Re: Name of projects

["David A. Desrosiers" <hacker gnu-designs com>]

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> However, I would think that even if the name was changed to
> palm-link/gnome-palm it would be a wise move.

	Both projects existed before Palm had their fun playing with people
who had the word 'Palm' in their domains/products/software. Everyone knows
what a 'pilot' is when referring to computing devices. People still call
them "Palm Pilots", as do I.

	Just because Palm changed it to best a lawsuit, doesn't mean we have
to. There is no confusion between a writing implement company and an open
source project that talks to handheld PDA devices.

> The devices being supported are "PalmOS devices," so there's no longer a
> concern of tying the name to a specific make or model (pilot vs. clie vs.
> handspring, etc), and I would think the PalmOS name is going to be fairly
> stable at this point.

	Why not rename the Linux kernel module from 'visor' to 'palm-pda'
instead as well? There are a lot of "remnants" of the way things used to be
still in existance. I see your point, but there's no confusion right now
between gnome-pilot and pilot-link (and J-Pilot, K-Pilot, PilotManager, and
so on). If it were 'gnome-pda', 'pilot-link' 'J-Palm' and so on, I could see
there would be confusion, but right now, _ALL_ of the projects share the
same naming convention.

> The other concern (maybe I'm grasping at straws) is that Palm had to
> change the name because Pilot (the pen company, I believe) was unhappy
> with their use of the Pilot trademark.  Is there any concern about that
> here?

	No, although when I suggested changing the structs inside pilot-link
to 's/pilot/palm/g' *.c *.h, Palm took notice. The closer we get to them,
the more they will see us as a threat.

> We have an extra degree of separation, I guess, but I don't know how the
> laws would apply in this instance.

	The consumers (I disagree with that term, as if all we do is
"consume") don't seem to have an issue discerning between a Pilot Pen and a
Palm Pilot. What's interesting is that the Pilot Pen company makes
"styluses", and PDA handheld devices (of all types) also use "styluses" as
an input tool. _THAT_ can be confusing.

> Anyway, if David and JPR aren't convinced, then no big deal.  It just
> seemed like a good idea to me.  :-)

	It encompasses more than just the "outside" project names, dozens of
other projects, dependancies, and related files and structures would have to
be changed to make this all match up again. Not exactly an easy task.



d.


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