Plasma 5?

[Mario Fux]

Am Dienstag, 06. Mai 2014, 14.24:47 schrieb Jos Poortvliet:

Morning guys

> > 2. I'm afraid of people discarding the version because of fear of
> > repeating 4.0.
> 
> Yeah. We once did the rebranding thing because there was confusion in our
> user base about what 'KDE' meant, which was hurting projects like Amarok
> and Krita (you mean you can run Krita outside of KDE? But you need KDE to
> run Amarok, right? I don't want all of KDE on my system just to run
> Kate...).

Yes, exactly. This is one (not the only one) big reason for the necessity of 
the rebranding.

> Of course, us being marketing noobs, we didn't do that rebranding very
> well, but history - let's not try to fix the past.

And let's just accept that we're human and make errors and mistakes and don't 
have a multi-million rebranding budget. But we did it quite well as there are 
already quite some journalists who get it. But what doesn't help is KDE people 
always restarting this discussions without knowing the facts and the reasons. 
Let this be my only rant in this email and thread.

> Technically, we've mostly solved this, and our application, library and
> desktop release schedules have now definitely diverged. But the confusion
> remains, for now. We CAN prevent this for the future. That's why I think it
> makes sense to go for Plasma 2 and start at 2.0... It is the 2nd
> incarnation of Plasma, after all. Of course there is more to Plasma then
> just plasma itself (KWin and all that) but this will certainly make it
> harder to call the entire thing 'KDE 5' for the press.

+1. I see the problem that 4.11 is not smaller than Plasma 2 but hey. If it 
helps on another thing.

> Of course today they call Applications 4.13 "KDE 4.13" and they are welcome
> to call Plasma 2.0 or Applications 5.0 or both 'KDE 5.0' but I doubt they
> can keep that up. By the end of the year, they would have announced, in
> (if the plans hold up) this order: KDE 5.0; KDE 5.0; KDE 5.1; KDE 4.14;
> KDE 5.2; KDE 5.3; KDE 5.4; KDE 5.1; KDE 5.5; KDE 5.0; KDE 5.6.

And the number of "they's" gets smaller and smaller...

> If they're smart, they will just get with the change: Frameworks 5.0,
> Plasma 2.0, Frameworks 5.1, Applications 4.14, Frameworks 5.2, Frameworks
> 5.3, Frameworks 5.4, Plasma 2.1, Frameworks 5.5, Applications 5.0,
> Frameworks 5.6.

If they really need version numbers and not just call it "a new version of 
Frameworks" or "Plasma" and the features are... As people/users normally don't 
look for version numbers but we can use the version number in helping to 
prevent confusion.

> Oh, and to Marco who noted:
> > To me either of which wouldn't make much difference, it's true tough that
> > looks less confusing if it has the same number as frameworks and Qt

Don't forget. The majority of our users are quite silent. The vast majority. 
The ones who like to juggle with version numbers are some small minorities. 
Louds ones, ok, but small in number.

> That's not likely to happen at all, as Frameworks, Applications and Plasma
> will all be on different release schedules. I'd actually think it increases
> the confusion if all have a 5.x version number but they don't actually sync
> up in any way.
> 
> The question the user then has is: do I run KDE 5.1 (Plasma), 5.6
> (Frameworks) or 5.0 (Applications)?

Aren't the version number mostly important for bug reporting and there they 
are extracted automatically?

> It'd rather be that he/she runs Plasma 2.1, Frameworks 6 and Applications
> 5.0 (yes I just said that the Frameworks should get rid of the 5 if they
> do indeed go for a monthly release cycle, just like Firefox, Chromium
> etc).

;-). Makes sense.

Best regards
Mario