Rebranding the release service

[Philippe Cloutier]

Le 2021-02-20 à 10:38, Luigi Toscano a écrit :
> Philippe Cloutier ha scritto:
>> 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?
> The thing called "release service", i.e. a set of artifacts (applications,
> libraries, even data, whose release process has been delegated to the "release
> service" team and happens at the same time.


Thank you for the quick reply Luigi

The "release service" in question can be obtained from 
https://download.kde.org/stable/release-service/

https://community.kde.org/Policies/Application_Lifecycle#Releasing 
describes it:

> Includes a range of libraries, applications and developer tools
I understand from this new information that the "bunch of releases" 
under discussion do *not* correspond to what was previously called "KDE 
Applications" (although it may *include* KDE Applications).

Do we have a better description of "release service"? If not, I suppose 
now would be a good time to define it, clarifying why a given library, 
application or tool would be included or excluded from that "range".


>
>> 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.
> It doesn't need to evoke applications, the idea is to have a brand.


Right; if it's not just applications, evoking applications is not as 
important. However, if it largely consists of applications, I suppose it 
remains non-ideal for the branding to primarily evoke internals.

-- 
Philippe Cloutier
http://www.philippecloutier.com