Plasma Next Naming

[Mark Gaiser]

On Tue, Jan 14, 2014 at 8:18 PM, Sebastian Kügler <sebas at kde.org> wrote:
> 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.

Till now i wasn't sure if i should even bother replying. I'm not a
plasma dev, my vote doesn't count and this reply is likely experienced
as bike-shedding. However, i still decided to post just to let my
opinion be known.

I disagree with the entire proposal.

My reasoning:
* this just seems like a move towards mac naming + adding a date to
not be totally the same
* it tries to do something that doesn't need to be fixed. The current
version based naming is fine.
* perhaps it's just for more "marketing fancy" options
* dates in names don't look appealing

Remember, Mac _still_ has a version number!
Mac OSX Mavericks (10.9). They don't market it as such on their site:
[1] but they do on your Mac and in the app store [2].

I don't see anything wrong with naming the next plasma as just "Plasma
2". and subsequent releases should follow the name: "Plasma
2.<update>" so "Plasma 2.1". There is nothing wrong with that. It
works for tons of software out there including the Linux kernel.
Changing to something more fancy adds exactly nothing.
So i disagree and judging from the responses thus far it seems like
it's going to happen anyway. That leaves me to the known phrase: "if
you can't beat them, join them".

Here is my proposal. (and for the constructive part of this reply)
Keep the version in it with a code name to accompany it.

Plasma 2 "Clownfish"
Plasma 2.1 "Dolphin" << This one will certainly cause confusion with dolphin :)
Plasma 2.2 "Porpoise" << Different kind of dolphin
etc..

That's how Fedora is doing their releases and you can market them as
"Plasma Porpoise (version 2.2)" released.

Or instead of silly names, you could go for honorable names. For
example, if Martin (Klapetek) has made something amazing again in
Plasma then dedicate the next release to him like so:
Plasma 2.1 "Martin"
or:
Plasma 2.2 "Aaron"

Or name it to the biggest new change which actually would serve more
purposes. The thing you name it to gets attention and is likely going
to be tried out by a lot more users then would otherwise be the case.
Plasma 2.1 "Milou" (the thing Vishesh made for searching)

But you will get into issues if you have a release where there are
just much performance changes or a new QML replacement for something
else. For example the panel. You can't name a release like so:
Plasma 2.1 "Panel"

That just looks silly.


To conclude. Any of the above, including the initial proposal from
sebas, forces the plasma devs to have a (code) name ready for the next
release. Do you all really want that? It doesn't add anything for
those developing and using plasma. It "might" add something for
marketing purposes, but even that is doubtful. My preference: Stick
with "Plasma <version>" (no codename and no date based version!) and
be done with it.

[1] http://www.apple.com/osx/
[2] https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/os-x-mavericks/id675248567