Plasma 5?

[Sebastian Kügler]

Hi all,

I am not happy with the 2014.6 name and naming scheme. There I said it.

The reasons for this are multi-fold. First, and to me most importantly: It 
feels awkward. Now that might be because it's new, but it also feels like no 
one else is going to understand it.

My thinking goes towards an option that we had briefly discussed, and I think 
dismissed too quickly, and for the wrong reasons.

So, I'd like to get some feedback on the proposal to call the new Plasma 
release Plasma 5.0, and use the "old" version numbering scheme going forwards. 
That means after 5.0 comes 5.1, 5.2, and so on, same for minor releases 
(however that is going to end up being decided). This feedback can then be 
taken up with the promo and marketing department, I think that we should first 
make up our own minds (for that reason, no cross-post to kde-promo at this 
point).

The baseline, to use "Plasma" as the brand, and only refer to the version as a 
technicality should of course stay the same.

Why do I think 5 is better than 2014.6, or <year>.<month of release>?

- It communicates continuity: Plasma Next really is the continuation of 15+  
years of doing a desktop. It has our DNA all over it, and it's not a 
disconnected "today's thing". Especially to our existing userbase, and those 
just outside of it (other people known to Free desktops), this has a real 
meaning. It's something people love, and sometimes hate, and it's not a 
completely new thing. This is well in line with what we've been talking about 
all along for Plasma Next.

- It's trusted and proven: it works and will cause no problems with packaging, 
and comparing version number

- It solves a bunch of technical inconsistencies (plasmapkg2 vs kcmshell5 -- 
why has one the 2 appended, the other 5?), library sonames are 5 as well.

- It indicates (like we did traditionally) that this is the 5th major version, 
building on a new Qt5, and Frameworks 5, we get to re-use that kind of 
consistency.

- To me, it feels just right. I know many others feel that 2014.6 is bad, and 
I've yet to hear somebody that really likes it (might be my limitation of 
course).

Now one of the reasons to not go for Plasma 5 was that "people would say 
that's KDE5, and we don't want that". To be honest, I stopped caring about 
that, if people want to call it KDE5, so be it, we'll call it Plasma 5 and do 
that consistently, as long as people understand what's talked about -- cool. 

We won't convince people to stop calling it "KDE 5" by introducing an awkward 
versioning scheme, but we can do that by properly adjusting our communication 
towards that. The distinction between Platform, Workspaces and Applications is 
more clear with our separated release cycles anyway, and perception of that 
will just make this topic easier.




Take to kde-promo for further discussion


-- 
sebas

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