Re: ROUGH draft of GNOME 3.0 press release (request for comments)

[Sumana Harihareswara <sumanah panix com>]

Thanks for your comments, Olav, Brian, Dave, Sri, and John.  I also got 
a review from marketing guy Ryan Singer, who said the press release 
looks pretty good.  And I've added a quote from Miguel de Icaza.  I've 
changed "Linux" throughout to either "free and open source" or 
"Unix-type".  I've changed the wording around the Jon McCann quotes so 
everything flows better.  I've done some other prose re-wording & fixed 
some spelling, and responded to your other comments.

I shall be sending my next draft in a separate message and will request 
comments.

To respond to a couple of other comments, mostly from John:

On 03/29/2011 05:54 AM, John Stowers wrote:
> I'm also not quite clear on the audience for this - if you think the
> market for this release is the tech press then my comments might be less
> relevant.

Yes, I anticipate the audience being the tech press.

> 9 years without a major release has negative connotations, and while
> 'major release' has a specific meaning in software, how about something
> more user facing
>
> 'Today the GNOME desktop project releases its first and most signifigant
> redesign of the computer experience in 9 years'

Thanks.  Changed.

> > The GNOME 3 platform consists of the GNOME Shell and the GNOME 3
> > development foundation.
> I would not introduce the distinction or idea of the platform or desktop
> or shell or too many new terms yet.

Thanks.  I reworded and streamlined this explanation and other later 
passages about the "foundation" ("platform" instead).

> > GNOME 3 is the cumulative work of five years of planning and design by
> > the GNOME community.  McCann notes: "Perhaps the most notable part of
> > the design process is that everything has been done in the open. We've
> > had full transparency for every decision (good and bad) and every change
> > we've made. We strongly believe in this model. It is not only right in
> > principle it is just the best way in the long run to build great
> > software sustainably in a large community."
> Do we want to pick this fight again?

It doesn't seem like fight-picking to me; if we really did do everything 
in the open, then we should celebrate that and trumpet our horn.

> > In partnership with Novell, Red Hat, other Linux distributors, schools
> > and governments, and user groups, GNOME 3 will reach millions of users
> > around the world.  Over 3500 people have contributed changes to the
> > project's code repositories, including the employees of 106 companies.
> > GNOME 3 includes innumberable code changes since the 2.0 release 9 years
> > ago.
> Nice!

I am especially glad you like how I phrased this, John.

> > Users and fans of GNOME have planned more than a hundred launch parties
> > around the world.  Users can download GNOME 3 from gnome3.org
> > immediately, or wait for Linux distributions to carry it over the coming
> > months.  GNOME 3 continues to push new frontiers in user interaction.
> Should we call this 'try GNOME 3 from gnome3.org' AIUI the livecd is
> focussed on the live experience but we still recommend people wait for
> their distros to provide them with upgrades (although this obviously
> falls to pieces in the Ubuntu case).
>
> John

Yeah, it's because of the Ubuntu case that I'm saying "Users can 
download GNOME 3 from gnome3.org to try it immediately, or wait for 
distributions to carry it over the coming months."

best,
Sumana