Submitted by We all know what KDE stands for, right? Unless you’re new here, you’ll know that it stands for the K Desktop Environment. While this certainly covers a large chunk of what KDE stands for, it has increasingly lost its meaning over the past few years. Consequently, the KDE team has decided to ‘reposition’ the KDE brand.
KDE is no longer ‘merely’ a desktop environment for X; not only has it gone cross-platform, but it also brought forth a large body of applications like KOffice and Amarok that are not really part of the desktop environment. On top of that, KDE also refers to the entire community that has developed around the project.
A number of things are changing in the way the project will refer to itself and its products. First and foremost, KDE is no longer an acronym, meaning that the “K Desktop Environment” is a thing of the past. From now on, KDE will refer to the KDE community as a whole, while also acting as an umbrella brand for the technology created by this community.
“The expanded term ‘K Desktop Environment’ has become ambiguous and obsolete, probably even misleading,” the team writes, “Settling on ‘KDE’ as a self-contained term makes it clear that we have made the shift from a limited set of software components to a community providing an ecosystem of free software applications and platforms for the end user on the desktop, mobile devices, and more.”
Several components of the actual desktop environment will be renamed too:
- The KDE Workspaces will be separately referred to as “KDE Plasma Desktop” and “KDE Plasma Netbook”
- The KDE technologies used for building applications will be referred to as the “KDE Platform”
- The KDE Applications will stay as they are: “the KDE Applications”
- The product we currently have released as “KDE 4.3” is essentially a compilation of our software (Workspaces, Applications and Platform), and thus the next release will be named “KDE Software Compilation 4.4”
That last one looks a bit problematic to me, and the comments on The Dot picked up on that. It’s quite clear to everyone what you mean when you say “KDE 4.3”, but that’s no longer what we’re supposed to say. It’ll take some time to get used to, and I have the sneaking suspicion it will be a long time – if ever – before the simple phrasing “KDE 4.x released” is replaced by the new, appropriate term.
In any case, this rebranding scheme does make sense, since KDE has indeed become so much more than just a desktop environment. Please, dear KDE people, do be nice to me when I accidentally use the ‘old’ designations in the next KDE release item.
I found the news well written and it reflects a great deal of thought by the people behind the efforts of the project.
I’ve always preferred the KDE Desktop (now KDE Plasma Desktop) over Gnome and other environments. Nothing wrong with the others, but options are always good to have.
Thanks the the entire KDE Staff and all the people who have worked hard to keep improving it over the years!
I have a feeling that it will never get away from the known “K” Desktop Environment brand. It can’t. It has been like this for ages. Thousands applications were named with a K, before their names. The K Menu was the K Menu. It’s too late.
Funny enough, it’s another non-sense move from the KDE community. Because I don’t see this happening.
That’s so true in that saying: “Two-headed is a monster”.
They are not dropping the K prefix. They just gave different names to the categories (kategories?) of the stuff they release instead of just calling everything just KDE. What you are referring to are the KDE Applications and from the linked article:
Why not call it Kool Desktop Environment again? :p
Because it’s not just the a desktop environment anymore, but a whole set of products.
lol they ran off the rails there a bit
thus the next release will be named “KDE Software Compilation 4.4”
rolls right off the tongue doesn’t it
I would prefer it to be renamed simply Plasma and that they provide their own Linux distro tweaked for it.
“KDE Software Compilation”
That makes it sound like shit was just randomly thrown together. Am I the only one who sees it that way? Definitely unhappy with this.
Why not “KDE Software Kompilation”? Then it’s like KSK, the german “Kommando Spezialkr~A¤fte” (Command Special Forces).
Hmm… I would tend to exchange “randomly” with “arbitrary”, with no deprecative implication, just as you could say the same about the various different Linux distributions that differ in the set of software they come with; the distributor chooses what to include and what not to include.
“Compilation” or “distribution”? Maybe KDE should really follow the idea to create their own Linux distribution that is really fitting KDE’s needs, so they would have the “brand” understanding they seem to achieve. Maybe, in some time we count “KDE” as another Linux distribution – the one that is KDE, instead of the one that ships with KDE.
Naming is somewhat confusing today. In the past, programs for X were prefixed with ‘x’ (famous exception: xargs); after KDE began its career, KDE programs began with ‘k’, and later on, this convention was changed so that KDE programs contained a ‘k’ in the name. Today, program naming – not only in KDE world – seems to be a process where artificially created words that do not stand in any relation with the program purpose become an established program name. I don’t count abbreviations (such as Gimp) here. At least in Germany, users don’t seem to be able to cope with those strange words that don’t mean anything, and are hard to spell and to pronounce for Germans. (Keep in mind that german PC users are scared by anything that is not contained in their own language.) So “Amarok”, “Krita”, “Brasero”, “Kopete” or “Gmencoder” may be excellent programs, but nobody likes them because of their stupid (sorry) names. But finally, KDE’s german language support isn’t that good at all…
Back on topic: The idea to focus on “KDE” representing more than a desktop environment (among others) isn’t bad per se, but KDE should then be able to be experienced as “being more”.
Good grief. Is KDE so bad off that it has to resort to “Kitchen Fresh Chicken” to get people hyped up about it. This is totally freaking lame. No, wait. It’s not KDE. Let’s call it “The Shack”. You suck, KDE. Cross platform my foot.
Edited 2009-11-26 05:33 UTC
What? That’s not what compilation means. Look it up in the dictionary, it just means to gather things from different sources and organise them into a single body. There’s nothing to imply “randomly thrown together” in that word.
Did you get hit bad by a GCC bug once or something? Or maybe you bought a lousy mix tape?
I know there is nothing wrong with the word itself, it’s the way it’s commonly applied. The crappy mix tape is exactly what came to mind.
Well, if they have to call it a ‘compilation’ then it implies that the connection between the components is not obvious. That unfortunately tends to speak of ‘stuff I threw together’, but the KDE foundation wants to make it clear that KDE is a desktop AND libraries AND programs. You can use the programs without the desktop, and the libraries without the desktop. With this announcement, though, KDE looks less kohesive.
Who the hell would want to use a KDE program outside of KDE? I mean most other environments have their own alternatives, sometimes they are even better. I definitely am not going to use Amarok on OSX, or Windows. I truly don’t understand what would be the point.
They should have just stuck with what they had or they could just go right ahead with Plasma as the name for the whole thing.
This is your point of view. You will be surprised to discover how many people uses KDE applications under, let’s say, GNOME. It’s normal, they are all Xlib-based applications.
And yes, also under OSX or Windows.
Sometimes worse.
I do not understand your point: even without porting to other environments, KDE would be much more than Plasma. That’s it.
Plus one.
Previously they called it KDE 4.3. That was bad enough, and only the hard-core geeks could understand why a piece of software should be called something as brain-dead as the “K Desktop Environment”.
But now you have to call it KDE SC 4.4. Just try to explain to non-geeks that you want them to try “KDE SC 4.4” and see how they like the name. It’s an idiotic idea that successfully changes the unpronounceable to the uncomprehensible. Great job, guys!
Were non-hard core geeks actually bothering to work out what KDE stood for anyway? I think not.
Are you having trouble with abbreviations in general if you find ‘SC’ to be ‘uncomprehensible’ (sic)?
The principle is that you take the first letter of each word in the thing you are trying to abbreviate and take the first letter capitalized. Hence, we can derive ‘SC’ from ‘Software Compilation’ as the first two letters of the two words are ‘S’ and ‘C’.
However, if you don’t think your target audience is familiar with the abbreviation it often makes sense to use the full original phrase.
In practice, the non-geek audience for KDE will probably never be exposed to the terms ‘SC’ or ‘Software Compilation’ because they will use a distro like Kubuntu, and ‘Kubuntu’ or ‘OpenSuSe’ will be what they think they are using.
Only if you are a geek tracking KDE releases will you ever come in contact with the term.
I think the word “gnome” is much easier to pronounce than the word “kde”. The word “kdesc” is even more awkward to pronounce. Moreover, words “kde” or “kdesc” don’t make any sense to the uninitiated, while the word “gnome” (as strange as it may sound at first when connected to a desktop environment) still is a normal word.
In some other threads I’ve tried to persuade people to believe that XFCE is a bad choice for the name of a desktop environment. I honestly believe that renaming XFCE to MOUSE (since they already use an image of a mouse in their logo) would be a very good idea. And mouse is a small animal, so it kind of fits to the idea of a desktop environment that tries to keep things small.
But back to KDE. I realize that my criticism could be viewed as unconstructive, because I failed to suggest a better term for replacing KDE. To make my critique a bit more constructive, I suggest that the project should replace the name KDE with a name like GEAR. They already use the image of a gear in their logo, and I understand that a part of their distribution is released under the name “extragear”. So it really wouldn’t be such a big change.
GEAR is a name that one can easily pronounce. Of course, then they would have to get rid of the habit to call all their software with names than begin with the letter K. But I would be happy even if they changed their name to KEAR. Kear would make no sense, but at least one could pronounce it just as easily as GEAR (or GNOME). But I’d really prefer if the KDE people changed the name of their project to GEAR.
*AGREED*…
XFCE is one of the reasons Olivier did not put his desktop environment into the mainstream as *THE* leading GTK+ based desktop. It’s a real shame, but this is life and you know how people can get stubborn to not change anything. Horrible name, horrible choice and I’m sorry that it doesn’t get too much attention and peoples interest.
Actually, MOUSE is a pretty good competitive name for that ugly-named desktop.
That’s just one of the problems with all of the OSS world. The naming is horrendous in all parts. KDE Gnome gimp gtk pitivi Thunderbird firefox f-spot etc. What in the world do any of these names mean? Way too many acronyms and made up words. Most other main stream apps are more sensical: photoshop word iChat iPhoto internet explorer. Is it seriously that hard to come up with a name that can actually be pronounced?
KDE has actually done nothing here to lessen confusion.
You forgot to mention the ever hilarious recursive naming….
Yeah.
Yeah like GNU… man is that funny
Borat: ‘NOT’
Not in all parts, but basically at a high percentage in the field of desktop (“Average Joe”) applications. For example, most CLI programs use names that tell you what the program basically does (e. g. pkg_add = add a package, smartctl = control program for S.M.A.R.T. functions, find = find files, sysinstall = system installer etc.). I agree that some program names have historical reasons, and many of them are acronyms, but they do exist longer than the Internet and have their place among experienced users. The average user mostly doesn’t even get in contact with them, so there’s no need to make them “sound better” (dd = copy_and_convert, tar = tape_archiver, fsck = file_system_checker etc.).
But with new programs, there should be some work done to give a good program a good name. An excellent example are web browsers. “Mozilla” and “Firefox” don’t “talk to the user”, they’re just brand names, such as you know that a “Ford” is a car (and not a fridge), or that “Coke” is something you can drink. Another example is Apple’s “Safari”: This name is “more talking”, like, you use the web as you go on a Safari, or even MICROS~1’s “Explorer”, like, you explore things. Maybe this idea inspired the name “Konqueror” for KDE’s web browser. But as I mentioned earlier, this name is hard to pronounce, at least for the average german PC user.
The means to establish brand names – names that do not have a relationship to what the product essentially is – is done through advertisement. Using common means of advertisement, you can “teach” the masses to understand every arbitrary brand name and bring it in relationship with a certain product. This is especially true for artificial words or for words borrowed from a foreign language, e. g. the “Handy” is the name of a mobile phone (cellphone) in Germany.
First of all, most of them are english words. If I would translate them to the german language (my native language), they end up in complete stupid thoughts. A gnome, a don’t know, a don’t know, another don’t know, a bird that explodes, a fox that’s on fire, a point where ‘F’ is…
I think the acronymes are not the problems as long as they carry an understandable meaning (e. g. xmms = X multimedia system).
To understand them, some knowledge is needed, especially about conventions, such as “tk” being a suffix for “toolkit”, which many toolkits follow.
A problem may arise when acronyms include other acronyms, e. g. GTK = Gimp Toolkit = GNU Image Manipulation Program Toolkit. That can be confusing.
The acronym KDE, as far as I know, is based upon CDE, the “Common desktop environment”, with C for “Common” changed to “K” with no special meaning.
Those are established brand names – established by advertising actions of wealthy commercial entities. It’s important to understand that most FOSS creators cannot afford this.
Using abbreviations and arbitrary product names isn’t restricted to FOSS, as I could prove. Think about VMS and what it stands for, think about z/OS and its meaning, think about the well-sounding IRIX and Solaris, think about HP-UX. They’re all well-known and established names, and nobody complains that “HP-UX is hard to remember” or that “Java sounds strange”.
The examples of iChat and iPhoto show how conventions are used within a certain ecosystem of software (and, in Apple’s case, of hardware, too).
But again, if you translate those words into your own native language, those names may sound stupid, such as “Word”. “Photoshop”, a shop where you buy photos, isn’t much better. But at least ther’s a relationship between what the program is called and what the program is inteded to be used for. A counterexample from MICROS~1’s “Office” suite is “Excel”. What’s an “Excel”? A thing with numbers in tables. And “Powerpoint”? A point where all the power is?
It seems to. I may say that I agree with your point, basically.
KDE is just jumping on the same waggon as all other creators of software are already on: There’s a new program, it needs a name. Something has to be chossen. Once choosen, it can’t be changed anymore, except an advanced product is created on the basis of an older product, such as “Mozilla” has become “Firefox”.
In case of “good naming”, KDE as well as Gnome or Xfce (I think that’s the correct writing today) are on the same level. Program names seem to be completely arbitrary chosen, and the choice often leads into confusion or plain head shaking, especially in non-english speaking countries.
It really seems that you have to use CLI programs if you want to have good program names.
According to your idea of a “mass renaming”: That cannot be done with all of the programs. I remember that the “Pidgin” IM program had another name some years ago, and today it’s known by this name, such as “Gimp” is used synonymous for a professional image manipulation program. You cannot rename them. But what’s possible is to pay more attention at program names when you introduce a new program.
Edited 2009-11-26 05:41 UTC
Picking a name that sounds great in all languages is hard, I would even say impossible if your goal is truly all languages. And if you go too generic your program becomes hard to find and hard to distinguish from other programs. I mean you could name a group of programs, web browser, image creator, music player, word processor, spreadsheet, email, instant messenger, ect… But your going to have a hell of a time finding it in search or differentiating yourself from the competition. A good name should be short, catchy, and be paired with good logo. Its a big plus if the name suggests functionality, but in practice its hardly a requirement. Branding isn’t a big deal especially if you throw the function into a subtitle or somewhere in the metadata so a search for web browser will bring up firefox. Brands are everywhere and present in every market, no one is not using a program because branding name, if the product is good people will recommend it to their friends and it will spread. If words like twitter and google can catch on anything can. The exception being if your name already carries some bad connotation like the gimp. And you need to check for that in multiple languages too, a few products have been burned by their name having an unintentional meaning in another language.
I’m really ambivalent about the KDE change. its marketing. If they think this will make the K desktop environment, excuse me, the kde software compilation an easier sell to people then by all means change it. No one is going to drop it over some thing so minor and I can kind of see their point. They are trying to sell a whole software stack no just a DE so they are trying to promote the whole software stack. Honestly it changes nothing for me and I doubt any programers are having much of their time wasted by this so why not.
Well, I laughed.
One doesn’t need users to be able to “understand” the program names. Acronyms are fine, because the description of the program function is right there on the menu.
The menus are laid out in logical groupings by functionality. Anyone can quickly find an application they are after, without having to knnow the name of it.
Example screenshot:
http://ourlan.homelinux.net/qdig/KDE4_desktop/Cahkra-ArchLinux-KDE-…
You don’t have to know that the Office Suite program for presentations is called OpenOffice.org Impress, or that the spreadsheet program is called OpenOffice.org Calc, because (as the screenshot above shows) this information is intrinsic to and displayed for you right there on the menus.
BTW, the names Microsoft PowerPoint and Microsoft Excel are no more or less confusing than OpenOffice Impress and OpenOffice Calc. The Windows programs are a bit harder to find on the menus, however, because you have to know the name of the software vendor before you can find the menu entries.
What the heck does Excel mean? Outlook? PowerPoint? Access? .Net? Safari? Quark ? Quicken? Flash? Acrobat? Google? Yahoo?
There are a lot of strangely worded programs that don’t quite explain what they do. Its not limited to FOSS. But of FOSS programs, I’ve always thought that the KDE programs were most appopriately named: Kwrite, Kmoney, KOffice. Konsole, Kedit, etc. Basically anything that starts with a K, I instantly suspect is a kde app. That’s good branding. Like the i for Apple.
The problem they have is surely KDE 4? I think its beautiful, and its most creative as a redesign of the UI. But no way am I ever going to offer this stuff to a naive user, any more than I would start them off with fluxbox or enlightenment, which are also both great, in their own ways.
I don’t know what they were thinking of. Not in terms of the thing itself, but in terms of the people who were going to have to use it. You just cannot do this stuff to the mass market. And yes, I have fired it up several times, quite liked it, decided fluxbox was still the main choice, and each time wondered what on earth I would say to a naive user if he/she were confronted with it.
And answer came there none.
Pfffft.
I have introduced KDE 4 to quite a number of new users in the past month or so.
Not one of them had any particular trouble with it.
It works great.
Me as well, and I gave them Ubuntu (with GNOME) but they prefer KDE.
You would say nothing because a ‘naive’ user would simply pick it up and get on with it, as long as there were integrated applications there for a user to do the things they normally do.
You’re being naive for even thinking of bringing Fluxbox into any conversation.
Odd to read that as I always thought KDE4.x was the most accessable DE for Linux newbies from Windows-land.
In a vanilla set up, it’s got:
* a left justified start button – like Windows.
* …in a Task bar at the botton of the screen – like Windows.
* and a system tray at the right of the task bar – like windows.
* it has a digital clock (also on the far right of the task bar) – also like windows
* KDE has simular window deccorations to Windows
* and single unified control panel (like windows) which then launches control pannel applets (like windows)
Sure, you can heavily customize KDE to look different to it’s default – vanilla – set up and sure, there are also many differences (some subtle, others more extreme) between KDE and Windows.
But for me, it seems the Window-esk in design out of all of the *nix DE I’ve tried.
So, for that alone, I think it’s probably the least intimidating DE for new users who previously used Windows.
Superficially, yes.
It’s close enough that you can probably use KDE 4 (and certainly KDE 3) if you’d only previously used Windows. Most of the basic parts are in the same place, and work much the same way.
However, once you get beyond the superficial level, there are so many little details that differ.
For example, in KDE, windows snap to the borders of the screen. New windows open, where possible, such that they do not overlap existing windows. The UI widgets don’t behave quite the same way, in some cases better, in others worse, but usually just different. Drag and drop is more ubiquitous in KDE than Windows, but less so than in Mac OS X. The file browser determines file types by examining the file, not by file extension (sometimes an advantage, sometimes not).
Probably the most obvious little detail – files open by single-clicking, rather than double-clicking. Double-clicking simply doesn’t exist in default KDE. It’s difficult to get used to, but once you’re used to it, it’s difficult to get used to double clicking again. Absolute newbies will probably prefer single-clicking, but it’s probably grating to anyone else who isn’t used to it.
Really, the “problem” isn’t that KDE looks fundamentally different. It’s all the little details. They’d be grating to an experienced Windows user (I’ve seen that first-hand). They look similar enough that you’re expecting the details to be the same, but they aren’t. I used to get the same problem switching between KDE 3 and Windows XP.
I have fewer problems switching between KDE 4 and Windows Vista / Windows 7. They look far less similar than KDE 3 / Windows XP, so I find it much easier to mentally switch gears.
But then an experience user could easily change KDE or Windows to reflect their preferences (as they’re going to be more tech savvy) so I don’t see the problem.
I love the fact that KDE has a simular GUI as Windows because, as much as I might dislike other aspects of Windows, I’ve always liked the way how the GUI was layed out.
But I also love the fact that KDE isn’t a clone of Windows. They’ve taken the bits they liked from the GUI and added a few things they preferred.
So while it might grate some users who are new to the system – ultimately it’s still better than creating a carbon copy (as people would stick to Windows and not bother with KDE).
You’re sort of validating their decision with this comment. KDE Desktop != KDE.
When people refer to KDE, they are generally referring to the desktop itself. They don’t like this, they don’t like that, they wish it would do this or that…
But the Desktop is just a subset of what the KDE project provides, and should not be the entire measure by which the group and project is judged.
Personally, I’ve always felt that the real story behind “KDE 4” had nothing to do with the desktop changes, but with the abstraction that was done, along with Qt’s built-in cross-platform capability, to provide a powerful application stack portable across multiple platforms, and not restricted just to *nix. KDE the application stack is, frankly, more analogous to Java in a very broad sense, than it is to Gnome (or E17, or XFCE, or…). The KDE desktop (plasma desktop), on the other hand, is the component of KDE designed to provide a desktop environment on *nix, and is analogous to Gnome et al.
The separation model isolates the base libraries for supporting KDE applications, meaning that users running KDE apps under a non-KDE desktop will not have to drag in all the desktop components they will not need. This will be particularly important for mobility platforms. The idea is that you should be able to cleanly port your KDE applications to things like Win Mob, Symbian or Maemo, let alone Windows or OSX, without dragging in a boatload of desktop dependencies or heavy hacking of the code.
This will also allow a focus on the KDE applications themselves, whether part of the KDE project proper, or third-party. There are numerous high-quality KDE applications that should be perfectly usable for people that don’t necessarily feel comfortable with the KDE desktop, or even *nix itself.
I’m not sure I entirely agree with the naming scheme, but I do think any change that tries to re-brand the key elements of the project itself are a step in the right direction, and will help clarify the development structure for future developers that may otherwise associate KDE with *nix-only development.
Personally, I think an emphasis on the advantages and portability of the development framework, versus an over-emphasis of the “native” desktop environment, has a better chance of attracting new developers. I think it also emphasizes the most distinct difference between KDE and alternative DEs, and it’s about time they started communicating this point through branding.
So to your original comment, you may not feel that the KDE desktop is optimal for all users, but that shouldn’t preclude evaluating individual KDE applications under your DE of choice, and choosing the best tool for your job.
Just my 2c…
Isn’t that what it originally stood for?
The kool thing was kind of a joke, it was “K Dektop Environment”. Now what they do whith that is:
Sorta like they “repositioned” the standard version numbering schemes… Yeah, we all know how well that brilliant bit of marketing worked. At best this is pointless, at worst it’ll backfire, potentially amusingly
Perhaps I’m easily confused, but while I understand they’re breaking up KDE into three different brandings, I’m not sure what the delineation is.
Edit: Ok, they do say how it breaks down… Like so:
Plasma desktop: Includes the desktop, widgets, window manager, maybe System Settings and the like to manage the thing, etc etc…
Platform: Akonadi/Phonon/Solid/Plasma that must be targeted to make ‘KDE’ applications.
Applications: KDE-games, KDE-pim, KDE-edu, KDevelop and Dolphin; special relationship with Amarok, K3B and the like continues outside of ‘KDE’
Edited 2009-11-26 14:09 UTC
Yeah, I think this new naming does make more sense. Like Amarok, which under the old labelling is not part of KDE, because it’s not part of the release. Except it IS a KDE app. And also it’s part of KDE as in KDE the organisaton/community/whatever.
This way is better. KDE is the group. Amarok is part of KDE. Amarok is not part of the KDE Software Compilation, because it has its own release cycle. It’s part of the KDE Applications, because that’s obvious. Also it’s not part of either of the workspaces (Plasma desktop/netbook) which also should be obvious.
Nah I was a bit wary when I first read about this but actually it does seem to remove a lot of confusion and make more sense this way.
While this certainly covers a large chunk of what KDE stands for, it has increasingly lost its meaning over the past few years.
I’m not sure about this. I rather think what a Desktop Environment is and covers has changed.
katastrophe
I agree it seems a little krazy at first, but I kan understand it… and as people new to linux begin to learn the terminology and software from skratch it will seem perfectly kanonikal to them.
You mean perfektly kanonikal right?
Yes, thank you for the korrektion!
eKlectic
AMAROK and those vertical texts… ARGHHH… burn in hell KDE
http://amarok.kde.org/en/releases/2.2.1
http://amarok.kde.org/files/amarok_221.png
What vertical texts?
Well, I like KDE and I am generally very interested in everything that happens around the project and I vote up every article related to KDE on OSAlert, but I really don’t understand why this is important news.
But it’s not really the news, but the whole thing. Who cares about this? Most people and even most professionals (companies, journalist, developer) will most likely not care about this anyway and will refer how they like. What’s the matter?
Talking about the KDE platform and KDE applications makes sens, but I definitely have to say that “KDE Software Compilation” sounds stupid – especially when you start slapping version numbers on it. Why doesn’t KDE 4.4 work even with being more explicit about the rest? “KDE Software Compilation 4.4” is way too long. And while abbreviating it to KDE SC 4.4, it just adds extra confusion IMO.
Really, my first reaction is that this is marketing nonsense. I love KDE, but this all seems a little silly to me. KDE doesn’t stand for anything anymore: fine. They want to be more explicit about KDE being made up of many different parts: find. They want to make it clear that KDE is more than just a desktop environment: fine. But going and slapping long names on everything just seems stupid to me – especially when you want to slap extra names on the project name itself. It strikes me as extra confusion and no gain.
Well, at least they’re not like gnome and claiming that you should pronounce the g. Doing that just makes you look like an idiot to anyone who actually speaks English.