, don't know that 4.0 isn't production-ready and installs it by mistake.

This is a non-issue.

Yes, it's important but not the way you people think. A version number is just an arbitrary indicator that it's a new version and that it's different from the previous. Many people are just making way too much noise about the fact that it's a "major" version change. Well, guess what? It doesn't matter if it's "major", it's just an indicator that X is newer than Y. I went from OpenBSD 3.9 to 4.0 and nothing groundbreaking happened. I guess I should have been disapointed because 4.0 was just better and that it didn't blow my mind?

Who do you think the community are you ejit? Do you really believe that KDE fashions its own in-house community and test team out of......nothing? If you aren't a part of it, get lost.



Yes, that's exactly what it's for. It's not there for you to measure your requirements up to a project that you had no hand in developing and that has no obligation to you personally or financially. You use it when it's good enough for you and matches your requirements. You had a point somewhere in the middle of all of that?



There are dozens of clueless ejits who went off and downloaded CTPs of Longhorn and complained when it didn't work properly, or when it hosed their system despite warnings. Some people just won't read anything. Go figure. The majority get their installations through OEMs and distributors.



Who gets to decide that it's not a prime time release? It's certainly not you I can guarantee you that. It's the developers, who had certain goals and requirements (stable development library interfaces etc.) for .0 before they moved on. If those goals and requirements differ to yours, well tough luck.

OEMs do not install CTPs or betas of Windows for end users, and distributors will not package KDE 4 as their default desktop in any form for some time yet. If people stumble across a CTP or beta of Windows, or they stumble across any piece of software that isn't good enough for them despite a lot of commentary on the subject, well, tough luck.

People will stumble across a lot of things. C'est la vie.



Excuses for what? That it doesn't match up to what your own idea of what the requirements for a project are?

How exactly are they deceiving users when they tell them before and after release that it's a de facto beta / developer release?

1. To lead into error; to cause to believe what is false, or
disbelieve what is true; to impose upon; to mislead; to
cheat; to disappoint; to delude; to insnare.
[1913 Webster]

Don't be so naive. Everyone knows there's an agreed definition of "release." When the KDE team suddenly up and decides they are going to redefine what a .0 release means and release beta quality software in their general release builds, and then pretend that their entire userbase is somehow anxiously reading their website, it reeks of excuse. This is NOT ready for primetime, and should not be called 4.0, and it's nothing short of silly to assume people will read the directions or check on this stuff. It's deceptive at worst, merely irresponsible at best.

I'm sure KDE4 will be great when it's ready, but it is NOT ready for users right now, and users who go to download things and they will download the most current release, which is 4.0.

To believe they can successfully redefine what a .0 release means to everyone by posting some byline on a website is truly naive.

To believe a .0 release is anything more than a glorified beta intended to get things going is naive.

You can't fault them for the exaggerated ignorance of others.

Edited 2008-01-21 21:58 UTC

Could you please stop posting your repetitive flamebaits? The KDE team uses the exact same definition of a dot-Oh release as GNOME did for their 2.0 release, as Apache did for their 2.0 release, as X.org did for their 7.0 release, as Apple did for their Mac OS X 10.0 release, as the Linux team did for their 2.4.0 release, as Netscape did for their 6.0 release, as Microsoft does with basically every Windows release, and so on.

Your countless repetitions don't change the fact that similar releases were made over and over again.
We all understand that you try to boost page hits with your flamebaits, but it gets old. Really. Just stop it. Please.

There are any number of philosophies on when to release software and all kinds of factors play a part in choosing which to pick.

KDE went with the traditional FOSS approach of release early/release often. They have their reasons for this approach. It may not mesh with what you want, but then you (I assume) aren't writing it.

Users don't install KDE, they install a distro. Users dont really care if it's called 4.0, 4.1 or 9 & 1/2 weeks.



Sorry, it's not deceptive. If they had told everyone this would be an awesome, mindblowing release and they changed it at the last moment, yes, that would have been. However, they've been saying from the start it's not a full-fledged update but mainly a framework update.
Thankfully most ordinary users aren't stupid enough to read too much into version numbers.

So *show me*. So far all I have seen is a bunch of talk about how fantastic, revolutionary, and all around totally, mind-blowingly ***COOL*** KDE4 is *going to* be. That and a very unimpressive and lackluster 4.0.0 which is a big step backward from 3.5.

Now, maybe KDE4 is going to be all these wonderful things. But *show me* don't tell me. I've been using KDE 4.0.0 since it came out. (Dropping back to my usual desktop when I need to get real work done.) I watched Aaron's presentation. It all *sounds* great in his talk. But aside from watching KStars and Marble over and over and over getting a bit tedious, the only new feature that he was able to demonstrate in the 1 hour and 20 minute talk, other than a prerecorded video of the desktop effects, which are pretty old hat under Linux desktops now, was tagging a media file from Dolphin.

Show me.

Edited 2008-01-21 20:25 UTC

The point of view that you show here, by saying "show me", is that of a *consumer*, which illustrates perfectly this post of butters:

http://osnews.com/permalink?297105

Please do yourself a favor and don't restrict yourself to being a mere consumer -- that's good enough for Apple/Microsoft users, but Free Software users are supposed to behave differently. The whole point of Free Software is to blur the disctinction between producers and consumers, instead everybody is an active "user".

This is no more than empty rhethorics. The posting you responded to basically says that the reality check he undertook showed that most of the bold promised made by the KDE devs haven't materialised yet.

Stating that has little to do with consumerism, it is basically a statement of self-evident facts.

I would add that there are two issues. One is that simply more time is needed to port or re-write the missing bits.

However, the second one is that in my view at least, it is still a complete mystery how some of the bolder promises with regard to changing and improving the user experience are going to be fulfilled. Heck, what is plasma going to mean for the user except for the ability to clutter your desktop with dozens of applets? What exactly is revolutionary about this?

So, I feel that on the conceptual side, i.e. regarding user interface design and usability, there still a huge void which ought to be filled. Else, KDE4 will remain attractive mainly for hackers but for users.

What you say would make perfect sense if Plasma was indeed going to fail to fulfill its promises. But it's in fact going to succeed, thought that is not visible in 4.0, and the great idea that will make it successful can be simply explained:

The basic idea of Plasma is to make a framework that is general and abstract enough that none of the traditional elements of a desktop (panel, background, desktop icons...) are hardcoded. Then in KDE 4.0, for lack of time all what they could do with that framework was a basic panel etc, and in KDE 4.1 all what they will do will be feature-parity with 3.5 so I guess you will be disappointed again, but the underlying framework will allow just about any other kind of desktop concept. So at this point we should start seeing interesting third-parties plasmoids reinventing the desktop.

In other words: nobody knows right now how to reinvent the desktop. But with plasma, anybody will be able to play with ideas with a few dozens of lines of python code, whereas with the KDE 3.5 architecture each component of the desktop was hardcoded as thousands of lines of C++ code.

There are other benefits of plasma such as integration in apps (amarok 2.0) and suitability for other form factors (media centers) but that's not my point.

The Ars article did explain the potential of plasma as a framework and it should be clear to everybody that this is a great idea.

And it has never been tried before. Former implementations of desktop widgets were just that -- desktop widgets. Plasma allows to reinvent not just desktop widgets but every component of the desktop.

Technically, this is only made possible by the QGraphicsView introduced in Qt 4.2 and will benefit a lot from the huge improvements in Qt 4.4 (to be released in 2 monthes, will be used by KDE 4.1).

What I saw was an impressively well-designed framework. I think they are showing us the start of something big. But, this takes a lot of work; they already have thousands of volunteer programmers working and they'll get there.

Design is important. You don't tack on integration between applications later and get good results, you design it in from the start. You don't tack on support for hot swapping peripherals and sound and networking for a whole environment. If you want to share the libraries between all these applications and not have redundancy, it's best they be well-designed from the beginning, and that's what the KDE folks are doing.

Don't just throw down the gauntlet to a lot of very hard-working people in the middle of a huge project. Pick up your C++ compiler and get cracking on the code.

Do it. Now.

I'm pretty sure such would be percieved a failure and would be heavily damaging for the reputation of the respective company. I believe that the public is pretty much mercyless in this regard.

Which does not rule out that you always have a second chance to compensate your earlier failure. Look at the history of Mozilla, whose reputation also reached pretty damaging lows around the release of Netscape 6..

Edited 2008-01-22 09:22 UTC

The real problem is that the KDE devs are making a big deal of this release at all. Why is there a 3 day "KDE 4.0 Release Event" for what is essentially a developer preview?

You are trolling right? Oh well, I will bite.

Do you think all the code for KDE 4.0.0 wrote itself?

The developers have just passed a major milestone. No, KDE 4.0.0 is not a developer preview, because the devs say it isn't. Now, let them celebrate their success or they will run out of enthusiasm and burn out.

BTW great work KDE devs, have some fun and I look forward to your future work.

Plasma is largely resolution independent and Qt 4.4 (to be released in a couple of months) will make this even better as it allows widgets in a QGraphicsView (and every object in a QGraphicsView is fully scalable, can be rotated, sheered etc etc while still allowing for input). A fully scalable interface can be build upon that, and TT might do that already for Qt 4.5 on which KDE 4.2 will be build.