From kde-promo Fri Feb 09 23:18:02 2001 From: Jonathan Singer Date: Fri, 09 Feb 2001 23:18:02 +0000 To: kde-promo Subject: [kde-promo] KDE League; celebrity worship X-MARC-Message: https://marc.info/?l=kde-promo&m=99107057932462 So, what is the KDE League doing? Anything? The only press release on their web page is the one announcing its formation. Also, looking at the membership application , it's not clear to me whether developers can join without having to pay the $5000 fee. And for crying out loud -- if you're running the web site for a public image campaign, learn the difference between 'its' and 'it's'! It looks like CmdrTaco is writing copy there. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------- On an entirely different note -- one of the things that limits KDE promotion is the absence of recognizable names. People referred to the ZDNet article about Gnome and Nautilus. Note how the story is hung on Miguel de Icaza as an individual? Having him as a front man is crucial to Gnome's image, both because it provides a convenient hook for journalists and because users feel good about using a product that allows them to associate themselves with a celebrity. Linux has the same advantage over the BSD's. (How many people can name the leader of the FreeBSD project?) Enlightenment may be slow, buggy and memory intensive but it has a much higher profile than WindowMaker, or even Sawfish, because its leaders are Slashdot celebrities. As a (very minor) developer, I enjoy the way KDE works. I'd have less motivation to put in effort if I saw some front man getting all the credit for it. But the reality is that KDE is perceived as a monolithic, faceless, corporate project while Gnome is seen as the product of a crew of rebel hackers. Despite the fact that the opposite is much closer to the truth.