KDE4stable - a proposal

[Mario Fux]

Good morning

I hate double made work. But I love debian and I love KDE. The only problem is 
that Debian stable has an outdated KDE version after some time.

The solution is backporting the current KDE version to Debian stable. It's 
done by different projects (see below) and different projects need a backport 
of the current KDE version.

So why shouldn't we join forces and work together on a backport of KDE for 
Debian stable (and derivate distributions).

My proposal follows now in less and more detail.

Short version:
--------------
Lets cooperate with the backport of current KDE. Create an alioth [1] project 
with a mailinglist, a repository (debian packages and svn) and some FAQs.

More details:
-------------

Here are some more ideas:
- Some releaseplan:
-> make quickly first packages (together with the Debian KDE/Qt Team and 
Kubuntu team) (State: unusable)
-> announce workable packages (State: testable)
-> declare them stable for productive use (state: usable)
(States similar to stable, testing and unstable. This way the user sees the 
state of the packages at once.)
- Provide security support for the packages declared 'usable'.
- We restrict on some architectures (i386, amd64, powerpc, ...)
- We garantee a smooth migration path to the next stable version of Debian 
(i.e. the backported KDE version should always be a version less than the 
version in Debian testing/unstable).
- Additional backport of further KDE applications.

Future perspective:
-------------------
Debian Etch will probably released with KDE 3.5.x and not KDE 4.x. So if we 
have to infrastructure we could shortly after present a Debian stable etch 
version with the current KDE.

I'm (and surely others too) interested in your opinion and if you like to work 
with us.

And last but not least, here are some information about me:
Primary school teacher, student in education and computer sciences. 
Longstanding Debian user and trying to give something back (e.g. DDTP 
translations and YaST4Debian [2]).
My best skills are not (yet) programming but coordination, documentation and 
organisation.

Why specifically this mailing list (different in each mail)?
------------------------------------------------------------
I choose this list as you're mostly quick fast with KDE packages and if I'm 
correctly informed you're interested in a closer work with Debian main too.

This mail is sent to the following mailing lists:
-------------------------------------------------
- http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/
-> main Debian development mailing list
- http://lists.debian.org/debian-qt-kde/
-> mailing list of the Debian KDE/Qt Team
- http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/
-> mailing list of the Debian Edu/Skolelinux project
- http://lists.dccalliance.org/mailman/listinfo/dcc-devel
-> development list of the DCC Alliance (with members like Linspire, Knoppix 
and Progeny)
- https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kalyxo-devel
-> development list of the Ekhis/Kalyxo project
- http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/kubuntu-devel
-> development list of the Kubuntu distribution

Reply-To: is set to debian-devel at lists.debian.org

Possible next steps:
--------------------
- If there is some possible feedback to this mail I'll request for an alioth 
project and setup a short FAQ and mailing list.
- As the release of KDE 3.5 is imminent we could together start with the 
packaging work of KDE 3.5 (based on the work

Last not: I don't intent to steal some work of any project but I think we 
could join the forces which would facilitate a lot. I appreciate all the work 
you all do!

I wish you all a good week
Mario

[1] http://alioth.debian.org
[2] http://alioth.debian.org/projects/yast4debian

PS: I'm subscribed to every mailing list I'll post this message to. So it's 
not necessary to CC: me.
PPS: Sorry for the unperfect english ;-).