@whjjackwhite @nora
The lack of transparency leads one to suspect that other companies also pay permanent developers. Among others Trolltech and SuSE.
d) The "companies" you mention are for the most part not companies but scientific institutions. You can quickly compile something there if it doesn't work. This is not the case with companies that have to earn money.
e) The KDE I find at Cern has the version number 3.
aschnefuenfzehn
a) This is not a "feature request", this is a bug
b) Nate Graham himself has promised that the bug will be fixed (in case you haven't read the 500 bug reports)
c) KDE is not only developed by volunteers.
See: https://curius.de/2021/05/open-source-entwicklung-freiwillige-oder-firmen/
KDE has unfortunately not disclosed the affiliation of its developers,
but due to known sponsorships, e.g. by blue systems, one can assume that not all are volunteers here either.
@nora
If you don't fix it, then close it.
But you don't dare do that either, do you?
And one could also argue differently:
the KDE developers don't give a shit what the users want, because they only want to do their own stuff.
Ignoring a bug with almost 500 comments and insulting the users (you're not the first to get mad at me for this) shows me in any case: you do your thing and don't care about the userbase.
This way of developing is the reason why KDE never made it to the Company desktops.
@nora
Which brings us back to the beginning:
the developers do what they want. After all, they do it for free (except for those who are paid).
Personally, I think that with this attitude they have driven away the most committed users.
Me, for example. I used to donate to KDE and even did some translations. But back then, after I asked nicely when the various widgets and backgrounds were coming back, I was called nasty names.
Since then KDE doesn't get a penny from me anymore.