[om-council] Holy name
Kate Lebedeff
kate at lebedeff.co.uk
Tue Jan 19 16:08:13 EST 2016
Dear council
We discussed with all of you the certain issues which follow the name OpenMandriva after the Mandriva insolvency, and here is a summary of some of our talks and related issues.
Background etc to the question that follows.
1. Very often, and many of us (so one can definitely say it is systematic, not just once or twice) have received questions or comments “ah, are you alive? I thought you are bankrupt (=“together with the company”). Since company’s death the Association name misguides quite many people, our users, (potential) contributors and business partners (sponsors).
2. Business/sponsor’s money. We have a real problem in Brazil, where real contracts based on our product were very hard to get (and some were not done simply), just because of the name. Local businesses (including large companies) had bad experiences with Mandriva and it is extremely hard to explain them that it is a completely different thing.
Same bad story we had in France.
So, some solution is needed.
We had a very hard time a while ago, when the “search for holy name” was conducted. Yes, the trouble maker is out, but still I am very unsure that running another name campaign is good idea. I mean, apart from everything else, this is very time and nerves consuming, and everybody here has other, much more important things to do.
At the same time, the current name was chosen for a reason, to show the roots, our origin, and that reason stays.
So what one could do to get rid of negative effects and not to step into messy “search for holy name” environment?
Suggestion is to replace the name of the association (do not mess up with products names! we speak now of the name of the umbrella organisation, to council of which you belong:) with abbreviation:
OpenMandrivaAssociation = OMA. The good thing is that abbreviation is widely used and would not be unnatural to do.
Now questions.
1. Which abbreviation to use? Is it important for you, if it will be OM, OMA, OMV?
2. How to do it? On one hand, it is not a change - it is same abbreviated name, on the other, Colin pointed out, that changing “OpenMandriva" to “OMA” without consulting all members of association may be interpreted same way as POK acted when he just renamed stuff in ABF.
2 ways:
1. We agree on abbreviation and go forward replacing by it the current name step by step, without fuzz, keeping the full name on “about” page, to indicate our roots”. We do take this decision just in council (legally fully valid, it is an ethics issue if ot do or not)
2. We write an email to all members, explaining the above reasons and asking them to please agree, and to point the abbreviation they feel better. To be ready that it may lead to unpredictable or as minimum to unclear results.
Please express your choice
Thanks
P.S. We are on active website development stage and your decision may have effect on your colleagues work, please let’s try to make decision asap, we discussed the matter already several times:)
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