mon journal - par Vincent - What is GNOME? - Comments

What is GNOME? - Quim Gil

Quim Gil — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 08:34:49 +0000

Oh, possibly my preferred GNOME debate, starting again. :)

From a marketing efficiency point of view, what we need now is not another bunch of slogans and the associated debate, but

1. A priority explicitely set in the Marketing Team agenda to come up with an updated slogan to substitute "GNOME offers an easy to understand desktop for your Linux or UNIX computer." (gnome.org) and "The GNOME project provides two things: The GNOME desktop environment, an intuitive and attractive desktop for users, and the GNOME development platform, an extensive framework for building applications that integrate into the rest of the desktop." (gnome.org/about).

2. A research on the previous slogans suggested and discuss, prior to any serious restart of this passionate debate.

3. Someone to coordinate this effort and have the responsibility to come up with results this time.

There is no way to build a solid and consistant marketing strategy without agreeing a brief, clear and strong answer-concept to the question What Is GNOME?

What is GNOME? - Vincent

Vincent — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 16:01:01 +0000

Murray: I chose this word because informatique (in French) is not techy at all. That's how we name this. Informatik and informatics both come from the French word and their original meaning was the same as the French one. A better word is welcome, but I couldn't find one in English ;-)

Luca: I agree that it's all connected, and as I said, freedom is central in GNOME and there's no way to deny this. However, if I had to choose between freedom and "being centered on users" to explain what our goal is, I'd choose the second one. It doesn't mean we should not talk about freedom and our community would probably stop being strong if we decided that freedom is not that important...

What is GNOME? - Luca

Luca — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 15:31:00 +0000

I still think freedom is a word that should define GNOME. Without the freedom of GNOME I don't think the community would be the same, it's all connected.

What is GNOME? - Murray Cumming

Murray Cumming — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 15:15:42 +0000

Informatics (or Informatik as I am familiar with it in German) is a horrible techy name. As far as I can tell it's just a wanky name for Software. And given enough time, "Software" will just be a wanky name for "stuff".