Now you can help too – KDE Multimedia Sprint 2012 Pledge (Randa/CH)

An exciting period is appraching fast – the KDE Multimedia Sprint in Switzerland:Events like these are important for a multitude of reasons – knowledge transfer, socializing, architectural decsisions and last but not least to keep up the fun and spirit. Its a time to shut off all other activities and devote full time to you, the dear user of our applications. There is a funding pledge at Pledgie, so if you ever wondered if you could help in any way, please visit Pledgie:

http://pledgie.com/campaigns/18045

Do you still have not the faintest idea what is going on and why supporting it would be a good idea? Read on in the folowing links:

• Images from Randa 2011 by Valorie Zimmerman
• My KMix blog post of Randa 2011. I started this blog post specifically because I was talked at Randa 2011 into doing it (and I am glad that I did).
• My plans for Randa 2012. Usability, finalizing started Features and Documentation.
• A personal blog post by an Amarok developer that shows why Sprints are so important
• Original pledge post by Mario Fux (Chief organizer)

Usability first – KMix’s long term Milestone plan

My personal agenda for KMix has always been to provide a full-featured, but extremely simple mixer to all Users. And I sincerely hope I have served you well. Now KMix is nearly adult (16 years since birth ) and  quite mature and feature-complete. I am now refining my view of what I want to accomplish:

Usability first

KMix was always dedicated to simplicity and ease of use – rather not support it than create a usability hazard. Currently  I continue to polish the existing features, for example the configuration dialog contains helpful hints and hides options depending on the system setup.
Update: Due to popular demand, I simplified the “Autostart” option, including auto-detecting autostart possibility.

Independent releases from KDE core releases

Nowadays KMix development  is independent from KDE core development. With its own GIT repository, I will try to avoid branches and let distributions always ship the newest version. Hopefully it is possible for distributions to follow this scheme. KMix will use Feature Switches to disable unfinished features instead of developing the features in branches.

The long term Milestone plan: A final version: KMix v5 including Plasmoid

I am planning to develop KMix  until KMix v5 and then put it on maintenance mode. This means, I will add and complete some features and do a lot of polishing until KMix v5. After that I will do bug fixing only. Features will be a very extraordinary event from then on.  Igor Poboiko’s KMix Plasmoid  is definitely planned as an included feature.