[om-council] Holy name
Colin Close
itchka at compuserve.com
Sat Jan 23 17:33:30 EST 2016
On Tuesday 19 Jan 2016 22:08:13 Kate Lebedeff wrote:
> 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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I wrote this some days ago.
Hi,
The commercial and sponsorship side of a our distro is important but we are a free software distribution with members who have voting rights which need to be respected.
A common practice in manufacturing is to re-badge/rename a manufactured product to suit the market it is being sold into. We can (within reason) allow our sponsor to call the distribution anything they like to suit their commercial purpose. We already have "branding" packages within our distro so this is a feasible option. I think I am correct in saying that our commercial sponsor already has a separate webpage which could also be "branded".
Is there a problem with this approach?
Why hasn't this alternative been examined? Trying to force a choice on people in this way without considering all the options is a little short sighted. As for the downside of re-badging, I can see only one and that is that those that are using our product in Brazil will not know it is ours and so it might be that we do not get user spin off from commercial use. Is there any reason why this solution should not be considered?
However it may be that the council may vote to take the route suggested and if that is the case OM is my preference. As regards member voting I think we are asking the wrong question. The vote should be on whether we abbreviate the name or not. This is far less controversial and can be given a strong justification because of the need for commercial sponsorship. Our members should be consulted if it turns out that it is decided to adopt an abbreviated name. If our sponsor re-badges then we do not need to consult the membership.
I am more in favour of finding a different way forward than renaming the distro but before going down this course we should really try to find an alternative solution to the problem rather than trying to get everybody to agree to something over which there are a number of different points of view.
If I had to choose I'd probably go for Scion give all the roots stuff..
One thing is for certain we should not let someone who is not part of this distro dictate how we make our decisions if we need to do something then we should do it and once it is done that individual is then completely disarmed.
Colin
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