Repositioning the KDE brand

[Cornelius Schumacher]

The past years have seen pervasive developments in the KDE universe. The 
application framework has grown, matured and gone cross-platform, as have the 
applications. Strong growth in our community has created an increasingly 
diverse and large set of high-quality applications.

Over the years the meaning of "KDE" has changed. It means much more than just 
a desktop environment now. First and foremost KDE stands for the community, 
and it acts as an umbrella for the broad variety of software the KDE 
community creates.

  KDE is no longer software created by people,
  but people who create software.

To be able to communicate this clearly in our messaging, it is necessary to 
reposition the KDE brand so that it reflects this evolution and stands for 
the community, our international team of talented developers, artists, 
usability specialists, translators and other contributors who make the 
project what it is today.

The misconception that KDE software only runs on a KDE desktop stands as a 
symbol for the reasons why we need to adapt our messaging to this changed 
meaning of "KDE". The marketing and promo groups have completed a proposal 
how to achieve that. One key element of this proposal is to retire the term "K 
Desktop Environment", and just use "KDE". See the attached document for 
details.

The goal is to implement this proposal for the 4.3 release and use the 
repositioned brand in our communication around the release accordingly.

-- 
Cornelius Schumacher <schumacher at kde.org>
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