The case for a kdelibs 4.8

[Scott Kitterman]

On Saturday, October 01, 2011 08:27:02 AM Martin Gräßlin wrote:
> On Saturday 01 October 2011 00:12:05 Arne Babenhauserheide wrote:
> > Am Freitag, 30. September 2011, 10:07:27 schrieb Aaron J. Seigo:
> > >  will say "Platform 4.7, Plasma
> > > 
> > > Workspaces 4.8 and application updates" (or something along those
> > > lines). that  was not just a marketing ploy, but an attempt to
> > > align our public communication with the realities that already
> > > existed in KDE development.> 
> > I hope I am not the first to note that this sounds really horrible.
> > 
> > Take this message:
> > 	KDE releases 4.8: Platform and Workspaces got some spectacular
> > 	changes,
> > 
> > while applications received much polish.
> > 
> > In a blog, this becomes
> > 
> > 	YAY! KDE releases 4.8!
> > 
> > Take your example. It becomes:
> > 	Plasma 4.8 released!
> > 
> > Well, where is KDE in that? Suddenly the community it is all about
> > becomes a sidenote.
> > And a newspaper will likely only see “hm, some stuff our readers won’t
> > understand” instead of “new version of the tools from KDE!”
> > 
> > There is a reason why Apple releases MacOSX 10.8 and not “Xcode 4.1,
> > Apple Mach 1.3, Quartz 4.7, …”
> 
> One of the main reasons for the rebranding was to realize that "KDE" is not
> one product, but a community that produces multiple products among them a
> desktop environment (Plasma). What you just try to tell us is that the
> complete rebranding is nonsense and we should go back to talking just about
> KDE for everything bringing the users back to assuming they need Plasma in
> order to use KMail.
> 
> I really like the fact that finally we have a release where it will be clear
> that KDE is the community and not one large product. All those who did not
> get it yet, might finally understand it if we write a really good release
> announcement.

I understand it and I think it's great.  At the same time, I think this idea 
that from a development perspective it's OK to mix and match and release any 
piece of the SC at any given time is technical nonsense.  As long as we leave 
the marketing to the marketeers and the developers don't get distracted by it, 
then I think it's fine.

I think users ought to be able to run KMail (to pick your example) on any 
desktop environment and have it work well.  I completely agree with this idea, 
but I don't agree with the idea to throw away the coordinated development 
schedule and release process.

Scott K