The project name

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Friday 08 February 2008, Jarosław Staniek wrote:
> Saro Engels said the following, On 2008-02-08 02:46:
>  > Sometimes I think that KDE on Windows/MacOSX is a bad choice since
>  > neither of the two targets the desktop itself (which is implied by that
>  > form imho) but we only port the applications (... yet).
>
> The fact is that I have always claimed the same as you, see the
> introduction at [1]
> http://wiki.kde.org/tiki-index.php?page=KDElibs+for+win32 - written in
> about 2004.

honestly, i don't think that "KDE on $PLATFORM" matters at all. it's a name 
for developers and the development team. users don't particularly care, imho. 
we should just promote Kexi or Kontact or the "KDE Development Kit" or 
whatever we end up calling that. the platform it targets should be irrelevant 
for user level marketing; it's really only a developer issue. and for the, i 
think KDE/Win, KDE/Mac, KDE/Solaris, KDE/BSD and KDE/Linux work just fine =)

or maybe it's an array. KDE["Win"] .. or a function call? KDE(Win) ;) 
anyways...

when it comes to user level marketing, it's all about context of venue. so 
promote Kontact on Windows by posting to windows forums or writing in windows 
focussed magazines. the screenshots should show Kontact on Windows XP and/or 
Vista. people will get the idea from there.

at that point, people will start to notice that "hey, these apps run 
elsewhere, too!" and that it's the app and the KDE platform, not the OS, that 
is the interesting bit.

yes, not everyone will switch off windows (in fact, by bringing these apps to 
windows, we actually decrease the odds of that) but that message will appeal 
to those who are looking to switch and will especially appeal to those who 
are needing to manage heterogenous environments (e.g. pretty much any 
company, school or government operation of size).

so what i'm saying in a very long winded fashion here is that, imho:

* KDE/$PLATFORM is a development team term only
* users should see the KDE brands (e.g. KOffice, Kontact, etc) directly

> But the _desktop_ is not the only meaning of the KDE term. Aaron has
> blogged about this more than twice I guess. Since then [2] has been updated
> too. And KDE is now
> - development platform
> - selection of applications
> - a desktop
> (what's more important depends on the context and who is asking ;)

one of the problems we have is that we refer to all these things by the same 
name. this is understandable given how KDE grew from a more simple "let's 
make a desktop" project into what it is today.

i do believe that going forward we will need to brand the different pieces 
separately. maybe one day we'll actually call the whole workspace the "Plasma 
Desktop" or something, which would go a long way to helping with the issue. 
we're not there yet, though.

> There is still one KDE on many platforms, just not presenting all the
> features (it's true on BSD too).

and OpenSolaris, for that matter.

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
humru othro a kohnu se
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

KDE core developer sponsored by Trolltech
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