Nepomuk in 4.13 and beyond

[Jos Poortvliet]

On Thursday 19 December 2013 09:14:42 Till Adam wrote:
> On Thursday, December 19, 2013 02:27:43 AM Mark Gaiser wrote:
> > On Wed, Dec 18, 2013 at 11:07 PM, Jos Poortvliet
> > 
> > <jospoortvliet at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On Tuesday 17 December 2013 12:22:26 Todd wrote:
> > >> On Dec 12, 2013 6:36 PM, "Vishesh Handa" <me at vhanda.in> wrote:
> > >> > > i’ll say it again here so that it is at least on record: i really
> > >> 
> > >> disagree
> > >> 
> > >> > > with renaming Nepomuk. call it Nepomuk 2 or whatever, but tossing
> > >> > > aside
> > >> > > name recognition and years of messaging is doing the promo teams a
> > >> 
> > >> massive
> > >> 
> > >> > > disservice.
> > >> > > 
> > >> > > i hope that Baloo remains a technology name well hidden from both
> > >> > > users
> > >> 
> > >> and
> > >> 
> > >> > > developers.
> > >> > 
> > >> > It will remain hidden.
> > >> 
> > >> I am a bit confused by this. You say it will remain hidden, but the
> > >> emails
> > >> I am seeing are calling for the outright removal of Nepomuk api calls
> > >> and
> > >> replacing them with baloo API calls.  This does not seen very hidden
> > >> from
> > >> developers.
> > >> 
> > >> Further, you talk about disabling Nepomuk in system settings.  This
> > >> does
> > >> not seem very hidden from users.
> > >> 
> > >> So, although I cannot speak for him, I am not sure Aaron's branding
> > >> concerns are being addressed.
> > > 
> > > In that regard - the promo team is also a bit uncertain on this. We
> > > strongly advocated presenting Baloo as Nepomuk-next-gen, NOT a
> > > replacement or a rewrite-from-scratch.
> > > 
> > > About the name - as Nepomuk also has its share of haters, I can't
> > > really
> > > judge if a rename has a net positive- or negative marketing value so I
> > > simply didn't and won't argue for or against it. Any real argument
> > > would
> > > need market research - which we can't really do very reliably. Unless
> > > somebody knows a web service which can judge the value of a word that
> > > internet users seem to attach to it or something like that :D
> > > 
> > >> Now if this was keeping the Nepomuk namespace and billing baloo as a
> > >> replacement for virtuoso, then I could see this as being hidden, even
> > >> with
> > >> substantial changes in how the APIs actually work.  But not when both
> > >> APIs
> > >> and user settings are being renamed.
> > >> 
> > >> If any news site catches wind of this, I don't see how they could
> > >> present
> > >> it as anything other than an outright abandonment of Nepomuk, and once
> > >> that
> > >> view gets spread around the web no amount of branding later will
> > >> change
> > >> it.
> > > 
> > > That we need to avoid. That is also why this mail was discussed with
> > > marketing before it was send (heck, Vishesh and myself discussed this
> > > at
> > > 
> > > least a year ago already) and it is why it states:
> > >> This is not a completely new project as large parts of Baloo code are
> > >> derived from Nepomuk and therefore comes with years of testing and
> > >> real
> > >> world use.
> > > 
> > > Of course, this could be made more obvious and once we 'officially' say
> > > something, we should take care with this. And we will.
> > > 
> > > That press can pick this up from here - is the price of doing things in
> > > the
> > > open...
> > 
> > I don't see an issue for "the marketing" folks.
> > 
> > Lets make a little comparison.
> > KHTML comes to mind. Some company (apple in this case) came by, forked
> > it and created the now quite awesome webkit. That in turn got forked
> > to Blink by google. It's just the evolution of software. And now we're
> > using webkit/blink in QML. Not KHTML.
> > 
> > Nepomuk was great in spirit, but started off with issues users
> > experienced as annoying. So it was "forked" into a new project (Baloo)
> > and now works a lot saner and faster. It might be "abandoning"
> > nepomuk, but as far as i understand it, it's not abandoning the
> > nepomuk ideas. Just another evolution.
> > 
> > Or this is how i see things in my simple mind :)
> > 
> > But there is one thing the marketing people could do here. If "a
> > popular linux news site" picks this thread up the title will likely be
> > "KDE drops Nepomuk" or something alike. That should be prevented.
> > There should be a dot story outlining the evolution from Nepomuk to
> > Baloo and the benefit the user will notice.
> > 
> > just my 5 cents.
> 
> It might help to get Sebastian Trueg to back it publically. Assuming he
> agrees with this direction, that is :). Failing that, stressing that this
> is being done by the very maintainers of nepomuk, evolving it, rather than
> forking it, might be best.
> 
> While I am personally quite excited about finally getting this important
> part of the PIM stack to the point where we can deliver on the potential
> of our work over the past years, I do worry about the perception impact
> this will have. I'd also be tempted to provide continuity and position
> Baloo as part of or an extension to Nepomuk as subsystem.

Yes, that's more or less the message we (promo) would like to have and afaik 
Vishesh agrees with that. Once this should go public I'm sure Vishesh will 
ping us and we'll figure out together what to say and how to say it :D

I wouldn't worry too much. As you note, it's the Nepomuk maintainer making a 
new generation Nepomuk, sharing much code and UI. It's not like it will be 
HARD to argue it's - well, that, a next generation Nepomuk :D

> Till
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