naming the next major release

[Marco Martin]

On Monday 19 August 2013, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> 
> 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.

after thinking about it for a while, just few considerations

* we want to maintain the "kde is the community, not the software" mantra

* so a name for "the product workspace" is needed

* any descriptive name, sich as "workspace" "shell" "desktop" risks to be too 
narrow, nerdy and cold

* a name that sounds cool but doesn't really describe something is better, 
"plasma" or "plasma active" are (as the term "firefox" per se doesn't have 
anything to do with browser)

* Plasma has quite some luggage already, that may be an advantage or a 
disadvantage, i don't know (but we have years of climbing the googlability of 
the term already, that's quite an investment)

* Plasma Active may indeed cause a problem in perception and bogus articles 
like "kde is dropping the desktop for tablets". Paradoxically I think the 
place where instead would have a good effect is the internal developer 
community (for applications developers there is still a bit of "the active 
version is not my problem, i care only about desktop" feeling

* I'm not sure thinking about a completely different new name would come up 
with something that would work, but if someone can think about any, please 
speak ;)

My vote would go for Plasma.
hell, i would even go as far as changing the kickoff icon (no, not with the 
cashew, with something better :p)

About numbers, 2 or 5 i don't know, they may risk to dilute the catchiness?


Cheers,
Marco Martin