naming the next major release

[Sebastian Kügler]

On Monday, August 19, 2013 21:56:35 Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
[ snipperdeesnip ]
> 	“KDE’s Plasma workspaces come in Desktop, Netbook, Tablet and Mediacenter
> flavours...”
> 
> 	“KDE’s Plasma provides user experiences for desktop, netbook, tablet, ..”
> 
> given that we are moving to a “grand unified shell” approach where the
> different user experiences flow seamlessly from one to the next, it may
> make sense to drop the concept that there is such huge differentiation that
> they are the “Workspaces” and instead are just “Plasma” which happens to
> morph to fit the device.

Anecdotal supporting evidence: When we first interacted with the wider Mer and 
device community around Plasma Active, in casual communication, I often heard 
people calling "the UI" simply Plasma. That's an interesting target group, as 
it fits nicely into those that we probably want to sell our seamless 
experience to, and rather unbiased.

I think more or less radically drop the notion of devices (or rather, leaving 
that to the packagers, in terms of installation) makes the most sense, as we 
can nicely work two ways, from "Plasma, the Desktop Brand" and "Plasma" the 
device UI (and even Plasma Mediacenter) towards that morphing UI. Kind of the 
NetBSD of the modern age: "It even runs on a toaster".

> 3. ‘2’ ... why “two” if this is version 5? well, libplasma is actually going
> to be version 6 iirc, so it isn’t the library. i also am not a big believer
> in branding after version numbers. neither are any of our proprietary
> competitors who have a lot more marketing and communications savvy than we
> tend to. ;) what i like about 2 is:
> 
> * it communicates this is something after the first. it’s that whole “two
> point oh” thing, though hopefully less hype than, say, “web 2.0” ;)
> 
> * it’s simple and direct
> 
> * ‘2’ is a couple, and a couple is a nice human idea :) this is borne out by
> the “1, 2, many” pattern in many ancient languages. we know 1, we know 2,
> after that it’s just an abstract concept.

One option that crossed my mind was "Plasma 5". I agree with your findings 
regarding Plasma vs. Plasma Workspaces, etc., and my gut feeling tends to just 
Plasma. in that regard. As to the version, 5 gives some sense to continuation 
of what was earlier the KDE 4 series, and I think there is some attachment to 
this, as it also communicates a continuation of our experience and evolution 
in creating workspaces. 

The .so versioning should, indeed, be just an implementation detail, and as 
such in line with other frameworks. Incidentally, both, .so version and 
"communication version" would be the same though (but explicitely do not 
*have* to, we can care about that later, though).

So Plasma 5 would be the continuation of KDE Plasma Workspaces 4.x, and, 
accidentally also Plasma Active Four.

> Sooooooooooo ... here is my proposal:
> 
> 	We call it Plasma 2 and use that as a rallying call to
> 	focus on its unified user experience
> 	across the spectrum of devices people use today.
> 
> as developers, it will remind us of our goals.
> 
> to our users, it will be the symbol of this idea of all these individual
> components that work together beautifully no matter what device you put it
> on.
> 
> yes, this means we drop “Workspaces” as clumsy, hard to understand and no
> longer fully applicable.
> 
> 
> Other proposals, ideas, tweaks to the above most welcome, but let’s try to
> come to a consensus on this matter before the end of this month.
> 
> then we can all move forward in confidence together, whatever it is we
> decide.

Otherwise, this strategy sounds fine to me.

Thoughts on the 5?
-- 
sebas

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