On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 02:05:01PM +0000, Martyn Taylor wrote:
<winge>
Gents,
I know we all had a bit of fun coming up with weird and wonderful
names when we were looking to rename IME (or now Tim).
But seriously... are we actually going to call our projects things
like Gablestablerfahrer, WingedMonkey and alike? I'm all for
avoiding boring names like IME and EVM (no offence MIQ) but surely
there is some middle ground to be had here? We should at least make
an effort to name our projects to roughly describe what they actually
do?
I'm not necessarily advocating for Gabelstaplerfahrer right at this
point; I think naming in premature. But I don't really think we should
preemptively rule it out, either.
That said, I don't think that naming projects after what they do is
really that common. "Linux" doesn't communicate "open-source operating
system," and someone unfamiliar could just as easily think it was a
disinfectant. A company named "Red Hat" is more apt to make, well, hats.
Even "McDonald's" doesn't communicate food -- it might as well be a
Scottish rifle manufacturer if you just go by the name.
And then there's a whole host of companies with ridiculous names that
we've come to accept. Yahoo? Zynga? Red Hat?
I think there's an even broader category of fun/eccentric names in open
source software. Katello has a component called 'thumbslug'. Fedora's
named releases Tettnang, Moonshine, Werewolf, Beefy Miracle, Spherical
Cow, etc. Some of thin's release names have been obscene[1].
So, I really want our project to be taken seriously, but I don't see a
name like Gabelstaplerfahrer or Winged Monkey as precluding that. (In
fact, I've already grown used to Winged Monkey as a serious project with
a memorable logo.)
I'm not really arguing in this email that we _should_ name our cloud
broker Gabelstaplerfahrer. I'm just saying -- when it comes time to name
things, let's brainstorm names and then vote on them, rather than
preemptively shooting down names. I'd much rather work on
Gabelstaplerfahrer than on Enterprise Cloud Broker Platinum Edition
Premium.
-- Matt
[1]
https://github.com/macournoyer/thin/blob/master/CHANGELOG