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List:       kde-core-devel
Subject:    Re: New special effects library
From:       Zack Rusin <zack () kde ! org>
Date:       2006-12-19 13:07:16
Message-ID: 200612190807.16369.zack () kde ! org
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On Tuesday 19 December 2006 07:34, Thomas Zander wrote:
> On Tuesday 19 December 2006 12:40, Zack Rusin wrote:
> > It looks like we're trying to market libraries which in turn is pretty
> > bizarre. Users don't care, or should never have to care about
> > technologies under the applications they're using, so the existence of
> > Phonon, Solid or Decibel doesn't matter to them.
>
> If we were a company; I'd agree. But we are an open source project and
> after targeting users, we have to realize that the only way we can go on
> living is getting new developers.  So we market for new developers as much,
> or even more, than for end users.
> Which makes having cool library names a pretty big deal.

So as an engineer you're attracted to names and you'd join KDE because 
libraries have cool names? I'd expect engineers to look at technologies not 
through their names but what they do (CoreAnimation and Window Presentation 
Foundation are pretty plain names, for technologies everyone wants to play 
with) and marketing what a technology does is done very differently than 
application. 

Saying that as a project to be able to market successfully to engineers you 
need goofy names is like having library developers saying they need to be 
naming class that does painting  QGesner (Gesner was the first to introduce 
pencil which everyone doing painting clearly knows). And I might add QGesner 
is freaking waaay cooler than QPainter but if we had QGesner instead of a 
QPainter everyone would find that silly. Sure if the technology is good 
people will still use it without a problem, but there always be "wtf is X 
doing" stage.

z
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