Re: Change the name
От | Christian Voelker |
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Тема | Re: Change the name |
Дата | |
Msg-id | F1ACDEEC-8475-4CC8-A003-BA1934C98EAB@gmx.net обсуждение исходный текст |
Ответ на | Re: Change the name (Ron Mayer <rm_pg@cheapcomplexdevices.com>) |
Ответы |
Re: Change the name
(Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com>)
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Список | pgsql-advocacy |
Hello, new to this list but long term postgres user. David Fetter mentioned the discussion in his weekly update that gets posted to the german list and he called it civilized. That made me reading certainly some hundred posts from the archive, maybe half of the thread and finally joining the list to participate in this discussion. I came to the conclusion that it is not friendly at all. Can there really be people who search for misspelled semicolons in their source files as a day job, blaming others to make a lot of hot air out of nothing when arguing about pronounciation of the project name? I can hardly believe. Pronounciation might be only one single argument compared to so many arguments against a name change. And it is a soft point com- pared to a missing semicolon that inevitably stops your query. But that doesnt make it be a weak argument. For me, there can hardly be anything more striking. Working code is of utmost importance, but all the bruhaha around doesnt count less I believe. And if marketing oriented people have a strong opinion about that issue, constantly neglecting the im- portance of their input feels rather destructive. Some day, they will leave you coders alone and the project might decline. I personally like to pronounce the RDBMS as Postgres-Qu-El but am too lazy to write the whole thing, so actually I do just the opposite of what seems to be common use. But when reminded of the problems with the two names I can recall the hurdles that they exposed in the be- ginning. And that was long before I asked anybody about it in a face to face talk on a fair. It was really disturbing when googling for a solution on an issue I had, never to know exactly whether the results referring to postgres would really apply to the postgresql thing I was using as well. Name confusion is not a minor thing and having postfix and postgres running on the same machine (postfix is the default MTA under MacOS X) caused confusion with the postmaster process showing in top and ps when I expected it not to run, only to find out that it was not what it seemed to be. And finally, you took action, great. The strangest solution to the problem I found in this thread was renaming to PostgresQL. Sorry, but there is no such thing as a separate Postgres Query Language, incompatible with Standard SQL as implied by this name. This would certainly bring confusion to a new level. And please, do not install a committee to decide on that - these are kind of solutions that come from such circles. For me the discussion seems to be the type of thing where you keep to say "no" until the day where you finally say yes. Its in the air. I dont like postgres much better or better at all, but it is obvious that it will be the official name sooner or later. It needs to happen some day. The sooner the better. From my point of view, the marketing name move should not be tied to the next major release. Doing so puts pressure on the decision what might be worth a major number and when it should happen (ASAP). This is not appropriate for a project, where quality standards should drive the decision for final release dates. On the other hand, I share the doubts with package renaming. I use the macports project for updating my system and in this package management system the port to be installed is called postgresql8. Renaming this to postgres8 would break all ports depending on it. Most ports will continue to use an old version that does not receive security fixes any more. But with the advent of postgres 9, there will be a separate package named postgersql9 or postgres9 anyway, because some other package maintainer might decide to stay with the older release. Nobody will mind the name change then. I guess this is the same with freebsd ports, debian apt-get, redhat rpm, gentoo and myriad of other package management repos. Under these circumstances, a big bang solution does not seem feasable. The big bang type of name change usually happens only with companies that have the bang to do so. But even they sometimes decide for a incremental change. Rebranding the german mobile carrier Mannesmann D2 to vodafone was an example for this strategy and renaming the electric power company HEW to Vattenfall also took more then a year and several big sports events to make sure the transition works smoothly and people dont refuse to pay to a company they never contracted with. But, this does not mean necessarily that we need to switch silently. I tend to use the elephants trunk and trumpet it out, but I have to admit that it does not fit perfectly with an incremental strategy. As with the all the work that needs to be done on the marketing side, I dont understand these objections completely, because they should be mentioned by those who would have to deal with it and not by the coders who are opposed to a change. I bet, that people who do care for a good name will take care for a good visual appearance as well. I guess that the artwork stuff will be done in no time by people who are happy to contribute. FreeBSD ran such a thing for their website relaunch as their first Google Summer of Code project some years ago IIRC - just a proposal. Regarding printed paper, it was already mentioned that it usually grows old before a year is over. T-Shirts are certainly different, but they get a pale stripe across the breast when exposed to the sun and dont look good after a while as well. Everybody who buys marketing stuff for more then a year in advance will regret this decision some day, whether the name changes or not, because of the cash drain, the waste of storage and all this. And if somebody comes moaning to a booth on a fair, complaining that the name on the booth and the website are different, what better time to ask for some money to change this? The only thing that I saw that is a real obstacle besides dullness were the legal issues raised by the fact that a company holds rights to the name but is not willing to explain what they intend to do with it. This could become a complete showstopper. But I am not a lawyer and there will be others who might find a way to deal with that. This was more then two cents I admit, but spending hours reading, I could not resist and keep my mouth shut. Bye, Christian
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