Keep on marketing!

Today, Casper v Donderen visited me. He wanted to discuss an article he'll be writing for a dutch Linux magazine about Maemo development. We went through the messaging and structure. Of course I'm blogging this to both remind him of the agreed deadline (2nd week of december) and to put on some pressure.

Yes, I'm like that. Very nice when we first meet - makes you wanna join the promo team. From then on, you'll be harassed by me. If I would have the travel budget, I'd actually stalk people - showing up in the middle of the night on their lawn, singing songs to their windows. Stealing underwear and stuff. Unfortunately the e.V. board didn't want to sponsor that particular motivational scheme. Too bad.

I also showed Casper the upcoming rebranding announcement mentioned in this article for the dot. Darn, that's gonna lead to some flamewars I'm afraid. Really. It's a big change which raises many hard-to-answer questions. We did our best, discussed it with the wider community (thread on KDE devel, blogging) and it was all thought out on a public mailing list, but still. At the marketing meeting we had to make some executive decisions to move this forward - every time you discuss it, the argument seems to ends in bikeshedding.

Which can be seen as a good thing. People care about KDE. About what it means, what it stands for. And they each have their own opinions on that. Naturally, these have emerged from these years of cooperation, and it's a very implicit thing. Not unlike the values the KDE community shares - now codified in our code of conduct. That one is worth a read - it is not only about how you SHOULD behave but also gives a nice description of our culture, how we are and how we think.

But shared values aside, we're still individuals, who disagree on things. We're not all here for the same reasons, you know... Some are in it for the money (ok, I actually doubt that's true for many, but I do think it's a valid reason). Others for the fame. Some want to make the world a better place. Others just want to have some fun.

I can go on of course, and for many it's a bunch of reasons, not a single one. I just want to say that when you read the announcement, to be posted in a few days, think about what the most important message is: KDE IS YOU. It is about us all, it is who we are. Yes, fluffy, yes, I sound like a hippy. Or something. And it's far less concrete and clear than KDE as a product. But it IS true.

WE ARE KDE.

All of you. What, you only read the planet, don't do much else? No? You never answer questions on a forum, IRC, mail? You never installed or recommended any KDE application to anyone? You don't care about world domination for Free Software? You don't have to write code to be part of this community, you know... You don't even have to spend >10 hours a week on it. I've never written a single line of code, and sometimes I don't have time for KDE stuff for weeks. But I feel part of this wonderful community. Fluffy feelings, yay! And so can you.