Infinity future: Pros and Cons of being a KDE project

[shenlebantongying]

Pros

• Bus factor > 1 forever via common ownership (all entrusted KDE devs have access to most repo.). If both of us suddenly disappear, KDE can delegate a new maintainer if someone wants to, instead of the painful process of forking. This will ultimately eliminate the problem of the original GD. I think this single reason is good enough.
• No need to maintain translations anymore
• Auto release service, and we don't care about when to release https://www.google.com/search?q=KDE+gear https://community.kde.org/KDE_Gear
• Able to distribute through Microsoft Store
  • https://apps.microsoft.com/search/publisher?name=KDE%20e.V.&publisher=KDE%20e.V.&hl=fr-cf&gl=CF
  • https://develop.kde.org/docs/packaging/windows/microsoftstore/publishing/
• Cool domain and documentation site like https://ghostwriter.kde.org/

Cons

• Need to host on KDE's infrastructures (changes overtime, currently it is GitLab + Bugzilla) instead of the popular GitHub
• Bloat, requires sharing tech with other KDE components (like depending on KXMLGUI). More complex build process

Anti-Cons

• GitHub is owned by evil corporations. Free software should be developed on open-source infrastructure.
• Bloat is good, KDE frameworks provides various staffs that we don't want or no time to write, such as
  • better colour scheme, instead of Qt stylesheets
  • Shortcut manager, instead of reinventing on our own

https://manifesto.kde.org/benefits/

@xiaoyifang What do you think? This is my contingency plan. 😅

[KonstantinDjairo]

i'm also worried about goldendict-ng's future, since it's a very important software.
did you ever considered making a codeberg repo for it? codeberg isn't tied to any organization in particular, and being owned by KDE sounds pretty much like "killing" the project.

the "Pros" regarding better color-scheme tends to vary over time, since you'd be tied to KDE and not everyone uses it, and you can't be sure whether KDE will be available for the user in the future.
So to put it briefly: you dont preserve software by relying on a even bigger software that not everyone uses.

this is free software, if the main devs disappear, someone will fork and continue to deliver updates (that's what happened to the old goldendict) , you dont need KDE for it.

[xiaoyifang]

Maybe try to bring more maintainer first

[shenlebantongying]

Maybe try to bring more maintainer first

I propose inviting @atauzki to the collaborators list too.

He has been with us since a very early time. He is generally a good person, knows at least the build related code, knows at least mdict format much more than me, able to distribute his own GD-ng build.

Furthermore, he can help maintain and code review build related things.

[xiaoyifang]

@atauzki What's your opinion?

[atauzki]

just packaging only，my need of offline dict is much less than before, so I don't so much care about some new features.

Maybe we can get more enthusiasts on freemdict, and listen to their opinions.

[xiaoyifang]

just packaging only，my need of offline dict is much less than before, so I don't so much care about some new features.

These should be fine, You can do what you are good at .
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