[scribus] Akademy invitation

Tue Apr 13 17:22:29 CEST 2010

2010/4/11 Riku Leino <tsoots at gmail.com>

> Hi,
>
> If there are no other (more involved in the project than myself) Scribus
> devs
> coming to Finland for Akademy. I am willing to give a 30 minute talk about
> Scribus, Qt and KDE. I am sure I will be able to gather the facts from the
> team and give a presentation without all the flaming present here.
>
> I must say all the hostile comments were bit of a surprise. We have been at
> Akademy before and I have never, even during my more active days with the
> project, heard anything like the comments here.
>

I was going to stay out of this thread as I really have not many clues of
what’s involved here. I don’t code and I know very little of KDE. I must say
I learned from the little I could read before the thread was forced to land
by this single word thrown like an incandescent anathema: "impolite".

I re-read the original post and the following answers and I find it hard to
pin this down as "hostile comments" or "impolite[ness]". I recognise at the
same time that we are here flying over the vast territory of personnal and
thus subjective appreciation. Nonetheless, I disagree that this was even
close to something rejectable in a well-mannered and lively discussion. To
the most, John’s coment was a bit dry, maybe. Using the word "hostile"
towards that comment seems to me a clear manoeuvre to sequester one’s
thought. Not very friendly.

As some of you will know, I am sensitive to hostile irony or deformation of
thoughts on a mailing list. There are very few people who do that on the
Scribus list. Please don’t ask me for names. I do have a few people in mind
while writing this. Tracking these people down is not the purpose of my
post... (Just as a side, delightful note — if you allow me to say this — I
happen to have a large smile while writing this sentence...) But let’s not
slip out of the main topic...

I think we need to be able to accept discordant opinions on many subjects. I
happen to fall into a category of people on this list who are not always on
the same wavelength as some developers on the Scribus team and nonetheless,
it’s been years now, I am very happy to collaborate as much as I can to this
project, sharing thoughts, analysis and ideas in the most elegant manner and
sometimes with the will to bite but not too hard... :)

I completely disagree that some comments in this particular thread were
impolite, hostile or childish (childish?). I think that the English
language, despite its limitations and imperfectnesses, has a wider
vocabulary than those few words to express in a much more nuanced way what
has been going on here. Expressing some dissatisfaction and putting forward
examples to support it is completely normal and has noting to do with
hostility.

The first comment came from a regular poster on this list and he came about
with a user perspective. All the points he raised were new to me (and
probably to many other readers of this list) so I learned a bit and it was,
despite diverging points of view, interesting to read. The second comment
came from another well-known and very active poster on this list and who
also happens to be a developer and who shared his developer’s view. To be
frank, I cannot find any of those comment “harmful”, “hostile” or “impolite“
in any way and even less "childish". Mind you, I am not a native English
speaker... But believe me, I do have a sense of what’s going on...

I think it is unquestionable that people can express their views and discuss
openly on a mailing list. This is very precisely the purpose of such lists.
And this ML in particular is certainly an example of well-mannered and open
discussions, including this one.

I stand against attempts to diminish the right to speak up by framing in
such an authoritative manner an open discussion. Moreover, I stand against
invoking distorted arguments to shut someone’s thought down or to ridicule
it or reduce it into a bottled formulae. If only there was a beginning of a
solid reply to what was raised by answers 1 and 2 to the original post...
But to the noticeable exception of Riku’s answer, no. In fact, I could only
read generalities in answer to specific issues.

Let’s concentrate on the main topic and on the reasoning.

I also happen to disagree that this discussion could prevent anyone from any
organisation to invite the Scribus Team anywhere.

By the way, nothing prevents anyone from attending Akademy if they wish. At
the same time, nothing prevents anyone from attending Libre Graphics Meeting
where we have made no secret for years that the Scribus team meets there
every year. KDE people could come to LGM in May and they could discuss there
and probably gather useful information for them. Informations they could
discuss at Akademy later on. Frankly, this could prove to be very productive
and possibly (probably) more productive than a 30-minute talk.

So, in answer to this kind invitation, I would gladly pass on the invitation
to KDE developers to attend LGM where they will have more possibilities of
learning more things about Scribus than anywhere else and get the full
picture of "what makes KDE feel like a step backward".

Louis

Riku ! This year we want to see you at LGM ! :)

>
> In my opinion the fact that Scribus is not a KDE app relates more to the
> resources Scribus currently has and also to the fact that Qt alone has made
> it
> possible to give Scribus the wide audience it has today. Stepping in to the
> KDE train now would somehow feel like a step backward. I think this is what
> people at Akademy could be interested to hear: What makes KDE feel like a
> step
> backward.
>
> Cheers,
> Riku
>
>
>
> Bertjan Broeksema kirjoitti torstai, 8. huhtikuuta 2010 23:20:40:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > In July KDE [1] will have its annual summit, Akademy [2]. As a program
> > committee we're looking for interesting talks [3]. We thought that it
> would
> > be nice to have a some talks from developers that work on Qt based
> > programs but don't use the KDE framework. We're in particular interested
> > to hear about why Qt is used and why there is no KDE integration.
> >
> > Scribus obviously falls into this category. We therefore want to invite
> you
> > to sent in a proposal for a 30 minute talk.
> >
> > For eventual questions, feel free to contact us at akademy-talks at kde.org
> .
> >
> > The deadline for submission is 23th of April. We're really looking
> forward
> > to your submission.
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Bertjan
> >
> > [1] http://www.kde.org
> > [2] http://akademy.kde.org/
> > [3]
> > http://dot.kde.org/2010/02/01/akademy-2010-our-world-clearly-call-papers
> >
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> > scribus at lists.scribus.net
> > http://lists.scribus.net/mailman/listinfo/scribus
>
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