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List:       koffice-devel
Subject:    Re: Small KOffice interaction design meeting in middle november?
From:       "Aaron J. Seigo" <aseigo () kde ! org>
Date:       2006-11-03 18:44:52
Message-ID: 200611031144.55555.aseigo () kde ! org
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On Friday 03 November 2006 1:43, Jaroslaw Staniek wrote:
> Aaron J. Seigo said the following, On 2006-11-03 02:21:
> > On Thursday 02 November 2006 17:31, Jaroslaw Staniek wrote:
> >>Sure, nobody claims otherwise, but just look at OO.org marketing machine
> >>and find a single top-level place where, say, UNO is marketed as the
> >>promary must-have jewel to the users :)
> >
> > this is a weakness of OO.o not to be imitated. they are their own
> > umbrella brand and therefore do not have the ability to take advantage of
> > other development efforts.
>
> I tried to talk about KDE apps (like KOffice) running on an non-KDE-based
> OS, let it be GNOME+Linux, win32. On such platform, people can say the
> same: "KOffice is their own umbrella" - juse assume it can be the case.

how we frame things becomes what people say, so lets talk about that force of 
change which we manage: how we frame things.

we could frame KOffice as its own independent umbrella but would that be 
taking the greatest advantage of the opportunities? KOffice as an umbrella 
brand associated with the KDE brand is much more sensible, imho. this is 
actually fairly basic marketing and used by conglomerates the world over.

one of the only times one breaks with this model is when the owned brand 
(e.g. KOffice in this case) runs counter to the parent brand's image. 
example: Disney owns Touchstone. any movies they produce that aren't in 
the "family fun" genre they release under the Touchstone brand and you'll 
never see a 'Disney' logo, name or anything else around the Touchstone 
branding. this is intentional: it lets them into markets that aren't "family 
fun" (therefore more $$$) without destroying the Disney brand ("family fun").

so if KOffice ever became contrary to the KDE model then it would be in KDE's 
best interest to remove mention of KDE from KOffice. if KDE became contrary to 
KOffice then KOffice may want to move away from mention of the KDE brand. but 
as KDE moves more to framing things in terms of a platform (with workspace 
tools as a child brand called "plasma") it would be daft for KOffice to try 
to encourage such a move as KOffice has only upside in this deal right now.

> Hmm, maybe we could add another point to the marketing TODO list: make
> people more aware that KDE apps can safely be started on other desktops
> like GNOME (with screenshots or screencasts), without talking about X11...

which comes at a price to the KDE workspace brand. i think this will come 
naturally with the win32 and MacOS ports without having nearly the same 
effect on the workspace. on x11 we should continue to support the KDE 
workspace. this is the "logical" view, anyways, from the parent brand.

if KOffice does start to take the position of promoting non-KDE workspaces on 
X11 we'd have to consider whether it makes sense to keep KOffice as part of 
the KDE brands. balance that against the number of new users and good will 
KOffice would receive for this approach. (personally i bet it would be a net 
loss)

but another case: if KOffice has some GNOME integration features to showcase 
then doing a "KOffice in GNOME" article release showing KOffice's integration 
in this environment and posting this to GNOME interest sites would make sense 
since that would be the heart of the story.

one can see this approach in how Microsoft positions and markets it 
cross-platform apps on MacOS.

> >>One would even claim that KOffice can live without many KDE technologies
> >>just nicely.
> >
> > ... and then it wouldn't be KOffice as we know it.
>
> Sure, but as someone mentioned this is a force dragging non-native-KDE
> users to KDE.

which is great, but completely tangential to what you replied to =)

> At least with Kexi I never planned to offer all the features 
> on win32 (e.g. awesome scripting capatibilities are not here, to mention
> one thing) and I write about this KDE advantage (call it nativeness!) where
> possible, including the docs aimed at my customers.

this is the workspace brand, not the KDE brand. i've been considering and 
discussing this problem (that KDE is a synonym for the parent brand and the 
workspace) for probably close to 3 years now.

> > to come at it another way: just how much attention and mind share would
> > KOffice in its current state and with its current user base get if it
> > weren't for the KDE brand?
> >
> > there's also a benefit to the KDE brand to having KOffice.
>
> Sure, and we're happy with this - if someone already users KDE, we most
> probably conquered his/her soul :)

the value for the KDE brand in having KOffice overtly associated with it has 
very little to do with people using the workspace. it has everything to do 
with the value of applications to the platform brand.

the platform brand is not the workspace. the workspace is a sub-brand within 
the platform brand. just as KOffice should be.

framed in this way KDE can reach many more users (as you noted earlier about 
using KOffice in, say, GNOME) and it also allows the platform brand and sub 
brands such as KOffice to coexist in harmony maintaining their mutual ties and 
cross-branding without damage to either.

the workspace brand will benefit from the network effect.

> >>on win32. You can drop KIO support too. It's KDE's selling point, not too
> >>much related what we're talking about KOffice to the outside world.
> >
> > think "Microsoft" and "Microsoft Office" and how their tools work
> > together, how they promote them together, how they leverage one with the
> > other.
> >
> >>This is of course especially true if we market KDE as a part of the
> >>operating system, not as a so-much-technical layer on top.
> >
> > since when are we marketing KDE as part of the operating system?
>
> Aren't we? :)

sorry, let me rephrase this: since when in the context of KDE4 (and therefore 
KOffice2) marketing are we marketing KDE as part of the operating system?

> "KDE is a powerful Free Software graphical desktop environment for Linux
> and Unix workstations. " [kde.org]

our marketing in the past was not organized in a manner appropriate for a 
project of the size, complexity and reach of KDE today. it may have sufficed 
back in the day (personally, i don't think it did; but the past is over), but 
today we need to think a bit more strategically.

which is to say, "don't quote kde.org to me. it's rubbish. let's talk about 
what we're doing going forward." =)

> You wrote below "from a user's POV having those features come from the KDE
> platform (not workspace!) means a lot." - look what the "platform" means
> for most users... very often it's indivisible term called OS (at best) if
> not "the computer".
>
> I mean OS == Desktop OS of course, so a graphical env. is a mandatory part
> of any OS these days for our target?

of course. but this is -not- the same as saying "KDE is part of the OS". 

unless one considers the pizza in the pizza delivery man's car "a part of the 
car". they are in the car, require the car to get to your house but it sure 
isn't the car. the pizza company doesn't market their delivery cars, they 
market pizza even though they do require the delivery vehicles.

> >>All these things like KAddressBook/KDEPrint/embedding/etc. are appealing
> >> to _devs_ (not to most users) because are so much nicer designed
> >> comparing to mac/win32 years-old APIs.
> >
> > users (not to mention sys admins) recognize and appreciate  the level of
> > integration.
>
> The integration is already there (on win32/mac) - file/print dialogs, even
> "native" pdf previews on mac... what's the difference for most users?

the same difference as Microsoft's applications when it comes to integration, 
uniformity, etc.

> > from a user's POV having those features come from the KDE platform (not
> > workspace!) means a lot.

> Outside of that, we may need to be careful to avoid 
> spreading features that users perceive as redundant... Don't worry, the
> native replacements do not need to be 100% accurate (as we market the
> 'native' KDE as an unmatched model) - so far I tried to wrap things like,
> say, KApplication's "send email" method using native API call, what was an

it's not the implementation it's consistency in the delivery of and the 
guaranteed accessibility to features that users notice. that's really 
what makes a KDE app recognizable to people.

> easy part. I will think about publishing a table like this on the new kde
> wiki one day:
> ------------------------------------------------------
>
> |           |Linux | Other Unices | Windows | MacOSX |
>
> ------------------------------------------------------
>
> |Freature 1 |   x  |      x       |         |    x   |
>
> ------------------------------------------------------
>
> |Freature 2 |   x  |              |         |        |
>
> ------------------------------------------------------
> [..]

that'd be neat =)

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
humru othro a kohnu se
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

Full time KDE developer sponsored by Trolltech (http://www.trolltech.com)

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