[Bug 507990] Re: Please include the old Kaddress book in KDE SC 4.4

[TK]

Scott: First, let me thank you and all of the contributors for your hard
work.  I while I am not a software developer, I have made good use of
the Kubuntu team's contributions for quite some time.

Using this defect report as an example, one challenge the Kubuntu
distribution faces is integrating the Ubuntu philosophy of stability and
considering impact of changes upon users
(http://www.ubuntu.com/community/conduct) with the conduct of the
upstream developers of KDE.  Amarok 2.0 was an unhappy experience for
many users when compared to 1.4.X.  It now looks like this same
development approach is going to be used with KDE's Kontact suite.

When this particular defect was brought to the attention to KDE
developers, the response was basically to take it up with your KDE
distribution if something more stable is desired.  And while some loose
promises have been make to add the KAddressbook functionality back in
the KDE 4.5 release, other parts of Kontact will be moving to the
Akonadi architecture in KDE 4.5.  If past behaviour in any way predicts
future behaviour, more loss of user features will result as the KDE
developers streamline their new Kontact suite code in the move to the
Akonadi architecture.

It is one thing to substantially alter the feature set of a music player
(Amarok 2.0) but anyone or organization that are using the features of
the classic Kontact suite for mission critical purposes may be in for
some unpleasant surprises over the next few years.  Perhaps it would be
prudent to identify who are Kubuntu's targeted users and warn off other
users for which Kubuntu might not be a good match.

Another option would be to continue to offer a version of Kontact 4.3.5
as an alternative while the mainstream Kontact suite goes through it's
growing pains in versions KDE 4.4.X and greater.  Offering this would be
consistent with the Ubuntu philosophy and perhaps something that would
differentiate Kubuntu from other distributions, particularly for
business users.

I clearly understand that this latter suggestion is not in the present
plans for Kubuntu.

As a rhetorical question which goes beyond this particular defect, how
will the Kontact suite move to the Akonadi architecture in KDE 4.4 and
greater be addressed in the Long Term Support release of 10.04 in the
context of the Ubuntu philosophical concern for the impact of changes
upon of the larger community?

-- 
Please include the old Kaddress book in KDE SC 4.4
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/507990
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