Re: Plasma Next Naming

I'm a follower of the Promo list, even if mainly as a lurking, happy 
user of products by the KDE community.

On 01/15/2014 02:02 PM, Ivan Cukic wrote:
>> "KDE releases the First/Second/Third Update to the October 2014 release of
>> Plasma"
>
This sounds like the way to go for announcements.

For on-screen (login, etc.) branding It sounds logical to call the 
visible KDE product "Plasma" or, perhaps "Plasma by KDE".
It seems to me that Plasma is the user-facing expression (no longer just 
for desktop computers) of the underlying Frameworks, libraries, etc. 
originating from the KDE community. "Plasma by KDE" says that pretty 
well, but on screen may not add much except acknowledgement to the hard 
work of the community of contributors. That there are dozens, scores, 
hundreds of user tools: Dolphin, Krunner, Kate, Ksnapshot (ones I use 
daily) embedded(?) within the Plasma Desktop or Plasma Active (which 
I've not yet experienced) which also are not necessary to constantly 
mention; there are just too many. Highlighting one or another is the 
task of many individual articles, showing how each one of them makes a 
job easier or more fun to do.

The brand seems to be Plasma (by KDE). It is sort of like the pickup 
truck, F-150 by Ford. The product changes every year. Mine is a 2003 
model, but it is still a Ford F-150. That's the brand, just as it is 
"Ram 1500" by Dodge/Chrysler or "Silverado" by Chevrolet/General Motors. 
You can certainly find lots of other long term brands that remain 
established through many versions.

As to frequently changing fish/animal names, my recollection is that 
those were born as internal/development nicknames. That Ubuntu, Apple 
and Microsoft all have accepted the leakage to the tech media and gone 
with the flow doesn't change their origin. Millennium and Vista actually 
took on negative associations which benefited the image of other 
platforms (GNU/Linux). In fact, I've been interested to see all the 
recent Microsoft ads calling their (struggling?) product "The New 
Windows", discarding the Windows8 or Windows8.1 labels. Products like 
iPad and XBox don't seem to intentionally mention the underlying 
software from the brand perspective.

Plasma is presumably the long-term name of choice that expresses the 
KDE-developed technologies and collections of applications. Calling it 
Plasma Clownfish for three months (whatever) and then changing to Plasma 
Barracuda seems to me to reduce the impact of Plasma itself. The press 
may miss the chance to scoop one another with an "insider" fishname, but 
it will mean more to me to see that the latest update to KDE's Plasma 
has added feature X or a long-awaited release of stable application Y.

I think the focus is Plasma, whether it is expressed as "KDE's Plasma" 
or "Plasma by KDE" or "Plasma by the KDE Community" could be a choice 
made by the author of a particular article. They all mean the same to me 
as long as I'm encouraged by all of them to focus on "Plasma" in each of 
them. Plasma allows the community of developers and also of users to 
focus on a common product whether it is on a desktop, laptop, tablet, 
phone, refrigerator, (maybe?), etc.

Next, it makes sense to make it easy to determine that it is October 
2014's first, second, third and then a more explicit marker like 
2014.10.1 (or whatever the bug crushers need). That pops up in my Help 
menu if I need it. I think crash reports may even capture that 
automatically.

Thanks to the developers, evangelists, and others beyond number for 
helping me enjoy my time at the computer keyboard.

--Algot

-- 
-------------------------
Algot Runeman

[email protected]
Web Site: http://www.runeman.org
Twitter: http://twitter.com/algotruneman/
Open Source Blog: http://mosssig.wordpress.com
MOSS SIG Mailing List: http://groups.google.com/group/mosssig2


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