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List:       kde-promo
Subject:    Re: [kde-promo] KDE League; celebrity worship; and random comments
From:       Christian Lavoie <clavoi14 () po-box ! mcgill ! ca>
Date:       2001-02-10 0:06:03
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> 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.

You, the problem is that image is extremely relative. One of the best selling 
points of KDE (to me, and a fair share of people I know) is that KDE is 
mainly leaderless. That is, you cannot point someone and say: "Here's the guy 
behind all of KDE" like you can with GNOME. (Even if it's completely false) I 
feel, as a (hopefully one day) developer, that I've got a much better chance 
of recognition if I write a KDE app than if I write a GNOME one. If I choose 
GNOME, De Icaza's probably gonna take credit for GNOME, even if I write a 
killer-enough thing. If I write KDE stuff, people are gonna say: "Hey, I like 
<appname>; it really makes KDE shine"

What we need to do is ensure that people know that. THEY COUNT. Users, 
developers, artists, EVERYONE counts for KDE. Tink's "People behind KDE" is a 
great idea. We must push that further (and I don't simply mean pushing tink 
into doing an interview a day) and improve the visibility of the KDE 
'canonic' developers, yes. But we must also ensure that people understand 
that they are a strong, in fact, the strongest part of the KDE resources.

Here's an idea I had: Make the content of the mailing lists publicly 
available. (Ok, they already are. Read on to see what I mean:) Some messages 
in the mailing lists are gems. They solve problems in ways that are not 
imaginable. Let's make it _easy_ for people to parse through the mailing list 
archives (let's face it, current interface is crude). Let's have someone do 
something similar to 'KDE Weekly News'. Not only does that makes it easy for 
people to see what's going on, what to expect, and what is currently broken, 
but it also gives people a chance to interact with the development team. I 
think we need a central place for people to look at in the development 
process, and provide feedback. Say foo-user gets a genius idea. Too bad the 
guy is a infographist, he can't implement it. There are very few ways to for 
users to provide well thought out feedback to the developers (yes, I'm aware 
of the bug report facility in the about menu) having talked about it with 
other users.

Think about the 'Ask Slashdot' or the advogato kind of articles. Someone say, 
"I've been thinking... Wouldn't be cool to connect libreadline to a 
QLineEdit?"... Is there somewhere people can discuss this, that users can 
voice their opinions on the actual coolness of such a thing?

Nope.

Not only does that would improve KDE technically, (the largest pool of ideas 
we get, the better) but it would also improve the KDE visibility (bringing us 
back to the purpose of this list) through its users. Users could now feel 
part of the KDE devel team. And _that_ makes them the best KDE advocates we 
can have. Not only would people want to show off their ideas being 
implemented in real life, but it would provide users with a recomforting 
feeling of being useful.

----

Last thing: Forget about Ximian's ad on google.

Is it a dirty move? YES.

Are we gonna go as low as they did? NO.

Let them hang themselves with dirty moves. And anyway, if the best way for 
GNOME to get publicity is by putting ads near the KDE name, it only means 
that users are looking for KDE first, and that Ximian must move them away 
from their first ideas to get users.

KDE still has more users than GNOME does. In the end, that's all that counts 
on the topic of Ximian trying to lure 'em away. (Now, what did you expect?) 
Ximian are the first to recognize that KDE is more popular... I say: HURRAY!

-- 
Christian Lavoie
clavoi14@po-box.mcgill.ca
UIN: 947212

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