Re: Rebranding the release service

[Philippe Cloutier]

Hi Paul,

Le 2021-02-20 à 14:24, Paul Brown a écrit :

On sábado, 20 de febrero de 2021 18:39:45 (CET) Nate Graham wrote:

On 2/20/21 9:35 AM, Philippe Cloutier wrote:

Le 2021-02-20 à 10:38, Luigi Toscano a écrit :

In any case, "KDE Gear" sure is short and makes some sense if we
consider it
related to Extragear, but for those who don't know KDE's history, I am
skeptical that gears are a good way to evoke applications.

It doesn't need to evoke applications, the idea is to have a brand.

Right; if it's not just applications, evoking applications is not as
important. However, if it largely consists of applications, I suppose it
remains non-ideal for the branding to primarily evoke internals.

FWIW, as a native English speaker, I like the word "gear" because it has
multiple meanings, apart from the historical link to the word "Extragear":

1. Metaphorical synonym for "equipment" or "stuff"
2. Visual reference to the KDE logo/brand
3. Association with technical engineering disciplines, and KDE is known
for rigorous, high-quality engineering

Overall I think it's a great brand name

It objectively is. As another native speaker, even the superficial meaning (1)
is already good, but then you get into the layers and it is genius.



I don't disagree it's a great brand name. It's short for sure; no need 
for abbreviations.


What I'm less sure about is it's good branding for the thing it would 
brand. The "G" would make it a great brand for GNOME products. I guess 
it would be great to brand GNOME Frameworks, or perhaps even GNOME 
Office, the latter being a productivity tool. Gears evoke manual 
transmissions - power, configurability and tinkerability. These are 
great attributes for *tools*.


And these were probably great attributes last millennium to attract 
enthusiasts to KDE. At this point though, what KDE probably needs to get 
to the next stage is organizational backing. And while organizations do 
need tools, only a minority of their members are engineers. 
Configurability is a great attribute for a desktop environment, but for 
most users, accessibility/simplicity is just as important, and there is 
a risk that by using gears as only symbol, the impression we give is 
that we prioritize configurability for power users at the expense of 
user experience, when in fact we want to make manual interventions like 
using the command-line a last resort.


So I'm not so sure that gears should remain as prominent in KDE branding 
in the 2020-s, and I'm not sure that closely tying the name to KDE's 
current symbol is such a good idea. But perhaps a question as important 
as the definition is the audience. What's at stake? Who does the 
"release service" target? Is the "release service" something important, 
which would be covered in an encyclopedic entry about KDE? My 
understanding is that the issue has fair importance, given that the name 
would be used in recurrent, important announcements.



By the way, although I'm not recommending to rename KOffice "KGear" or 
anything, I should mention that as Microsoft seems to be renaming its 
Office to "Microsoft 365", "KOffice" should gradually become a less 
interesting brand for KOffice (even without considering the increasing 
prevalence of remote work).





Cheers

Paul


--
Philippe Cloutier
http://www.philippecloutier.com

Re: Rebranding the release service

[Paul Brown]

On domingo, 21 de febrero de 2021 11:07:34 (CET) Eric Schmidt wrote:
> Don't you also say "to switch gears" if you go the next step? Would fit here
> too, wouldn't it? I'm not a native.

Hello Eric,

"Switch gears" would be more like "change the subject" of a conversation, for 
example:

"Now we have decided on a name for the KDE releases, let's switch gears and 
talk about Plasma."

Cheers

Paul

> Am 20.02.21 um 20:24 schrieb Paul Brown:
> > On sábado, 20 de febrero de 2021 18:39:45 (CET) Nate Graham wrote:
> >> On 2/20/21 9:35 AM, Philippe Cloutier wrote:
> >>> Le 2021-02-20 à 10:38, Luigi Toscano a écrit :
> > In any case, "KDE Gear" sure is short and makes some sense if we
> > consider it
> > related to Extragear, but for those who don't know KDE's history, I am
> > skeptical that gears are a good way to evoke applications.
>  
>  It doesn't need to evoke applications, the idea is to have a brand.
> >>> 
> >>> Right; if it's not just applications, evoking applications is not as
> >>> important. However, if it largely consists of applications, I suppose it
> >>> remains non-ideal for the branding to primarily evoke internals.
> >> 
> >> FWIW, as a native English speaker, I like the word "gear" because it has
> >> multiple meanings, apart from the historical link to the word
> >> "Extragear":
> >> 
> >> 1. Metaphorical synonym for "equipment" or "stuff"
> >> 2. Visual reference to the KDE logo/brand
> >> 3. Association with technical engineering disciplines, and KDE is known
> >> for rigorous, high-quality engineering
> >> 
> >> Overall I think it's a great brand name
> > 
> > It objectively is. As another native speaker, even the superficial meaning
> > (1) is already good, but then you get into the layers and it is genius.
> > 
> > Cheers
> > 
> > Paul


-- 
Promotion & Communication

www: http://kde.org
Mastodon: https://mastodon.technology/@kde
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kde/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/kdecommunity
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kde

Re: Rebranding the release service

[Eric Schmidt]

Don't you also say "to switch gears" if you go the next step? Would fit here 
too, wouldn't it? I'm not a native.

Am 20.02.21 um 20:24 schrieb Paul Brown:
> On sábado, 20 de febrero de 2021 18:39:45 (CET) Nate Graham wrote:
>> On 2/20/21 9:35 AM, Philippe Cloutier wrote:
>>> Le 2021-02-20 à 10:38, Luigi Toscano a écrit :
> In any case, "KDE Gear" sure is short and makes some sense if we
> consider it
> related to Extragear, but for those who don't know KDE's history, I am
> skeptical that gears are a good way to evoke applications.

 It doesn't need to evoke applications, the idea is to have a brand.
>>>
>>> Right; if it's not just applications, evoking applications is not as
>>> important. However, if it largely consists of applications, I suppose it
>>> remains non-ideal for the branding to primarily evoke internals.
>>
>> FWIW, as a native English speaker, I like the word "gear" because it has
>> multiple meanings, apart from the historical link to the word "Extragear":
>>
>> 1. Metaphorical synonym for "equipment" or "stuff"
>> 2. Visual reference to the KDE logo/brand
>> 3. Association with technical engineering disciplines, and KDE is known
>> for rigorous, high-quality engineering
>>
>> Overall I think it's a great brand name
>
> It objectively is. As another native speaker, even the superficial meaning 
> (1) 
> is already good, but then you get into the layers and it is genius.
>
> Cheers
>
> Paul

Re: Rebranding the release service

[Paul Brown]

On sábado, 20 de febrero de 2021 18:39:45 (CET) Nate Graham wrote:
> On 2/20/21 9:35 AM, Philippe Cloutier wrote:
> > Le 2021-02-20 à 10:38, Luigi Toscano a écrit :
> >>> In any case, "KDE Gear" sure is short and makes some sense if we
> >>> consider it
> >>> related to Extragear, but for those who don't know KDE's history, I am
> >>> skeptical that gears are a good way to evoke applications.
> >> 
> >> It doesn't need to evoke applications, the idea is to have a brand.
> > 
> > Right; if it's not just applications, evoking applications is not as
> > important. However, if it largely consists of applications, I suppose it
> > remains non-ideal for the branding to primarily evoke internals.
> 
> FWIW, as a native English speaker, I like the word "gear" because it has
> multiple meanings, apart from the historical link to the word "Extragear":
> 
> 1. Metaphorical synonym for "equipment" or "stuff"
> 2. Visual reference to the KDE logo/brand
> 3. Association with technical engineering disciplines, and KDE is known
> for rigorous, high-quality engineering
> 
> Overall I think it's a great brand name

It objectively is. As another native speaker, even the superficial meaning (1) 
is already good, but then you get into the layers and it is genius.

Cheers

Paul
-- 
Promotion & Communication

www: http://kde.org
Mastodon: https://mastodon.technology/@kde
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kde/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/kdecommunity
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kde

Re: Rebranding the release service

[Nate Graham]

On 2/20/21 9:35 AM, Philippe Cloutier wrote:

Le 2021-02-20 à 10:38, Luigi Toscano a écrit :
In any case, "KDE Gear" sure is short and makes some sense if we 
consider it

related to Extragear, but for those who don't know KDE's history, I am
skeptical that gears are a good way to evoke applications.

It doesn't need to evoke applications, the idea is to have a brand.



Right; if it's not just applications, evoking applications is not as 
important. However, if it largely consists of applications, I suppose it 
remains non-ideal for the branding to primarily evoke internals.


FWIW, as a native English speaker, I like the word "gear" because it has 
multiple meanings, apart from the historical link to the word "Extragear":


1. Metaphorical synonym for "equipment" or "stuff"
2. Visual reference to the KDE logo/brand
3. Association with technical engineering disciplines, and KDE is known 
for rigorous, high-quality engineering


Overall I think it's a great brand name.

Nate

Re: Rebranding the release service

[Philippe Cloutier]

Le 2021-02-20 à 10:38, Luigi Toscano a écrit :

Philippe Cloutier ha scritto:

Hi Jonathan,

Le 2021-02-15 à 09:49, Christoph Cullmann a écrit :

On 2021-02-15 15:36, Nate Graham wrote:

On 2/15/21 6:01 AM, Jonathan Riddell wrote:

Here at KDE we've always struggled a bit with branding and the
announcement of formats for the bunch of releases that was originally
"KDE" then "KDE SC" then "KDE Applications" and at Akademy 2019 we decided
to debrand it and make it a release service with lots of different stuff
in it.  We had monthly update announcements that included those releases
on the months when they happened and otherwise included everything else
released over the past month.  But the format doesn't seem to have caught
on by various metrics.  So the promo group had some chat about different
formats you can read at https://phabricator.kde.org/T14091


Currently the plan is to reband it probably with the name KDE Gear.   That
gets released every 4 months (same as currently) with a big announcement
for it and everything in it.  It's still a collection of apps and
supporting libraries with no connection to each other except they happen
to be KDE projects which don't want to do their own release work.  Then
every 4 months on the months between times we have an update article
highlighting all the other stuff that has been released by KDE.  The
bugfix releases for KDE Gear happen monthly as currently and only have a
minimal announcement.

We hope this format will get some more traction with engagement from
outside press and social media buzz.  Any comments welcome.

+1, I think this makes sense. I like "KDE Gear". It's short and sweet
and suggestive, but not descriptive.

+1, too


If I understand correctly, this is discussing announcements like
https://kde.org/announcements/releases/2021-02-apps-update/

But what exactly are we trying to name here? A bundle which contains all KDE
applications as the ticket indicates?

The thing called "release service", i.e. a set of artifacts (applications,
libraries, even data, whose release process has been delegated to the "release
service" team and happens at the same time.



Thank you for the quick reply Luigi

The "release service" in question can be obtained from 
https://download.kde.org/stable/release-service/


https://community.kde.org/Policies/Application_Lifecycle#Releasing 
describes it:



Includes a range of libraries, applications and developer tools
I understand from this new information that the "bunch of releases" 
under discussion do *not* correspond to what was previously called "KDE 
Applications" (although it may *include* KDE Applications).


Do we have a better description of "release service"? If not, I suppose 
now would be a good time to define it, clarifying why a given library, 
application or tool would be included or excluded from that "range".






In any case, "KDE Gear" sure is short and makes some sense if we consider it
related to Extragear, but for those who don't know KDE's history, I am
skeptical that gears are a good way to evoke applications.

It doesn't need to evoke applications, the idea is to have a brand.



Right; if it's not just applications, evoking applications is not as 
important. However, if it largely consists of applications, I suppose it 
remains non-ideal for the branding to primarily evoke internals.


--
Philippe Cloutier
http://www.philippecloutier.com

Re: Rebranding the release service

[Luigi Toscano]

Philippe Cloutier ha scritto:
> Hi Jonathan,
> 
> Le 2021-02-15 à 09:49, Christoph Cullmann a écrit :
>> On 2021-02-15 15:36, Nate Graham wrote:
>>> On 2/15/21 6:01 AM, Jonathan Riddell wrote:
 Here at KDE we've always struggled a bit with branding and the
 announcement of formats for the bunch of releases that was originally
 "KDE" then "KDE SC" then "KDE Applications" and at Akademy 2019 we decided
 to debrand it and make it a release service with lots of different stuff
 in it.  We had monthly update announcements that included those releases
 on the months when they happened and otherwise included everything else
 released over the past month.  But the format doesn't seem to have caught
 on by various metrics.  So the promo group had some chat about different
 formats you can read at https://phabricator.kde.org/T14091
 

 Currently the plan is to reband it probably with the name KDE Gear.   That
 gets released every 4 months (same as currently) with a big announcement
 for it and everything in it.  It's still a collection of apps and
 supporting libraries with no connection to each other except they happen
 to be KDE projects which don't want to do their own release work.  Then
 every 4 months on the months between times we have an update article
 highlighting all the other stuff that has been released by KDE.  The
 bugfix releases for KDE Gear happen monthly as currently and only have a
 minimal announcement.

 We hope this format will get some more traction with engagement from
 outside press and social media buzz.  Any comments welcome.
>>>
>>> +1, I think this makes sense. I like "KDE Gear". It's short and sweet
>>> and suggestive, but not descriptive.
>>
>> +1, too
> 
> 
> If I understand correctly, this is discussing announcements like
> https://kde.org/announcements/releases/2021-02-apps-update/
> 
> But what exactly are we trying to name here? A bundle which contains all KDE
> applications as the ticket indicates?

The thing called "release service", i.e. a set of artifacts (applications,
libraries, even data, whose release process has been delegated to the "release
service" team and happens at the same time.

> In any case, "KDE Gear" sure is short and makes some sense if we consider it
> related to Extragear, but for those who don't know KDE's history, I am
> skeptical that gears are a good way to evoke applications. 

It doesn't need to evoke applications, the idea is to have a brand.

-- 
Luigi

Re: Rebranding the release service

[Philippe Cloutier]

Hi Jonathan,

Le 2021-02-15 à 09:49, Christoph Cullmann a écrit :

On 2021-02-15 15:36, Nate Graham wrote:

On 2/15/21 6:01 AM, Jonathan Riddell wrote:
Here at KDE we've always struggled a bit with branding and the 
announcement of formats for the bunch of releases that was 
originally "KDE" then "KDE SC" then "KDE Applications" and at 
Akademy 2019 we decided to debrand it and make it a release service 
with lots of different stuff in it. We had monthly update 
announcements that included those releases on the months when they 
happened and otherwise included everything else released over the 
past month.  But the format doesn't seem to have caught on by 
various metrics. So the promo group had some chat about different 
formats you can read at https://phabricator.kde.org/T14091 



Currently the plan is to reband it probably with the name KDE 
Gear.   That gets released every 4 months (same as currently) with a 
big announcement for it and everything in it.  It's still a 
collection of apps and supporting libraries with no connection to 
each other except they happen to be KDE projects which don't want to 
do their own release work.  Then every 4 months on the months 
between times we have an update article highlighting all the other 
stuff that has been released by KDE.  The bugfix releases for KDE 
Gear happen monthly as currently and only have a minimal announcement.


We hope this format will get some more traction with engagement from 
outside press and social media buzz.  Any comments welcome.


+1, I think this makes sense. I like "KDE Gear". It's short and sweet
and suggestive, but not descriptive.


+1, too



If I understand correctly, this is discussing announcements like 
https://kde.org/announcements/releases/2021-02-apps-update/


But what exactly are we trying to name here? A bundle which contains all 
KDE applications as the ticket indicates?



In any case, "KDE Gear" sure is short and makes some sense if we 
consider it related to Extragear, but for those who don't know KDE's 
history, I am skeptical that gears are a good way to evoke applications. 
Gears evoke internals (backend technology), not graphical applications 
(frontends). If we take Microsoft Windows as example, we see gears are 
used as icons for DLL files (libraries), among a few file types. The 
corresponding KDE bundle would be KDE Frameworks.


That being said, I shall stress that:

 * The gear is used in KDE's icon. So arguably, the gear means more
   than "backend" in KDE context.
 * English is not my native language.




Greetings
Christoph


--
Philippe Cloutier
http://www.philippecloutier.com

Re: Rebranding the release service

[Nate Graham]

On 2/15/21 3:18 PM, Albert Astals Cid wrote:

El dilluns, 15 de febrer de 2021, a les 14:01:25 CET, Jonathan Riddell va 
escriure:

Here at KDE we've always struggled a bit with branding and the announcement
of formats for the bunch of releases that was originally "KDE" then "KDE
SC" then "KDE Applications" and at Akademy 2019 we decided to debrand it
and make it a release service with lots of different stuff in it.  We had
monthly update announcements that included those releases on the months
when they happened and otherwise included everything else released over the
past month.  But the format doesn't seem to have caught on by various
metrics.  So the promo group had some chat about different formats you can
read at https://phabricator.kde.org/T14091

Currently the plan is to reband it probably with the name KDE Gear.


Ouch, y'all ended up liking my silly suggestion ^_^ Sorry about that.


Don't sell yourself short, Albert; I think it was really good!



Anyhow, I'm expecting we're not necessarily have to change stuff like branch 
names or RELEASE_SERVICE_VERSION_MAJOR cmake variables to adapt to this promo 
driven change, right?


I don't think so, no. Those are implementation details, and it would 
certainly be a pain in the neck to update them to reflect the name, only 
to change them again if we change the name in the future. My vote is to 
keep the internal strings the same.


Nate

Re: Rebranding the release service

[Albert Astals Cid]

El dilluns, 15 de febrer de 2021, a les 14:01:25 CET, Jonathan Riddell va 
escriure:
> Here at KDE we've always struggled a bit with branding and the announcement
> of formats for the bunch of releases that was originally "KDE" then "KDE
> SC" then "KDE Applications" and at Akademy 2019 we decided to debrand it
> and make it a release service with lots of different stuff in it.  We had
> monthly update announcements that included those releases on the months
> when they happened and otherwise included everything else released over the
> past month.  But the format doesn't seem to have caught on by various
> metrics.  So the promo group had some chat about different formats you can
> read at https://phabricator.kde.org/T14091
> 
> Currently the plan is to reband it probably with the name KDE Gear.

Ouch, y'all ended up liking my silly suggestion ^_^ Sorry about that.

Anyhow, I'm expecting we're not necessarily have to change stuff like branch 
names or RELEASE_SERVICE_VERSION_MAJOR cmake variables to adapt to this promo 
driven change, right?

Cheers,
  Albert

> That
> gets released every 4 months (same as currently) with a big announcement
> for it and everything in it.  It's still a collection of apps and
> supporting libraries with no connection to each other except they happen to
> be KDE projects which don't want to do their own release work.  Then every
> 4 months on the months between times we have an update article highlighting
> all the other stuff that has been released by KDE.  The bugfix releases for
> KDE Gear happen monthly as currently and only have a minimal announcement.
> 
> We hope this format will get some more traction with engagement from
> outside press and social media buzz.  Any comments welcome.
> 
> Jonathan
> 

Re: Rebranding the release service

[Christoph Cullmann]

On 2021-02-15 15:36, Nate Graham wrote:

On 2/15/21 6:01 AM, Jonathan Riddell wrote:
Here at KDE we've always struggled a bit with branding and the 
announcement of formats for the bunch of releases that was originally 
"KDE" then "KDE SC" then "KDE Applications" and at Akademy 2019 we 
decided to debrand it and make it a release service with lots of 
different stuff in it.  We had monthly update announcements that 
included those releases on the months when they happened and otherwise 
included everything else released over the past month.  But the format 
doesn't seem to have caught on by various metrics.  So the promo group 
had some chat about different formats you can read at 
https://phabricator.kde.org/T14091 



Currently the plan is to reband it probably with the name KDE Gear.   
That gets released every 4 months (same as currently) with a big 
announcement for it and everything in it.  It's still a collection of 
apps and supporting libraries with no connection to each other except 
they happen to be KDE projects which don't want to do their own 
release work.  Then every 4 months on the months between times we have 
an update article highlighting all the other stuff that has been 
released by KDE.  The bugfix releases for KDE Gear happen monthly as 
currently and only have a minimal announcement.


We hope this format will get some more traction with engagement from 
outside press and social media buzz.  Any comments welcome.


+1, I think this makes sense. I like "KDE Gear". It's short and sweet
and suggestive, but not descriptive.


+1, too

Greetings
Christoph

--
Ignorance is bliss...
https://cullmann.io | https://kate-editor.org

Re: Rebranding the release service

[Nate Graham]

On 2/15/21 6:01 AM, Jonathan Riddell wrote:
Here at KDE we've always struggled a bit with branding and the 
announcement of formats for the bunch of releases that was originally 
"KDE" then "KDE SC" then "KDE Applications" and at Akademy 2019 we 
decided to debrand it and make it a release service with lots of 
different stuff in it.  We had monthly update announcements that 
included those releases on the months when they happened and otherwise 
included everything else released over the past month.  But the format 
doesn't seem to have caught on by various metrics.  So the promo group 
had some chat about different formats you can read at 
https://phabricator.kde.org/T14091 


Currently the plan is to reband it probably with the name KDE Gear.   
That gets released every 4 months (same as currently) with a big 
announcement for it and everything in it.  It's still a collection of 
apps and supporting libraries with no connection to each other except 
they happen to be KDE projects which don't want to do their own release 
work.  Then every 4 months on the months between times we have an update 
article highlighting all the other stuff that has been released by KDE.  
The bugfix releases for KDE Gear happen monthly as currently and only 
have a minimal announcement.


We hope this format will get some more traction with engagement from 
outside press and social media buzz.  Any comments welcome.


+1, I think this makes sense. I like "KDE Gear". It's short and sweet 
and suggestive, but not descriptive.


Nate

Rebranding the release service

[Jonathan Riddell]

Here at KDE we've always struggled a bit with branding and the announcement
of formats for the bunch of releases that was originally "KDE" then "KDE
SC" then "KDE Applications" and at Akademy 2019 we decided to debrand it
and make it a release service with lots of different stuff in it.  We had
monthly update announcements that included those releases on the months
when they happened and otherwise included everything else released over the
past month.  But the format doesn't seem to have caught on by various
metrics.  So the promo group had some chat about different formats you can
read at https://phabricator.kde.org/T14091

Currently the plan is to reband it probably with the name KDE Gear.   That
gets released every 4 months (same as currently) with a big announcement
for it and everything in it.  It's still a collection of apps and
supporting libraries with no connection to each other except they happen to
be KDE projects which don't want to do their own release work.  Then every
4 months on the months between times we have an update article highlighting
all the other stuff that has been released by KDE.  The bugfix releases for
KDE Gear happen monthly as currently and only have a minimal announcement.

We hope this format will get some more traction with engagement from
outside press and social media buzz.  Any comments welcome.

Jonathan