They chose the latter, and, even if communication about the plans wasn’t enough, I think, in time, paid off.

Do you have any problem with the _current_ state of KDE Plasma or Amarok?

Here’s the simple thing to do in that situation. Don’t stop supporting the old version. Mark the new one beta until it’s done. You don’t have to do a lot of active development on the old one, just make sure it still compiles. And above all, don’t tell everyone that you’ve done it because you know better than them what’s best.

Rewrite is necessary > first new version lacks stuff > following versions bring the old stuff back AND other improvements.

I’m very grateful to the developers for everything they do. The least I can do is to be understanding of their procedures and the problems around them. And if I can, I’ll help. That’s what free software is about.
Some people prefer to bitch, apparently…

Plugin Configuration :
———————————
CoverWeb Browser …..: no
Media Player …..: yes
MP4 File Type …..: no
M4A File Type …..: no

“Version 2 has mysteriously lost: the ability to see an iPod’s playlists, the ability to store a playlist in an m3u file and automatically keep it up to date, the ability to sync the Amarok statistics to an iPod, and more. Reminds me of the Gnome print dialog fiasco. “We’ve removed features. It’s better! Really! Oh, and we won’t support the old version either.””

Tell you what, let’s play spot the difference. Here’s a screenshot of KDE 3.5.x:
http://kde.org/screenshots/images/3.5/01-welcome.png
And here’s a screenshot of KDE 4.6.x:
http://www.kde.org/announcements/4.6/screenshots/46-w09.png

Pretty similar, aren’t they? Look, there’s the panel, with an application menu, and application launcher icons… and a pager, the task manager, system tray and obviously a clock… and there’s KRunner, showing off one of its new features (completely contradicting your statement, by the way)… yup, looks pretty similar to me.

Gnome 2.30:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_3Lb62RCRATE/TFpVMw9EjxI/AAAAAAAAALM/vMCwsOwS8H0/s1600/F13-easyprint-screenshot.png
Gnome 3.0:
http://media.if-not-true-then-false.com/2011/05/fedora-15-f15-gnome-shell-plain.png

…

This rant suggests that you think that the gnome hackers target their desktop at you solely. “But couldn’t i get a switch so that i can decide for myself!!122″. That sort of “freedom of choice” is a smoke screen. You can’t cater for all needs. As a programmer you will HAVE TO try to make compromises if you don’t want to end up with interfaces that looks like this: http://justaddwater.dk/wp-content/uploads/2006/12/wgetgui-screenshot.png

Full disclosure: I am the coordinator for Xfce’s Greek l10n team.

I think there is room to refactor software. gtkpod was heavily redesigned recently, and it is fine. Except that it can’t play music anymore.

If you can appeal to a slippery slope, I’ll appeal to common sense. A music player should play music. Not everyone has a PC speaker anymore (or wants to hear beeps from it instead of headphones). Some people have directories with 5000 files in them and would prefer to type instead of click.

Linux 2.6.mumble (36 maybe?) removed v4l1. This removed a feature, sure, and broke some stuff. But I think it was a fine decision. There is value to removing stuff sometimes.

But it needs to have a healthy dose of thought.

My point is, there will always be somebody that depends on a certain feature. Any change will annoy or upset people. Does that mean we should never change anything anymore?

But I do understand your point about GTKPod.