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

[jos poortvliet]

Op Saturday 14 July 2007, schreef 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.
>
> Cheers

Now onto this proposal: three months. Why do we want it? 
Three reasons I can think off:
- Stability. We want to give out a message 'this is ready for corporate use'
- Time. We need time for our release event...
- Features. We need some support from the community for language packs, 
plugins, applets, plasmoids and other user-generated stuff.

I think for marketing, we should focus on the third. If we tell ppl about the 
first, they will see our 4.0 release as a release candidate. Of course, we 
can mention it later on as an advantage... Second - a bit silly. But the 
third...

"We, KDE developers, have worked on this for 2 years. Now it's time for the 
community to get involved! You will have three months to work on additions to 
KDE, like (blabla). After this time, we will choose the best of them, and 
bundle them with the official KDE."

This way, we can put KDE firmly with it's feet in the community, AND we get 
more commitment!

We should open the 4.0.x series of course only for bugfixes, but maybe also 
for some usability fixing like toolbar button configuration and such. And of 
course translations and documentation.

These three months can see regular subreleases, which will keep the fire 
going. We can tell, at each release, who's work (from community members) 
we're thinking of incorporating in KDE.

How about this?

Grtz

Jos

-- 
Disclaimer:

Alles wat ik doe denk en zeg is gebaseerd op het wereldbeeld wat ik nu heb. 
Ik ben niet verantwoordelijk voor wijzigingen van de wereld, of het beeld wat 
ik daarvan heb, noch voor de daaruit voortvloeiende gedragingen van mezelf. 
Alles wat ik zeg is aardig bedoeld, tenzij expliciet vermeld.

Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments.
See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html

   A: Because it destroys the flow of the conversation
   Q: Why is top-posting bad?
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