Rebranding the release service

[Philippe Cloutier]

Hi Jonathan,

Le 2021-02-15 à 09:49, Christoph Cullmann a écrit :
> On 2021-02-15 15:36, Nate Graham wrote:
>> On 2/15/21 6:01 AM, Jonathan Riddell wrote:
>>> Here at KDE we've always struggled a bit with branding and the 
>>> announcement of formats for the bunch of releases that was 
>>> originally "KDE" then "KDE SC" then "KDE Applications" and at 
>>> Akademy 2019 we decided to debrand it and make it a release service 
>>> with lots of different stuff in it. We had monthly update 
>>> announcements that included those releases on the months when they 
>>> happened and otherwise included everything else released over the 
>>> past month.  But the format doesn't seem to have caught on by 
>>> various metrics. So the promo group had some chat about different 
>>> formats you can read at https://phabricator.kde.org/T14091 
>>> <https://phabricator.kde.org/T14091>
>>>
>>> Currently the plan is to reband it probably with the name KDE 
>>> Gear.   That gets released every 4 months (same as currently) with a 
>>> big announcement for it and everything in it.  It's still a 
>>> collection of apps and supporting libraries with no connection to 
>>> each other except they happen to be KDE projects which don't want to 
>>> do their own release work.  Then every 4 months on the months 
>>> between times we have an update article highlighting all the other 
>>> stuff that has been released by KDE.  The bugfix releases for KDE 
>>> Gear happen monthly as currently and only have a minimal announcement.
>>>
>>> We hope this format will get some more traction with engagement from 
>>> outside press and social media buzz.  Any comments welcome.
>>
>> +1, I think this makes sense. I like "KDE Gear". It's short and sweet
>> and suggestive, but not descriptive.
>
> +1, too


If I understand correctly, this is discussing announcements like 
https://kde.org/announcements/releases/2021-02-apps-update/

But what exactly are we trying to name here? A bundle which contains all 
KDE applications as the ticket indicates?


In any case, "KDE Gear" sure is short and makes some sense if we 
consider it related to Extragear, but for those who don't know KDE's 
history, I am skeptical that gears are a good way to evoke applications. 
Gears evoke internals (backend technology), not graphical applications 
(frontends). If we take Microsoft Windows as example, we see gears are 
used as icons for DLL files (libraries), among a few file types. The 
corresponding KDE bundle would be KDE Frameworks.

That being said, I shall stress that:

  * The gear is used in KDE's icon. So arguably, the gear means more
    than "backend" in KDE context.
  * English is not my native language.


>
> Greetings
> Christoph
>
-- 
Philippe Cloutier
http://www.philippecloutier.com

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