Re: Please sit down before reading this, and take a deep breath.

[John Williams <john williams lists gmail com>]

On Mon, 2005-12-12 at 20:16 -0300, Santiago Roza wrote:
> > Oh!  Then why do we capitalise it?  Is it still an acronym?  If so, what
> > do the letters stand for?
> 
> who cares about that?  several brands are usually spelled in
> uppercase, and that doesn't seem to undermine their popularity or
> acceptance...
I care, but perhaps not for the reasons you might suppose.  Those brands
which are spelt in upper case are usually acronyms that have no meaning
as actual words, e.g. IBM, KFC, etc.  (I can't actually think of any
others right now!)

But "GNOME" also means "gnome", i.e. a small, dumpy, cutesy-stupid type
fellow.  Following Murray's repeated points about brand association, is
that the type of image we want? (Is this impression only valid for
native English speakers?)

But before we get too worked up about this, I am not sure that it's such
a big deal.  I just wondered what other people thought about name as a
pure brand-name, rather than a symbol that stands for concepts which we
all know and love.

By the way, Santiago, I think collecting negative reviews is incredibly
useful.  Now it is up to us to make sure this your efforts do not go to
waste.  Are you listening, Luis?  :-)

ka kite ano,

John