Third KDE 4 Development Snapshot Released: 'Kludge' (KDE.News) [LWN.net]

Third KDE 4 Development Snapshot Released: 'Kludge' (KDE.News)

Posted Feb 26, 2007 9:07 UTC (Mon) by aseigo (guest, #18394)
In reply to: Third KDE 4 Development Snapshot Released: 'Kludge' (KDE.News) by mmarq
Parent article: Third KDE 4 Development Snapshot Released: 'Kludge' (KDE.News)

> never alienate your standing base

i assume you read the -rest- of what i wrote explaining exactly
this? =) we agree on that point, which is good.

realize, however, that by asking for some imagined purity what you are
asking is to restrain who we can effectively talk to and what we can
effectively accomplish. if we are only allowed to speak the language of
the free software world we will not reach other areas that we really need
to be.

fortunately, it's not an exclusive, binary sort of being. but realize that
your taking offense over something that doesn't affect you in the least
will lead only to you having less of what you want in the future.

free software is for more than just you and me.

and it isn't just sophism. at least not what we're doing. it's explaining
what we have in terms that are understandable to others. we're throwing
bridges across communication gaps that others (primarily, the proprietary
competition) would sooner see remain.

what would be sophism is to try and fool people with half-truths and lies.
there are those who do this in the open source world, sadly, but i don't
think we're (KDE) one of those communities.

we -started- by asking ourselves: what do we want to focus our messaging
around? what should everything we talk about resonate on? our answer was:
1) freedom, 2) technological prowess. in that order.

we're looking for effective, and even new, ways of communicating our core
values in ways that will allow them to be heard by more people.

and if that offends you, i'll see your claim of "sophism" and raise it
with an "elitist behaviour" right back.

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Third KDE 4 Development Snapshot Released: 'Kludge' (KDE.News)

Posted Feb 26, 2007 18:07 UTC (Mon) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link]

"" but realize that
your taking offense over something that doesn't affect you ""

??... i didnt take offense of nothing !

My point is that the *language* inside developments circles, dosent have to adress *sophistic* language requirements of the marketing world:

.- they are more or less orthogonal, meaning that the development should or must or have to have a commercial focus, but no matter what, marketing language will only be at best a generalized approach.

.- inherent openness of FOSS is what make marketing live hard, because they try to pick notions that are terrible at generalization, and often at odds with fashions, styles or ways... being promoted.

.- FOSS thrived so far being at odds with generalized perceived *ways*... so why bother?

All the best.

Third KDE 4 Development Snapshot Released: 'Kludge' (KDE.News)

Posted Feb 26, 2007 18:41 UTC (Mon) by aseigo (guest, #18394) [Link]

> they are more or less orthogonal

i would agree in general; so when we do speak with more "market friendly"
terms at times, we need to find a way to remind the community about the
rest of our communication which is quite dry and straight forward.

the initial reaction to this article is a good example of why.

> inherent openness of FOSS is what make marketing live hard

to me that just means we need to re-shape "marketing" a bit, just as we
have re-shaped development methodologies a bit. certainly a challenge, but
challenges are fun.

> so why bother?

because this has not worked on the desktop side of things, and for pretty
obvious reasons. while the server side of the market is indeed populated
primarily by sophisticated, tech-aware people who are used to dealing with
technical terms, complex ideas and community networking on- and off-line,
the desktop market is very, very different.

> All the best.

likewise =)

Third KDE 4 Development Snapshot Released: 'Kludge' (KDE.News)

Posted Feb 26, 2007 20:04 UTC (Mon) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link]

Completely on agreement.

"" ...to me that just means we need to re-shape "marketing" a bit... ...certainly a challenge, but challenges are fun. ""

agreed... but lack of control of the "bigtime promotion of general fashions, styles, looks, ways... " can turn the fun... not so fun. Remenber how recently, MS CEO tryed to connect the general FOSS paradigma with an "IP thieves" lair, in a purely marketing(FUD) manouver.

So a thick skin and caution is also required.

Wow! aseigo not only deciphers mmarq's posts but responds in kind!

Posted Feb 27, 2007 5:04 UTC (Tue) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322) [Link]

I'm very impressed. It seems mmarq has met his match :-)