Re: Plasma Next Naming

On Friday, January 17, 2014 12:46:04 Martin Klapetek wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 6:37 PM, Aaron J. Seigo <[email protected]> wrote:
> > On Thursday, January 16, 2014 18:13:23 Martin Klapetek wrote:
> > > I can't speak for "the team" (whichever team), it's my own opinion and
> > 
> > that
> > 
> > > is that being more informal is simply more attractive to broader group
> > > of
> > > people.
> > 
> > a specific “broader group”, or do you mean “more people than Plasma
> > appeals to
> > now"?
> 
> More people than now.

More people who are .. developers? enthusiast Free software users? 

> > there are more options than “informal” and “technical”; “sophisticated“,
> > "professional” and “inspiring” are three other options that occur quickly
> > to
> > me.
> 
> Sure, I'm happy to see some proposals from those "categories".

Personally, I like the date naming scheme with the ‘by KDE’ moniker. It’s elegant, understated, 
professional and just a little "swish".

> > “it’s
> > not for serious business” response.
> 
> And there we have new konqi design, which is ridiculously cartoonish
> (please anyone don't take as an insult or anything). And I remember Ossi in
> the konqi thread raising this very question about us being for serious
> business. It seemed it wasn't problem in that thread...

Konqi never is and never can be a mascot that appeals to serious business. No matter how 
cartoonish or not cartoonish, a fanciful dragon with a cute name isn’t that.

Thankfully, Konqi does not represent any specific KDE product nor do we use it to present KDE to 
the public (anymore). We’re not asking promo to use Konqi in naming schemes or distros to put 
Konqi by name in the log in screen. He’s more suited to being an internal mascot ...

Personally, I think raising Konqi as an important mascot for the KDE contributor community is really 
beneficial and help gives us more “glue” to stick the community together with. The new Konqi is 
pretty great from that perspective: it’s fun, light-hearted, echoes the past but looks like today.

Hopefully KDE will not use Konqi for public promo of its technology, however.

(I’m one of those people who think he shouldn’t appear in the About dialog. It violates Branding 
Rule #1 (don’t screw with your logo) and Konqi is a purely in-group meme that looks anything but 
professional from the outside; it certainly doesn’t communicate anything useful to the average user 
who isn’t part of that in-group. I’ve been asked by non-geek KDE users more than once what the 
story is behind that dragon in the about dialog.)

> > not in their software ... some love it (Hello, openBSD), but it will not
> > speak
> > to people who don’t get why a (changing) fish is part of the brand for a
> > given
> > desktop/tablet/etc. interface. as a more informal (and abstract) concept
> > and
> > may not play well with more formal contexts (e.g. business, or simply the
> > straight-laced)
> 
> Then again - you have Ubuntu (changing every 6 months), OS X and I don’t

> know what else....and using an animal (weird ones in Ubuntu's case) works
> good for all their purposes (including business)?

Running a $20 million loss on 60 million in revenue after 10 years (none of which has been 
profitable) is not a business success. That may not be Canonical’s goal, though, so I don’t personally 
judge them by that.

Red Hat is by far the king of successful business Linux distros. This is how they manage to have an 
annual revenue of 10^9+ US$ and can afford to be the single largest contributor to the Linux kernel, 
among other projects. Their branding ‘mood’ is a part of this. Internally, they have cool customs like 
giving every employee a red fedora, and that’s perhaps analogous to Konqi for KDE: a fun social 
identity creator. Externally, they are this:

	http://www.redhat.com/

It’s an interesting mix of somberness and aspiration.

Ubuntu has taken a different track: it has worked hard to woo the enthusiast community. They did 
things like set up LoCos (though that seems to be mostly in the past?), sponsor big community 
gatherings centered on their product, did massive CD give-aways, gave cute names for their distro 
releases and chose an emotional phrase for their brand (”Linux for humans” and "Ubuntu"). 
Combined with a public, charismatic patron and having a charismatic community manager front and 
center in their strategy, this was a very successful approach they used to dominate the conversation 
in the popular Linux sphere. They are also running that ~25% deficit with ~6% the revenue of Red 
Hat.

So it’s evident that both approaches have strengths and weaknesses; they also talk to different 
audiences and create different expectations. Both probably see themselves as successful, though 
measured by different metrics and with different target audiences in mind. 

Which is why I asked about audience; both Red Hat and Canonical made purposeful decisions 
based on who they wanted their audience to be. Picking a meme in hopes it will appeal to more 
people without a clear idea of who those people might be is usually not very successful ..  at least 
according to every book and article I’ve ever read on the topic.

Another important take-away is that Red Hat took 10 years to turn their first profit; Ubuntu is also 10 
years into their efforts and it took the bulk of that time to climb to their current mind-share position 
in the community. So it takes a ~decade of consistency in this market to move such a mountain, 
whether one goes for the “serious business” crowd or the “community” appeal angle (or something 
else entirely). That’s a lot of consistency. Look how long the KDE rebranding took, from the point of 
internal discussion to fairly consistent levels of usage. 

Plasma has spent the last ~3 years defining itself with terms like “elegance” while working to 
deliver technology ahead of the rest of the pack (c.f. the modern craze around convergence). The 
years prior to that were spent getting Plasma to the point where competitive claims could be made.  
It has been a successful theme in that Plasma dragged itself from being a pariah people tossed 
stones at (even KDE people, sadly) to being recognized as the #1 Linux desktop environment today; 
this is not only because the technology matured nicely but because of the messaging we undertook 
to support that. Another 3-7 years of consistency is probably needed to fully realize the potential of 
the concept, but what was achieved so far is pretty decent given that this effort started ~3 years 
ago with ~0 budget.


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