[om-council] Holy name

Bernhard Rosenkraenzer bero at lindev.ch
Fri Jan 22 16:49:51 EST 2016


On 2016-01-19 22:08, Kate Lebedeff wrote:
> We had a very hard time a while ago, when the “search for holy name”
> was conducted.  Yes, the trouble maker is out,

Don't count on it - he'll be back to bug us with "told you so" as soon 
as we make any attempt to change anything about the name.
His reaction will probably be a broadcast to the world saying something 
along the lines of "I've always said naming it OpenMandriva was a 
horrible idea, but the stupid marketing robots in the council who stole 
the project overruled me causing the project to go down, now they 
finally woke up to the fact that I was right all along, but they're 
STILL messing it up by not doing the right thing and going for a name 
that connects back to Mandrake-not-Mandriva. Abandon the hopeless 
council Nazis and join the REAL thing, Moondrake, that has been doing 
the right thing since 2012. Oh by the way, here's a new prerelease, 
codename CIMETH (Council Is More Evil Than Hitler)."

> 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.

True.

> At the same time, the current name was chosen for a reason, to show
> the roots, our origin, and that reason stays.

Also true. Unless...
What happened to the Conectiva name when Mandriva went out of business?
If it was "freed up", that might be a good option for a renaming:
- It used to have a good reputation while it was a separate project
- Links (somewhat) to our roots and origin
- We have a good excuse to change the name to that ("because now we 
can") without triggering as much of a fight.
- Hasn't been in use for long enough to not be connected to the Mandriva 
bankruptcy
- We wouldn't even have to change the logo because it could just be 
"reinterpreted" to be a bold C and a regular o

> 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?

Not very important, all have their drawbacks...
All 3: domain names not available (and someone hearing about OM* will 
not necessarily know that more information can be found at 
OM*-project.org or whatever and may give up after seeing OM*.org/OM*.com 
being unrelated).
OMA: German grandma. No problem with grandmas, but they're probably 
about as far disconnected from a technology related project as anything 
thinkable.
OMV: Hard to pronounce, potentially too close to "bad history"
OM: Buddhist meditation syllable - likely many "om projects" exist 
making search results harder, also guaranteed to annoy extremist 
followers of other religions.

Some other alternative and pronouncable abbreviations also generally 
don't have the domain names available (OpenM, OpenMA, OpenManA, OManA, 
...).
Some alternatives that might work and have domain names available (e.g. 
M-Open) would require shifting stuff around a little and would make it 
harder to just move towards it by using abbreviations.

> 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.

IMO it's another thing of being pragmatic (1.) vs. being true to our 
ideology (2.).
Either is ok with me (leaning towards 2.), but I'm wondering if there's 
a 3rd better option.

ttyl
bero



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