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

[Jonathan Thomas]

Amarok 2.0 was a bit different, I think, in that we weren't forced to
upgrade. Amarok is released by itself, tied to nothing, and we would
have had no trouble supporting it for the timeframe of Jaunty. We
didn't, because there was a push to get KDE3 off of the Live CD. We
didn't make this goal anyways, and looking back it didn't make too much
sense in the first place, from a user perspective; a bad move on our
part all around. With KAddressBook, we have little if no choice.

The circumstances KAddressBook situation is a bit different.
KAddressBook is shipped along with almost a dozen other applications in
what is called the KDE PIM module of KDE. It is delivered as a single
tarball for us to build and split in to binary packages. (Along with the
other 8 or so KDE modules) Practically, the only real ways to provide an
older version of KAddressBook are to either: a) Not upgrade kdepim at
all, leaving all PIM applications at their KDE 4.x versions, ignoring
all features *and* bugfixes that have occurred since KDE 4.3, or b)
Carrying a massive, massive, massive patch to downgrade KAddressBook to
its 4.3 version. Both are very unpleasent and unfeasible solutions to
the problem, especially since that means that there is no gaurantee of
security fixes for 5 years for KAddressBook 4.3, since it has been
deemed unmaintained by KDE PIM since the 4.4 cycle began.

Unfortunately, the majority of KDE developers live in merry little svn-
land, where since they compile all of KDE themselves have almost no
perspective of what a distribtion can and cannot do. While I'm sure we
all do appreciate their work, many times they can annoy distributors
greatly, as is in this case.

In regards to enterprise-related organizations or users, having a
gaurantee to *not* have security updates *at all* for five years for
KAddressBook 4.3 would be almost as bad if not worse than using
KAddressBook 4.4. In the end we're just trading one set of evils for
another and are pretty much porked any way you look at it.

I must reiterate that we would have no problems if a contributor stepped
up and provided a PPA or somesuch for KAddressBook 4.3. I or any of the
developers would be more than happy to provide any assistance and answer
any questions for anybody who wants to do so. The philosophy of Ubuntu
is community, and as Kubuntu is largely a community project we rely
heavily on it to get things done.

For KDE 4.4, KAddressBook was the only thing that has really moved on to
use Akonadi. (And since 4.4.0 final has been released, it will remain to
be the only one) KPilot had actually switched in 4.3 to some success,
but it was removed from distribution because its authors did not wish to
continue with it, and the Palm Pilot was a dying breed anyways. KMail
will most likely be ported to Akonadi for KDE 4.5, but this doesn't
really affect 10.04 LTS. In keeping with previous releases, we will make
available official backports of KDE 4.5 available as an option to 10.04
users via the Kubuntu PPA.

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