As the first of several opinion pieces exploring current issues in KDE, we offer you a video of Aaron Seigo explaining how KDE's success as a community producing all kinds of software led to outgrowing our old name, the "K Desktop Environment", what KDE means now and why it matters.



Aaron Seigo on KDE Branding ( Aaron Seigo on KDE Branding ( Ogg Theora version

A little over a year ago, an article was published on the Dot titled 'Repositioning the KDE Brand'. The article publicized the outcome of a process within KDE to make sense of the relationship between the community and its products, and to reach a durable solution regarding the terms that should be used to refer to both.

Since then, good progress has been made with people understanding, accepting and using the new terms. Spreading awareness within and beyond KDE, and increasing the understanding of how the brands are now used, takes time and continued communication. This effort is still ongoing.

Justin Kirby caught up with Aaron - Plasma developer extraordinaire, former president of KDE e.V. and KDE promoter - to ask him to explain the KDE brands and the reasoning behind them. As Aaron lucidly describes, the central element of the new terminology is the fact that KDE refers to the community, and not to any one of the products that the community creates. Thus, KDE is a community that makes three different types of products: workspaces, a platform, and applications.

Workspaces: The main brand for the workspaces is Plasma; KDE produces Plasma Desktop, Plasma Netbook, and soon Plasma Mobile and others.

The main brand for the workspaces is Plasma; KDE produces Plasma Desktop, Plasma Netbook, and soon Plasma Mobile and others. Platform: The KDE Platform consists of the base of libraries and services that are needed to run KDE applications.

The KDE Platform consists of the base of libraries and services that are needed to run KDE applications. Applications: KDE Applications are created by the KDE community using the KDE Platform, that can run in environments other than the Plasma workspaces (such as Gnome or, in many cases, Windows).

You can watch the interview in the embedded video above if you have a compatible Flash player or download the free format Ogg Theora version.