[kde-ev-marketing] the "gamma" proposal - details that need working out

[Troy Unrau]

On 10/07/07, Thiago Macieira <thiago at kde.org> wrote:
> Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> >the aim is to create a 4.0 release in october (or whenever it is
> >deemed "ready") without an official "to the rest of the world"
> > announcement. this allows us to push 4.0 out to the community -and-
> > create a media event on a day we can count on (e.g. past the day of
> > scheduled release)
>
> I thought that was the plan all along. Why are we arguing about it then?
>
> Release Team gets code ready and tells Marketing Team: "here, release it
> when you find the best time for it".

Yeah, more or less.  The only difference is that between the scheduled
release and the actual party is like three months, so we were assuming
that there would be substantial improvements to the code in those
months, especially the translations.  But we still wanted that release
announcement to be about 4.0.0, and the way to do that was to shift
all the release numbers down by one.  The better solution, as
suggested by a few others, is to simply use release names.

Anyway, the marketing stuff comes below:

This whole debate can be solved if we move to using release names
rather than numbers. In that event we can totally pull the wool over
the eyes of the press. eg: Windows XP == NT 5.1, but still had a big
impact.  OS X is releasing 10.5 shortly, but by giving it a name and
burying the release number, it seems fresh and new.  After monitoring
this discussion, I now believe that moving to named releases would
solve our problems without messing with the current release cycle or
structure.  Then everyone is happy, even Sebas. :)

So, we then need names that reflect the state of 4.0 for both the
"4.0.0" October release, and our slightly more
polished/translated/fixed "4.0.1" release in January which would be
used for the announcement.

<em>Since a number of the marketing types are trying to steal and
repurpose the word "gearhead" to mean "person involved or interested
in KDE", I believe we could reasonably call 4.0.0 in October as "KDE 4
Gearhead Edition".  Developers and early adopters would all likely be
classified as gearheads, at least by the definition we've been using
up until this point.

Then in late January we can call 4.0.1 as "KDE Fourth Gear Edition" or
such (inspired by a comment on one of ade's KDE T-shirt blog posts).
Which is professional sounding enough to announce in Silicon Valley
while giving it a strong KDE flavour and effectively disguising from
the fact that it's actually 4.0.1 under the hood.</em>

Additionally, since our main press event is in California (there will
be other concurrent, community oriented events happening elsewhere of
course), the terminology of Fourth Gear will be a hit.  For those
unaware, Fourth Gear here is generally considered to be the gear you
hit on the freeway when you want to pass somebody.  If we play this up
properly, we can use this as the release where we are 'passing Gnome'
or 'passing OS X' or such to go to the front of the pack. (Your
thoughts on this name Aaron? since you're presenting speaking at this
announcement...)

Unless someone has a serious and legitimate objection to this (and not
just bikeshedding on the names), I suggest that we make this our
official course of action.

We will be nailing down the exact date (of the announcement) this
upcoming Thursday on a conference call between the event planners.
Once that date is set (likely last week of january, or even February
1st), it cannot slip since we'll be booking hotels, journalists will
be invited who will need to book flights, and so forth.  "KDE 4
Gearhead Edition" (4.0.0) can slip a little if the release team needs
more time (up to three months I guess) and it won't bother our
announcement in January.

Cheers

-- 
Troy Unrau
Geophysics Student - University of Manitoba
KDE Gearhead