Plasma Next Naming

[Sebastian Kügler]

Hey,

Until now, we've been using "Plasma 2" as a working title for the next version 
of Plasma. We never formalized this, and the last discussion we had about this 
died out without producing a clear result. We've gone over these points during 
the sprint, and discussed some details about it.

Some things that came up that we think are important for a new name:

- We don't want it to be too technical, it should be engaging to "normal 
  people"
- Version numbers seem confusing an not very expressive, these should rather 
  be a technical detail (for example to group bugzilla entries)
- We want something that can be related to its release date
- We don't want to see it tied to a single class of devices

We came up with the following scheme, which we'd like to propose:

* The upcoming release of the KDE Plasma Workspaces is called Plasma
* The version number used is Month (as name) + year
* Each release gets a codename based on a marine animal (*1), in alphabetical 
  order, one for each feature release
* The exact name should be decided by the promo team (we have domain experts   
  that can give input, *ahum*)
* "workspaces" should hardly be used at all, it's a technical term and doesn't 
  bear all that much meaning for users

So, some examples how that's used:

* "Please file a bug against Plasma June/2014"
* "Plasma by KDE" (don't use "KDE Plasma", but rather "by KDE")
* "KDE Releases Plasma Angelfish"

A release could go along with an illustration of said animal to make it more 
engaging.

(*1) we chose from a lot of options, and find marine animals quite nice for 
the following reasons:

- Many options
- Animals are easy to relate to for non-technical users
- There are many choices, and they can be connected to different 
  characteristics (think of swordfish for speediness, for example)
- The names often bear some meaning without knowing the exact animal in 
  question
- It's rather easy to express concepts like organic, elegance, while being 
  playful and colorful

Some example that I've found possibly suitable after a bit of research: 
Angelfish (example http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Angelfish , eloquent and colorful ), 
Barracuda ( http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Barracuda ; fast and mean ), Clownfish ( 
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Clownfish ; small but fierce ), etc. As you can see, 
there's quite the variety.

Feedback to this proposal is very welcome, but please keep in mind that we 
would like to move on with this question. It's highly subjective to 
bike-shedding, and a decision is better than no decision.

Cheers,
-- 
sebas

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