Sometime last year I expressed my thoughts on the kde-promo mailing list that one of the reasons for lacking support of the KDE rebranding initiative from 2009 was the lack of official abbreviations – after all, “KDE 4.7” is easier to write than “KDE Plasma Desktop 4.7”. I got no responses but for the last months I didn’t really care a lot.
After yesterday’s announcement of KDE Frameworks 5.0 I’ve seen talk about “KDE 5.0” on several web sites. But as anyone into KDE knows, there is no KDE5. Reading the mailing lists and other Planet KDE posts, it seems to me that the Plasma Workspaces won’t necessarily jump to the next major version once Frameworks 5.0 are released.
So here’s the list of abbreviations that I personally use since a while and also saw a few others use as well:
- KPW – KDE Plasma Workspaces: All shells developed by KDE.
- KPD – KDE Plasma Desktop: The shell by KDE for desktop computers.
- KPN – KDE Plasma Netbook: The netbook shell.
- KF5 – KDE Frameworks 5: Successor of KDE Platform and kdelibs.
- KApps: KDE Applications: Applications written by KDE.
- KR: KDE Release: Coordinated release of several KDE modules twice per year. Formerly called Software Compilation (KSC/SC4) or K Desktop Environment. (KR is probably the most common abbreviation as openSUSE uses that since quite some time to refer to its own release repositories.)
So that’s it. Remember: That list is in no way officially endorsed by KDE Promo, KDE e.V., or anyone else.
As with all 3-letter abbreviations: Conflicting meanings exist – be it Kathy’s Patch Works, or a Netherlands telecommunications provider. So use them only if the context is clear.
My Little Blog 
This bad marketing eventually kill KDE… So sad to see these dozen of abbreviations that just hinder to see the fact: Big Dragon is dying, the useful applications obtain far less attention than things that improve something, someday, somehow.
And the saddest thing is that marketoid dreams are replacing real development.
I think that names getting complex won’t help, for me it will always be kde 4.7/8/whatever.
I would use other scheme:
KDE: name for the community, the developers and everything as a whole.
KDE with a number after it would mean one of the sixmonth release, as they are used differently there’s no problem.
Plasma: name for the desktops, netbook/desktop/active variants.
Frameworks: kdelibs and kde platform succensor
Applications: every app, including amarok/rekonq/etc.
if out of context, plasma frameworks and applications can be used with KDE in front of them.
My 2 cents:
Plasma: The shell by KDE for desktop computers.
Plasma Netbook: The netbook shell.
Platform 5: Successor of KDE Platform and kdelibs.
Applications written by KDE will have their own names
All the rest apart from the workspace essential apps (Plasma, Kwin, File Manager, utils, etc.) should have their own release schedules
My idea on the above, and what I think the rebranding was all about, was to enforce the idea of KDE as an “organization” (or community, as you prefer) which makes several applications, just like Mozilla, for example. I mean, KDE is to Plasma what Mozilla is to Firefox.