Stuart Jarvis

Following on from my comments about our brands, I want to talk a little about how this affects our release announcement and release promo.

One thing you’ll notice on the upcoming KDE Release Day is, well, the use of ‘KDE Release Day’. When we discussed our branding structure, both last November and at Akademy, we agreed that the software compilation (or what used to be KDE 4.x) is just a result of the way we organise ourselves: it is convenient to release a lot of things together to get group testing, make life easier for localisation, packaging and to give us big promotion opportunities a couple of times a year. The software compilation is an organisational thing – it’s the collection of KDE modules and being in the software compilation means application developers get some stuff done for them (release management, general promotion and localisation) while in return they have to follow the same release schedules including freezes as everyone else. Some of our highest profile apps such as Amarok, digiKam and KOffice prefer not to be in the software compilation and are big enough to handle their own releases.

We recognised this and the fact that the software compilation is not a product, but it is something that people need to refer to sometimes: “Is KMail 2 going to be part of SC 4.5.0? No, it will be part of SC 4.5.1″. That is why we settled on the name software compilation rather than something catchier – it was never meant to be a brand. However, we didn’t get things quite right. The initial announcements were ok, I think, but we then promoted the software we released in SC 4.4 as KDE Software Compilation 4.4. We promoted something that wasn’t really a brand or a product, rather than concentrating on our actual products of the Plasma workspaces, Platform and apps.

Announcements for our 4.5 release day

So, for 4.5 we’re trying to be more true to our original intentions. You won’t see the software compilation mentioned in the official announcements, but instead we will talk about the actual products. We are also more accurately reflecting the purpose of the SC (a simultaneous release of software) by referring to the KDE Release Day. On this day we release new versions of our three main product groups: workspaces, apps and the KDE Platform.

We’re not trying to stop you from using the terms software compilation or SC – we need some way of referring to this thing we release every six months. But externally we encourage you to be more specific where possible. So if you like the new activity manager, it’s more precise to call it a cool new feature of Plasma Desktop 4.5 than SC 4.5. Likewise, if Marble’s new routing capabilities get you excited (and they should) then be excited about Marble, not the SC.

Now, KDE’s 4.5 Release Day is almost upon us and the promo team has been very busy getting the release announcements ready. Personally, I’ve been away on holiday for a couple of weeks and therefore pretty useless but – as always – other people have picked up the slack.

To highlight this, in the pic on the left is of our 4.5 release announcements as written in our EtherPad installation.

One of the many nice features of EtherPad is that you can use colours to track contributors, so each colour you see there represents the work of a different person (except that a few people managed to use two different colours…). The mass of light blue is Jos, although some of that is an import from work Luca started in Google Docs. The bit I really want to point to though is the yellowish part (first paragraph and many others) that belongs to Dion Moult. Not only has he put in masses of his own work, but also rallied people on the promo mailing list to make the needed edits and add information. Dion has been around for a while now – I think I first saw him on the kde-promo list in September 2009 – and it’s awesome that he has taken this and pushed it. Sometimes what is most needed is someone to keep an eye on what needs doing and bug people to do it.

Tags: branding, herding cats, promotion, releases, thanks

Well, I may have hinted at it already, but:

I'm going to Akademy

I’ll be doing a few things while I’m there, so here is a bit of shameless self-promotion:

• KDE Software for Scientists (lightning talk)
• Beyond Our Comfort Zone: Spreading KDE Software to Non-Free Platforms
• KDE Software for Scientists (BoF with Luca Beltrame)

There are many fascinating things going on and I’m particularly looking forward to learning more about Nepomuk, community building and the Plasma Media Center project. Well, actually there’s far more than that. I’d particularly like to go to Inge’s KOffice talk too but have unavoidable commitments elsewhere – I do have to turn up for my own talk, right?

Other than that, I’d like to sneak off and see at least a little bit of the football in some of the evenings, even though England’s chances of winning this year have suffered a minor setback (very unlikely -> impossible). Also, if someone local (or someone with luggage space) can bring a ball along perhaps we can sort out some jumpers for goalposts style KDE football action?

Other than that, there’s a lot of serious work to be done. Many of us will be trying to give those of you who can’t attend a taster of the action through regular blogging and the promo team will, I’m sure, do their best to make us Dot editors collapse from exhaustion.

Oh and thanks very much to KDE e.V. for assisting with my travel expenses – which by extensions means thanks to the companies and individuals who have chosen to Join the Game and support KDE.

Tags: akademy, Join the Game, koffice, Nepomuk, Plasma Media Center, thanks

Thanks very much to everyone who commented on the KDE Scientists post.

There’s far too much for a Dot article, but I’m trying to sift some general trends and a few quotes out of the mass of information and am writing the article at the moment.

The level of interest has taken both Luca and me by surprise (in a good way) and the information you gave us is very useful in helping us to plan the next steps.

Initially, I’ll be talking about this at Akademy and it also feeds in to Luca’s BoF. However, we are also setting up another quick session to try and get interested people together and share a few ideas. If you can, please come along to the KDE Science BoF on Wednesday at 1030.

If you can’t make it, don’t worry, we’ll be sharing our initial thoughts and there will be plenty of chance to give feedback and get involved as we try and develop this. All the comments on my last post will be considered and please feel free to add any further thoughts below or contact me via the About page.

Tags: akademy, community, Science, thanks