Re: Changing the name of GUADEC

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

On Mon, 5 Sep 2005, David Neary wrote:

> Date: Mon, 05 Sep 2005 22:13:25 +0200
> From: David Neary <dneary free fr>
> To: Foundation-List <foundation-list gnome org>
> Cc: Guadec planning mailing list <guadec-planning gnome org>
> Subject: Changing the name of GUADEC
>
>
> I would like to propose changing the name of GUADEC. There are many
> reasons to do this, here are 5:
>
> 1. There is no link to GNOME in the name, or to being a conference
> 2. No-one knows what it means, which means the first question people ask
> isn't "when is it?" or "where is it?" or "who's going?" it's "what does
> it mean?"
> 3. It sucks.
> 4. Do we really want to limit it to Europe?
> 5. We have a great new name.
>
> Davyd Madeley came up with GConf.

This isn't an improve and not enough of an improvement to merit the
change.  If you had said "Gnome Con" which should need no further
explanation I might have been able to take your comment seriously
but as it stands you are replacing one bad bit of gibberish with
another.

> Some people might say that there are more important issues to deal with
> for GUADEC, like the content, the target audience, the direction, the
> site, all that. They're right. But this is one small thing we can make
> better, and finally correct an increasingly inaccurate pointless acronym.

Speaking of pointless acronyms we look like illetrates claiming GNOME is
an acronym if we never bothering to punctutate it G.N.O.M.E. and typing
GNOME is only slightly less cumbersome.  If anything we should stop
pretending Gnome was an acronym rather a contrived backcronym by people
who are too clever for their own good.  (Given the comments others have
made about the bad reputation Gnome has developed I think saying there are
people who are too clever for their own good is the most fair and polite
way I could possibly put it.)

> > And lets face it, the only reason we find GConf a good option is
because
> > of the inside joke with the name. For anyone not a core member of the
> > community that is lost.
>
> I like GConf for that reason,

For whatever reason GConf is not the most loved peice of software which
doesn't help this choice of name.

> and because it's got Conf in it,

Conference is more often abbreviated to "Con"

(I was thinking FreeCon sounds like "Freak On" and...) GCon, sounds almost
like "Geek On" but I'm sure any humour value of that would wear off fast.

> and it's a better abbreviation for 'the GNOME Conference' than GNOMECon
> or GNOME-Con(which has too many capitals) and GnomeCon violates the
> religious doctrine on GNOME capitalisation.

I hate acronyms.  Not clever, not funny, generally unhelpful.

Rather than waste any more time arguing over this specific suggestion I
think we can agree GUADEC is not exactly ideal and we could benefit from a
name change if it was for some greater purpose.

If a name change could really help entice a wider audience such as XCFE,
GPE, and not just Gtk developers but also KDE and Freedesktop.org
developers then that would be an excellent reason to change it and I could
get behind that.

Sincerely

Alan Horkan
http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/