hi again :) i'll just reply to this one email instead of each emai in the thread, though all the replies were, i though, well thought out and interesting. i just don't want to add more distracting noise than absolutely necessary to the devel list here :) so ... On Thursday, November 3, 2011 08:38:08 Julius Schwartzenberg wrote: yes, i figured as much. on the good news side, many who made that switch have come back to using the Plasma Desktop, esp in the last year as Plasma has matured while GNOME and Ubuntu go through their own growing pains. others have come to use Trinity because it fits them best. many who never used KDE software in the past are doing so now. so i think we're all achieving that goal of both growing our reach and appeal while also retaining our loyal user base from current and past years. that effort is absolutely worthwhile. sounds like a good plan .. no problem; while a bit regrettable, it's nearly impossible to get things perfect on the first try. more important is how we learn and improve things for the future :) ... i might have written it more along the lines of: "Trinity 3.5.10 is an exciting upgrade for users of KDE 3.5: it is faster, more secure and more feature rich than any previous KDE 3 release. Trinity allows you to run KDE 3.5 software on modern Linux systems and take advantage of all the strides forward in areas such as network and hardware management that have been made in recent years. Trinity also <fill in 1-2 more benefits>." (could be made a lot better, that's just off the top of my head before i've had my morning coffee ;) the idea is to talk more about the benefits of Trinity itself rather than speak in competition language. instead of reminding people that there was a change in maintainership, the reader is focused on benefits they will get and reminded that Trinity is a continuation of a great software product (KDE 3.x) it's a small thing, perhaps, but it really shapes how people communicate and behave. :) that's almost always the case, and why i decided to reach out directly to those who are involved with Trinity and putting their own blood, sweat and tears into it (and subscribe to Yet Another Mailing List to do so ;). rather than grumble in my little cave or write some blog entry or what-not, if figure it's better to see what's up and work on improving things. there's a mix of reasons for that: * some don't care too much as they are very focussed on the 4.x code * some are wary about people who focus on 3.x because of the amount of negative feedback that was leveled at them from "ardent supporters" of KDE 3.x. * some were/are unsure what it means and how well it can work to give "our baby" (KDE 3) over to another team of people (Trinity) to maintain and improve. given than Trinity is working out pretty well, these attitudes can and will soften. it's part of the process. imho, the main thing we need to do is to stop giving people excuses to focus on KDE 4.x code when Trinity makes a release. the article on osnews.com (which was not written by any of you, i know! :) was particularly sad as Trinity became an excuse for the author to repeat misinformation about KWin 4. nobody wins there as Trinity doesn't get to keep the spotlight and misinformation sucks, no matter who it's about. resolving this issue will allow us to build much strong bridges between the Trinity project and the rest of the KDE community. i'd be happy to assist in your next announcements. here's what i can personally offer: as long as you give me enough lead time (1-2 weeks is usually enough) i would be happy to go over your release announcement material and offer feedback (which you can ignore or accept, i give freely without expectations there) as well as work on a story based on that for dot.kde.org that will get accepted for publication. i'm also on irc.freenode.net (nick: aseigo) most days and read my email like a proper addict ;) so feel free to fire questions, queries, thoughts, etc. my way. happy hacking, -- Aaron J. Seigo humru othro a kohnu se GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43 KDE core developer sponsored by Qt Development Frameworks

I imagine Tim submits press releases. Or possibly one or two online editors are members of one of the mailing lists and that is how they know. I have been involved in technical writing for almost three decades. Regardless of how much effort anybody exerts into word smithing, somebody will interpret the words in a manner never intended or imagined. This is the nature of communications. There is no way to avoid that from happening. A peer review of the web pages and press releases before publication will eliminate most misunderstanding. An easy solution is to prepare the release web pages but keep the links to the pages hidden until the official release. Notify everybody on this list with the links and ask for feedback and comments. Darrell