Re: Plasma Next Naming

On Tuesday, January 14, 2014 20:18:17 Sebastian Kügler wrote:
> - We don't want it to be too technical, it should be engaging to "normal
>   people”

The product name certainly does need to be engaging, but (referencing what follows in the email), 
does a version name need to be engaging?

> - Version numbers seem confusing an not very expressive, these should rather
> be a technical detail (for example to group bugzilla entries)

Maybe a silly question: but who finds version numbers confusing?

> * The upcoming release of the KDE Plasma Workspaces is called Plasma

Is there any desire to have libplasma used outside of Plasma desktop/tablet/mediacenter shells? 
There are implications if the answer is "yes"

> * The version number used is Month (as name) + year

Including what gets reported in about UI and command line switches? How will this work with plugin 
compat checking, or will there be another numerical version?

> * "workspaces" should hardly be used at all, it's a technical term and
> doesn't bear all that much meaning for users

+1

> * "Plasma by KDE" (don't use "KDE Plasma", but rather "by KDE”)

What benefit does this aim to bring? 

Will this be the recommendation in login screens as well? (So soon after we finally got most/all 
using “KDE Plasma” instead of just "KDE")

Should other KDE applications / libraries adopt this naming for consistency? Why / why not? If not, 
do we expect our users and downstream to get that sorted out correctly?

There are certainly products that use this naming scheme, such as perfumes and clothing, but it’ll be 
a bit of a stand-out in the tech space.

> * Each release gets a codename based on a marine animal (*1), in
> alphabetical order, one for each feature release

> * "Please file a bug against Plasma June/2014"
> * "KDE Releases Plasma Angelfish"

Having both a date/year and a code-name seems counterproductive for communication: do bug 
reports go against Angelfish or June/2014? (probably neither: a version number, which is a third 
piece of information, is used). User A says “I’m using Plasma Angelfish” and the other says “I’m 
using June 2014”.

Having announcements that use “Plasma Anglefish” but “file a bug again Plasma Jun/2014” 
highlights how this will be difficult to understand for the casual user (and probably many non-casual 
users).

If “Plasma Zebrafish” compatible with “Plasma Jellyfish”? This is something that version numbers 
actually tell you without having to look it up on a table.

A date contains some implicit information, while a naming scheme needs both additional 
information to be understandable (e.g. knowing that it is alphabetical; a look-up table for how old a 
given codename is versus another) and doesn’t relate anything beyond sequence.

A name based on animals seems very gimicky imho and a step towards a rather more informal 
approach. It may also be perceived as a me-too move in reference to MacOS and Unity.

What particular challenge(s) is the code naming idea trying to address?

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo


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