[Compcomm] My ideas (for the record)

Thu Jun 14 11:46:50 EDT 2007

Greetings, my handle is MikeMLP in the opencompositing.org forums.

Just about all of the suggestions made here sound good to me.  If we really are about to start voting round two, the community at opencompositing.org needs to know exactly what it is voting for.  Since the "Community division" is a part of  the Compiz umbrella, then everything related to both "divisions" really should be hosted at compiz.org.  There should be one forum, and a "Community division" subsection at forums.compiz.org.  The compiz.org homepage should be updated and extended to reflect this, and explain this structure to all visitors.  If this is the plan going forward (as I think it should be) then this must be made painfully clear to the opencompositing.org members before voting round two gets underway.

As a "side effect" of this plan of integration at compiz.org, this means that the new name would matter "less" than if it had its own web site, because compiz.org would be the "place" for everyone to go.  In other words, the power of the new name would, through this very organizational structure be diminished, and Compiz would be the "main name" known by all.  I know that that is probably a problem for some people who wish to "compete" directly against the eye candy in Windows and Mac OSX, but really, we have to walk before we can run.  Isn't Compiz still alpha software?  Personally, I think Compiz is a fine name for marketing, and if people want to theme their eye candy a certain way, then that could be something the community division decides to turn into a community-driven project in the future.

As Jeff said on page 39 of the infamous name poll thread:

- Compiz-Extra and Composite Community are not easy to brand and are quite forgettable (on purpose). A good name should be memorable and be easily identifiable. Think of Apache and the apache feather logo. Apache would have been an excellent web server without the name and logo, but with them it easily became the most popular. While we don't generally think of an open source project as having competition, in one sense we are competing for the Windows desktop mindshare, and we need every advantage we can get if we ever want to see Linux succeed on the desktop.

For now, Compiz IS the brand, and should remain the brand. The name works fine, the bling can be community-themed for the purposes of polish.  If in the future, things need to be simplified when a "mass audience" exists, then there will be a time for that sort of discussion among all members of the community.  I really think the focus right now should be to get everyone under one roof.  That will do much more to prevent community fissures than a subset of the community attempting to do a big marketing push prematurely.

Jeff also said:

-We wanted to move past the acrimony of the past and use a name that didn't stir any anger or have historical "baggage".

I think integration of the community as well as the code transcends any remaining acrimony.  By design of the merge, everything is now Compiz.  So unless Compiz itself is renamed too, which I think is something that most people are not ready for yet, everyone needs to accept that everything, even the "community division" is still going to be Compiz, regardless of if the "community division" has a flashy new name for itself.

Mike Dransfield <mike at blueroot.co.uk> wrote: Firstly, I really have lost interest in what you guys do, I suspect that 
a lot of
other people have too.  This is just a post to make my opinion clear so 
that people
know.

I have never been against creating a merged community, but I seem to have
been branded a non-cooperator because I came to these conclusions when
everyone thought we were creating 'new software'.

Promoting anything other than the compiz 'brand' will only lead to a SPLIT
community not a joined happy one.  There will always be people who will
support compiz so there will always be duplication and waste.  Its not 
just me
and RYX, I feel the entire compiz community has been left out of these
discussions.  The closest we have is this thread.

http://forum.compiz.org/viewtopic.php?t=745

Here were my ideas for what to do with this mess.  Unfortunatly, I have no
say in it whatsoever, so its down to the 'community' to do it.  For some 
reason
I stopped being part of the community and I became 'compiz' at some point.

- Drop the opencompositing.org forum, as many people have pointed out
it is just a duplication of compiz.org.  It should never have been 
rushed into
in the first place.

- Speak to David about pointing 'community' subdomains such as 
forum.compiz.org
planet.compiz.org etc to the current spare server.  Move 
forum.compiz.org over WITHOUT
DATA LOSS.  The domain ownership and www. subdomains should remain as 
they are
for obvious reasons.  Extend the menu on www.compiz.org to include these 
extra
parts.

- Create releases for the plugins (ie as tar.gz's), release to the 
fdo.org compiz
releases directory (anyone with git access to fdo can do this).  If you 
are worried
about plugins 'tarnishing' the reputation of compiz (which is probably a 
valid
concern), then label them properly, anything like compiz-plugins-* will 
do.  If you
try you could have 4-5 package names done and out within 24 hours, pick
names which describe what they are so things are clear.

- Anything which is not a plugin, package in another package.  If there 
are lots
of small apps which only work with compiz, then call it compiz-apps (or 
something
like that)

- Drop libbs/libccs/libcompizconfig and work on making a settings tool 
which
does not rely on one plugin.  Work with David to get your legitimate 
requirements
added to the existing framework.  Creating a settings manager which only 
works
for < 30% of the compiz users is not very good.  You might as well just 
access gconf
directly since thats what > 70% of the users will be using anyway.  You 
cannot
complain how awful gconf is, but then use gnome, it does not make sense.

- Promote compiz and these extra plugins.  You guys are very good at 
that, its
a shame that everyones hard work is treated with such disrespect and is 
thrown
away all the time.

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