[kde-promo] Plasma Next Naming

[Martin Graesslin]

On Wednesday 22 January 2014 19:29:24 Mark Gaiser wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 22, 2014 at 6:24 PM, Martin Klapetek
> 
> <martin.klapetek at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Wed, Jan 22, 2014 at 6:05 PM, Mark Gaiser <markg85 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> It just shows that not everyone is happy with the initial proposal.
> >> 
> >> "The next version of plasma" has always been made public under the names:
> >> - PW2
> >> - Plasma Workpaces 2
> >> - Plasma 2
> >> 
> >> Yes, we right now have "Plasma 4.xx"
> >> We call it "Plasma". We hardly ever put a version behind it.
> >> 
> >> I really think it makes perfect sense to just call it "Plasma 2". It's
> >> very much in the direction you folks (those blogging about plasma)
> >> have always named it. To me it just doesn't make much sense to
> >> suddenly entirely drop that de facto new name for "Plasma June/2014"
> >> or "Plasma Angelfish <date>" or whatever the order is.
> > 
> > Let me give a different example from the same area - do you remember
> > Windows Longhorn? Everyone was talking about "Longhorn" always and how
> > revolutionary and new it will be...and then, Windows Vista came out. From
> > the very same company, Windows Vienna turned into Windows 7. And many
> > others could be found.
> 
> The comparison isn't fair.
> The name change from Longhorn to Vista had cost Microsoft billions!
> Literally. The change from Vienna to 7 wasn't that big of a deal since
> it was already mostly known as windows 7 before it became the official
> name.

I think this comparison is fair and I had it already written in my reply to 
Markus (removed it as I don't like referring to the competition). Btw. how do 
you know that it cost Microsoft billions? AFAIK "normal" users didn't know 
that the next version was called Longhorn in the development. We shouldn't 
expect that we as a group of engineers know these names, means that anybody 
else knows the name.

The comparison is fair as it shows that it is a normal thing in IT development 
to rename the working title once the software goes into production.

> 
> Big company's can pull these stunts. They have the marketing budget.
> We - KDE - can't pull that stunt. There is no marketing capital like
> those big company's have. We need to slowly build momentum starting
> from the very first blog about a new piece of software and sticking to
> it's name or change it slightly. But the general structure should
> remain the same i think.

That's just not realistic to assume that we can get the name of the product 
before we start developing. Should we not blog about our process just because 
we haven't named it yet? We work in an environment where our development 
process is extremely open. We have to work with that and make the best out of 
it and not stick our head in the sand and say that it's already too late. We 
are not driven by Phoronix reporting everything we do.

Following this we are not allowed to change the version number for KWin, right 
- it has to be 5, /5 or next which I used in the blog posts? Or what about 
giving KWin/Wayland a different name? All not possible because I already 
blogged about it before talking to the marketing team? That doesn't make 
sense, marketing comes last.

Cheers
Martin
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