Link (impossibly generic systemsettings and system monitor): GNOME & KDE Developers Go To Battle Over A Name

[Duncan]

Felix Miata posted on Sun, 24 Jul 2011 05:35:40 -0400 as excerpted:

> On 2011/07/24 08:45 (GMT+0100) Peter Nikolic composed:
> 
>> WHat was wrong with the old " Personal Settings "  name  as in KDE
>> 3.x.x  i
> 
> Personal Settings was not a KDE moniker, but one used by openSUSE and
> maybe some other distros.

/That's/ why I didn't remember that, but kcontrol.

>> could never understand the need for change except to pre-empt this
>> exact problem, After all  the settings in question are for the
>> individual user so if user 1 logs out and user 2 logs in user2 may
>> want/need different  stiings hence thay are not System but on a Per
>> user basis
> 
> Not that there's any justification for what Gnome devs did, but what
> _was_ wrong with KControl? KControl still makes more sense to me, as it
> doesn't imply global settings management, as opposed to user-specific
> settings management, which is most of what they do.

One thing that was pointed out on the thread (by a gnome guy, AFAIK, but 
I believe he was right) is that kde-anything (and by extension k-
anything) rather short-circuits the big kde software collection or 
whatever it is they call it (kde-sc, but I never remember what the "c" 
is, collection, collaboration, some such) rebranding, where kde doesn't 
stand for K desktop environment any longer (I've read that the K was for 
Kool at one point, but that predates me), but rather, the project behind 
it, with the "software collection" or whatever it is being the primary 
common output of the project.

And of course kde-sc-system-settings gets a bit long... and kdesc-
settings doesn't exactly roll off the tongue either, besides looking like 
an app for configuring the description (long-name?) of things. =:^(

I've suggested before that we take a hint from how the media dealt with  
very famous name-change by an equally certain famous singer, and call it 
"The app formerly known as kcontrol." =:^)

Meanwhile, it can be noted that the recent trend, instead of starting the 
name with a k or at least ensuring it's in the name somewhere (amarok), 
has been anti-k, caligra instead of kaligra, system settings, even 
sometimes c in place of k altho IDR the specific example there where I 
saw a kde dev actually point out that they were deliberately anti-k now, 
with new names.

That probably has something to do with the totally generic names in some 
cases.  (I believe I also noted at one point that they could even call it 
the-price-of-tea-in-China-settings or some such, that's not much less 
accurately descriptive than system settings, especially if they had a 
module for setting the tea-timer toy times, for those that point out that 
there's a /few/ real system settings there, like the time.)

Another argument that I believe I've seen is that some distributions 
wanted to include their own kcms (kcontrol modules, BTW, and last I 
checked, /that/ bit hadn't changed) for (real) system settings.

But that doesn't hold water here because (1), that's not what kde ships, 
nor does it really make a lot of sense for kde to try to ship distro-
specific system tools, so (2) distros can and some actually are or were 
with 3.x already renaming it, as part of their customizations, and that's 
hardly a reason in itself to change upstream kde, when it's not system 
settings as they ship it.

But I don't know the real reason, except for the obvious "out with the 
old, in with the new", even if the old was quite accurate, descriptive 
and googlable/unique, while the new is none of the three.  That's the 
most likely real reason I've come up with, even if it drives us logical 
types that also happen to know a DVD drive from a retractable cup holder 
up the wall.

<shrug>  Heh, maybe /that's/ why the did it, precisely to try to drive 
their former users to something else.  Makes abut as much sense as the 
other reasons... and does seem to match all the other behavior associated 
with early kde4, claiming it was ready for normal use while their own 
bugs stated many features weren't yet ported, or the ports were still 
variously broken, while pulling the support rug out from users who tried 
to stick with only reasonable alternative many users had, the old and 
still quite workable 3.5 version, after making a very big and public 
promise about support continuing as long as there were users.  Certainly 
/seems/ like a calculated campaign to drive away the existing users, and 
which it was rather effective at doing, for many of them.  So it 
certainly seems to match the other facts and behavior at the time.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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