Quite often the topic of GNOME 3.0 comes up among the GNOME user community. To me, the gist of the response from the developer community seems like bad PR: "don't hold your breath." I was thinking about "GNOME 3.0" recently from a marketing perspective, and what it would mean if we approached "3.0" from a marketing angle.
My current understanding is that GNOME major releases are differentiated primarily by binary compatibility. The assurance is that any software written for any major version of GNOME will work for any minor version in that series. While this scheme made sense to explain the transition from GNOME 1.0 to 2.0, it is no longer workable. There is too much software written for 2.0 to throw it away wholesale, but more importantly there's no overriding reason to change the desktop infrastructure that GNOME already has. As explained by Miguel and others, moving to 3.0 implies a seismic shift in desktop technology away from WIMP. Because of this, we've been told not to expect a 3.0 release at all. I think this logic is fundamentally flawed. Version numbering schemes are all arbitrary, therefore refusing to increment versions for a technical reason is also arbitrary. If, by the technical definition, GNOME will never get to version 3, then it's time to change the numbering scheme. Why is it important to reach new versions? Because version numbers are critical in marketing. Microsoft very specifically named their next-generation console "Xbox 360" when they could have easily called it Xbox 2. They wanted to avoid being a "2" while Sony charges ahead with a Playstation 3. Similarly, GNOME should catch up to KDEs numbers. There's no shame in playing catchup when all you're doing is renumbering your product. It's a simple an easy way to make yourself more comparable with the competition. Besides helping improve image against competition, big version numbers get big press. Version numbers imply progress, improvement, and new levels in features. Users will get excited, jaded developers will take another look, and the faithful will be reinvigorated. Lastly, reaching a new big version number will avoid the current numbering mess, where "2.10" is greater than "2.8". Sure, once it's explained it makes sense, but it's not intuitively obvious and makes progress look slow. For these reasons I think GNOME should call _something_ 3.0. The question is, what do you call 3.0 and when? Hopefully, soon. 3.0 is a great version number to be at. 3.0 is the version at which Microsoft products become good. 3G is what people look for in their mobile phone. More generally, three is a great number. Just look at tripleverb.com and see how popular 3 is for marketing. GNOME 3.0 could utilize a coordinated campaign for GNOME 3.0 that exploits this notion of 3s. Therefore all we need for 3.0 is Three Big Features. In the end, it doesn't really matter what the Three Big Features are as long as they are extremely user-visible. If we're reaching 3.0 because of marketing, it should be obvious what has changed between 2.0 and 3.0. If I think back to the transition from 1.0 to 2.0, I don't remember much about libraries or APIs, I remember "smooth fonts." To me, the transition from gtk 1.0 to 2.0 was the real Big Feature in that upgrade. So Big Feature number one should be pervasive use of Cairo, composite, and xdamage. Gnome 3.0 should have drop shadows, fading menus, slightly transparent notification bubbles, window animations, workspace switching animations, and more. It doesn't have to be gaudy, and it could be turned off, but users have to be able to _see_ a difference, and it should look fun. For every GNOME application, ask "can we add any eye-candy here?" People like Linus will scream and moan, and that's exactly what we want. Big Feature number two could be multimedia support through gstreamer. Sure, gstreamer is already on the desktop, but we can push it more. Show off Diva or Pitivi. Advertise out-of-the-box mp3 as well as other formats. Big Feature number three could be desktop search and tagging. Push Beagle out there. Apple made a lot out of spotlight and we can do the same with beagle. Polish the nautilus tagging extension, and connect it to beagle. F-spot already does tagging, so that work is already done. Tagging and Search are big web 2.0 ideas, so we could pitch GNOME 3.0 as "Bringing web 2.0 to the desktop." I'm not deeply immersed in the GNOME developing world, so my specific suggestions for features may be unrealistic. Those who work at Novell, Redhat, and elsewhere are probably in a better position to decide exactly what features are ready for primetime. But I think the GNOME community really needs a 3.0. I think a lot of people are getting a little depressed and weary -- although that may just be because it's winter in this hemisphere. Although GNOME has been making excellent progress, it has been incremental and gradual. Having a 3.0 goal will give the community something to aim for and get excited about. Thanks, Owen Williams -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list