Forum OpenACS Q&A: Time for a name change?

Now is a different story, though. Between AD's shift to Java, their
shift to a non-GPL-compatible license, and their move toward
proprietary software, there really is no reason to hope for
stronger relations with the company; nor is there much benefit to
be gained from it. To the contrary, we risk confusion by
continuing to associate this project with them. Casual observers
from the outside are prone to believe that OACS is just a port of
ACS Classic 4.2 to PostgreSQL when clearly it has already
become more than that. Plus, keeing the "A" in the name
continually invites people to ask when we are going to migrate to
Java and "catch up" with AD. I find myself constantly explaining to
prospective clients why the code fork was a good thing in this
case and why they should consider using a platform that was
abondoned by the company that bears its name.

I propose that we drop the "A" in "OACS" and rename the project
"Open Community System" or "OCS." The acronym is close
enough to the original that people who care will still see it's
heritage, but we lose the AD baggage that automatically comes
with their name. Since we'll undoubtedly be doing some PR work
after the first release, now would be a good time to change the
name if we're going to do it.

What do you think?

(Of course we all understand that my opinion is extremely biased, no?)

What else is unique about this thing that is currently called
OpenACS?

To be successful, a brand name should:

• be distinctive
• be easy to pronounce, recognize, recall, and store in memory
• suggest something about the project's benefits
• suggest the attributes of the project
• avoid misleading, nontranslatable, or potentially dysfunctional associations

If "collab" weren't already so overdone, I'd suggest using it as
part of the title. I do like "Open" and would prefer to keep it as part
of the name, if possible.

I like the word Open.

I would vote for:

Agora (although it's a little obscure, it sounds good)
Communikit (that's kind of perfect actually)

Perhaps we can narrow this down to five candidates and vote? Does anybody think we shouldn't change the name?

• samoyed.org
• alex.org
• OpenSam.org

alexir.org (from elixir)

openalexir.org

openalex.org (sounds a bit weird maybe)

If we are talking about a major name change than I don't think it is acceptable to have to use new_name projects.org as a web address. People aren't going to remember to add "projects" to the name, won't reach the site, and the whole purpose is lost.

I don't think that Alex ever caught on as a mascot. I would drop him.

I have a suggestion, lets pay $25k or so to an outside marketing firm to come up with a non-english word that is an allusion to what we really mean and create an ugly logo. I know at least one company that has taken that path...

Agora also means "now" in Portuguese (build web applications _agora_ 😊).

I'd say "groupware" is probably the most descriptive, and is a term that is easily understood by most developers. ("community" is really nebulous)

"Open" is probably a term i'd also keep.

Open, Groupware... any others?

From the "Agoraphobia FAQ":

Q What the heck is an "agora", and why have you named your software after it?

A "Agora" has several meanings, all of which are relevant to this software project and the community that supports it.

In Greek, "agora" means "marketplace/" In fact, in Ancient Athens, the Agora was the open marketplace where Socrates taught his students. So the Agora was an Open place where both commerce and knowledge sharing took place. Our software is an Open platform which supports both commerce and knowledge sharing.

In Portuguese, "agora" means "now." Our software is designed to help you get your web platform up right now by giving you all the building blocks you need, including a unified permission system, unified email alerts, workflow, content management, and many other features.

In Hebrew, "agora" means "to hire." We believe that the best way to find (and hire) competent web programmers is to observe their participation in an actual development community. Here at the Agora web site, you can see who asks good questions, who gives good answers, who participates, and who doesn't. You can see a programmer's entire history in the community. Where else can you get that kind of knowledge of your vendors before you hire them?

I think "collaboration" is a fine replacement for "community".

"Framework" should be avoided, it implies the word "unfinished".

Maybe that is just my carpentry background showing through.

I think Agora would have been perfect, but since W-Agora is already taken, I don't want to encroach on their name. I would have killed to see the Agoraphobia FAQ.

Pueblo is a good name, and is memorable.

I liked Communikit also, because it sounds like Communicate and Community Kit at the same time. It implied a toolkit for me.

Another attribute of ACS is rapid development. It seems like it doesn't take very long to build a full-featured site.

While we're on the subject of OACS modules, some of the stuff in the toolkit is not heavily utilized in the current website.

Shouldn't we be eating more of our dogfood?

I remember back to the days when OACS was ACS/pg, there was a naming suggestions contest or sth. I was suggesting:

FOCUS

(Fully-Opened Community Unifying System) or
(Fully-Opened CommUnity System)

but I didn't get any response from the senior members... :<

Sincerely,

If there's any right time to make a clean split from ArsDigita, it is now. The founder is gone (along with his vision), the mission statement has changed, the toolkit is different, etc. Ultimately you will be better off in the long run and in the short run, a Google search will find OpenACS anyhow.

The 'net (and business in general) has a very short memory. In a year or so, no one will care if you changed your name from Architext to Excite or Mosaic Communications to Netscape (or you are now called Novartis, Verizon, or Accenture).

I don't know the state of OpenACS 4, but I'm assuming that there still is some convention in using ArsDigita-related stuff out of habit (e.g., ad_my_neato_proc_name).

I agree with Joel and Sean that it must be short and 2 syllables.  We are going to create a brand not some acronym that explains the toolkit.  What does "Java" had to with a language?  Also like Sean we must drop the "Open".  We dont need to emphasize Open or Community once the brand is accosiated with this great Open Community Toolkit.

Also the ad_my_neato_proc_name mentioned by Sean is something that will be hard to remove, much like ns_my_neato_proc was never changed on Aolserver which used to be naviserver (is that spelling correct?).
I vote to change the name to remove the current confusion with aD.  I vote the name to be simple and unrelated to project like "Coke, Kodak, Java, etc."  Linux... what the heck does the Linux word relate to a kernel. They mean nothing we just need to finding something easy to remember and nobody has used it like "ximian".Bluetooth....Viagra

I am sorry that I am not good at names but here are my weird suggestions.

- Josean (Joel + Sean hehehe)

- Ogora (since Agora is getting some votes here)

- Alexure (after Alex)

- Evander (after Eve Anderson she will probably not mind)

- PhilGee (gives the name history and easy to pronounce)

- Crossminds

- Catapult (OACS does catapult me ahead of other developers)

- Blue Digits

- Starter

- Piston (just like an engine)

- Head Start - this looks good as it conveys the real benefit of this tool kit.

Hmmm I think I like "Head Start" its simple and conveys the real advantage of OACS.  Its a head start on building web application.  The  downsides are its only applicable in English and maybe confused with other stuff.

Head Start - gives you a head start in building web applications.

I think we should take oasis4.org  (This is version 4 after all!)

I really love the "Open" part of OpenACS. I think that part is critical, plus it is likely that a URL like www.open???.org would be available.

So I was thinking of things like:
openfocus (but the open part is redundant in the acronym)
openagora (but again... agora is such a general term)
opencs (Open Community System- bland, but clear)
openct (Open Community Toolkit)

My mind seems to be taking this down the bland path... anyone have more interesting open??? names?

• open-tools.com
• open-tools.org

That said, Liv Tyler is attractive, and "Arwen" is easy to say and
remember...

That said, my vote would go to the megababe Arwen, and not to some bearded geezer in a floppy hat. Besides that, Gandalf Technologies was a Canadian ISDN modem company that flamed out in the mid 1990s. Might be bad karma.

Alexandria
Ant
Avalon
Cactus
James
Jetspeed
Slide
Struts
Tomcat
Turbine
Velocity

It's interesting to note that tomcat.org takes you to a non-descript French site, while slide.org ends up at some kind of Spanish ecommerce site. The point being, the name was chosen on it's qualities as a brand, not on the basis of an available domain name. Besides, if people don't know the URL, they'll use Google. You just need to make sure the brand itself is easy to spell and remember.

To bad Alexandria is taken ... 😊

Name a computer company after a fruit. Insist on a really expensive seven-color logo. Force some really bad hardware down consumers' throats (original iMac mouse). Build the definitive computer user interface guidelines. Buck the trends by running the 1984 commercial (still a milestone in the advertising community), name your product line incorrectly (Macintosh is not an apple, McIntosh is). Remember to "Think different" from time to time (including an ad campaign that includes guys like Richard Feynman and Richard Branson).

Apple is one of the supreme innovators in marketing. There are only a handful of companies on this planet that can be represented by their logos. Nike and Apple are two.

Having a cutesy logo/name isn't a bad thing, despite what Patrick thinks.

Only when that decision is made will it be feasible to propose project names.

Patrick doesn't like the cutesy, Apple thing. Maybe someone else wants the no-nonsense German luxury auto (BMW 325i, Mercedes-Benz E320, Audio A6) thing. Maybe someone else wants the nonsensical stuff (e.g., Toyota Cressida - yes, let's name our product after one of the biggest bitches in Greek theater). That's fine, my vote doesn't count any more than anyone else's, and probably should count for less.

Pentium was a nice Latin-y name. It was so good that Intel decided that whatever the exorbitant amount that they paid to the branding consultants they were going to get their money's worth, hence: Pentium, Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Pentium III, and Pentium 4.

I agree with the thought(s) that the name is, in many ways, what you make of it. Red Hat took a name that seems to have little to do with anything and turned it into something synonymous with Linux and open source products.

In the vein of Apache, we could consider doing something with OACS. Oaks and oak are already taken in the .com and .org domains, but oaksweb is available in both. (OACS becomes "oaks", pronounced the same way, is the thinking here.) The genus for an oak tree is Quercus, but the domain name could be a problem. Other possibilities:

• Rubra - A red oak is Quercus rubra
• Lyrata - Water white oak is Quercus lyrata
• Enceno - another name for Coast live oak, Quercus agrifolia

I think that the types of end-customers for us commercial houses vary so much that it would be tough to come up with a brand that would appeal to all of them. Something a small non-profit would find appealing would probably turn off a largish corporate entity, and vice versa. So my suggestion is that we (or you, since I haven't thought of any good name ideas yet) come up with a name that gives a mental image of what the toolkit does, and let those of us who are trying to make money with this thing build the brands that will appeal to our particular market segment. This approach also works for the non-commercial users, those who are interested in the toolkit just because it's cool and they can contribute to it.

That doesn't necessarily mean it has to be something dry and boring (sorry, Michael! :) like OCS. Of the current suggestions I think I like Pueblo best, though Don's probably right that it's already overused, because it conveys the idea of a self-sufficient, fully-functional village where people spend time, communicate among themselves and even shop.

Also, although Mike's suggestion was mostly meant to be a joke, I rather like Bacchus; I believe he was the god of gatherings and social activity and enjoying life, not just drunkenness, and for those of us on the inside it has a nice inside joke to go along with it. :)

Personally, I enjoy Latin-related names, but it ultimately comes down to a decision by the OpenACS gatekeepers/junta to decide what the corporate identity slant of this open source project is to be.

Only when that decision is made will it be feasible to propose project names.

One thing worth pointing out, though. Retention of our current logo and URL by doing a simple switch from "ArsDigita" to "Architecture" is appealing because experience shows that renaming and rebranding is an expensive proposition. Going to a name like "Pueblo" (which I still like) would require a lot of ongoing explanation - "oh, it's the new name for OpenACS" - and we don't really have many resources (only volunteers) to publicize a name change.

I have personal business experience of trying to do a name change and it wasn't a very pleasant one. It just confuses customers. We had no choice in the matter, for reasons similar to those raised here, actually, and based the new name on the old. But the old name was was easy to turn into an acronym ("OMSI") while the new one wasn't. Bad idea.

So maybe plain-old "OACS" pronounced "Oaks", while boring and prosaic, would be the easiest thing to pull off.

Could we get away with releasing "OACS 1.0" ? I think changing the version number will do as much as anything else to emphasize that we're not going to be issuing a Postgres port of ACS 4.6 (Java) on our fourth minor-version number release.

It's kind of like Tcl being pronounced Tickle, except we actually
rename it Tickle. Wouldn't that have been a better name anyway?
😊

Just thought I'd toss out those ideas for discussion, too.

... Oaks five point o.... hmmm sounds good.

Jun

It strikes me that what OpenACS does is build enterprise web sites. There are a number of players out there, I understand BEA is the biggest of them. None of them have a lot of name recognition, and I think all of them are hugely expensive. Because of the current general interest in open source solutions I suspect that we could come up with a reasonably effective PR campaign without a whole lot of expense once the new version is named, available, and documented to the point that reasonably competent web developers (not programmers) have a chance to go to the website, find the code, and get it running. I know there are thousands of folks that have sites that have grown to be too large to keep developing in Dreamweaver that would love to have something affordable to move up to. I think magazine editors know this too.

I don't think this is an accurate assessment either of the enterprise market or of OpenACS' potential niche in it. While it is true that there is no dominant player in the application server market, it is no longer true that the top products (including BEA, Websphere, and iPlanet) don't have a lot of name recognition. This is a very tight and competitive market. Furthermore, what enterprise organizations are looking for (and I know because some of these guys are my clients) is the size and quality of the professional support services available behind the toolkit of choice. If we go after this space, we have to be able to match, say, IBM for tookit support. Forget it. If you want to go after enterprise (and it's by no means obvious that enterprise is the largest or best market for OACS), then you have to find a specific niche rather than going head-to-head against the big money.

As much as I believe in community building, and as much as I think that community building is a magnificent way to build and grow a commercial site, I'm not sure the business community really groks that. They can be taught to use those features (bulletin boards, mutual support fora, spam programs) but they aren't the things that will get them in the door. An inexpensive tool that lets them build maintainable advanced data-backed sites will.

I couldn't disagree more. Building database-backed web sites is a solved problem. You can do it with ASPs, ColdFusion, WebObjects, mod_perl...you name it. Is OpenACS a better and more efficient solution than these others? Sure, in some cases. But it's not obviously superior enough to overcome marketing and support issues when going after the enterprise market. (You might have a better case to make for small to mid-sized organizations, though.)

On the other hand, eLearning and knowledge management are hot topics right now and, unlike the application server market, these *aren't* solved problems yet (although they really should be). Companies are starting to pay big bucks for these sorts of solutions. Cisco's CEO is a huge champion of eLearning. Microsoft and Oracle are arguing that they have knowledge management solutions. (They don't, but that's not the point.) OACS' strong heritage as a platform for collaboration gives us a real (but swiftly diminishing) advantage in this market niche.

Again, though, it's not clear that the OACS community wants to target enterprise with its marketing efforts. I personally favor this market because I think there's a huge opportunity there and because it happens to by the market where I make my living. However, I suspect it is *not* that natural market for many of the developers who put their blood, sweat, and tears into developing the toolkit.

On the topic of finding an original name, if we decide that we can't take a name unless it has a super-easy URL with it and has not been used by *anybody* then we'll never get a good name. There are just too many people with too many named products out there. I don't think, for example, the fact that somewhere out in the universe there might exist a Pueblo Software company is adequate reason to discard the name "Pueblo." I'm not even sure that the fact that there is an Open Source bboard called "w-agora" is enough reason to drop "Agora," although it's a significantly more serious reason than the ones given so far against Pueblo. These factors are not all-or-nothing deciders; they are just some of the data points we need to consider.

Lastly, I do think we need to keep talking about what facets we want to emphasize in OACS and to whom we want to market. Although we are virtually guaranteed not to get unanymous agreement, we need to have arrive at something like a consensus about the very basic marketing thrust. If we're not marketing to someone, then we're marketing to no-one.

So, Pueblo still gets my vote.

It's not clear to me from this thread so far whether there will be a shortlist of names on which we can all vote or whether a secret cabal will read every comment and pick the one with the most persuasive argument. Any calls for due process appear to be drowned out by everybody's favourite suggestion.

... which is why I'm going to add to the noise. But first, some points of view with which to frame my suggestion.

I wholly condemn any use of the word "Open" in the new name. Any tourist who happens on the project website will be able to determine the openness of it in short order, and there are too many bad memories of the "open" systems of the 80s. I agree with Michael that it made sense in the beginning to identify the project as ACS-Classic-with-a-twist and that the situation is different today. If we insist of stating the obvious and calling it Openwhatever, then I should always refer to my "grass" lawn or my "brick" house, not forgetting my "personal" opinion. And the point about getting many false hits in a google search is also compelling.

"Oasis" should be the ideal name for the project. It conjures up all the right images and connotations in my mind, but it's just too much overused by other projects, groups and businesses.

I don't know what to think of "Agora". I keep confusing it with Amphora (again, Classical Greek wasn't on the curriculum at school).

I believe that tying the product description into the name can have consequences. With something as shifty as the Internet, do we want to have a name that looks outmoded when the infrastructure moves on ("Db-backed websites with html front ends. Hah! Thats sooooo 1990s"). Imagine if the market changed on Burger King and made it better for them to become a soup kitchen franchise (or, worse, a Services Company). Their name would no longer reflect their product and they'd have to reinvent it.

The ACS was a magic mix of technology and design, but the real magic ingredient was the attitudes of the original developers. Pragmatism reigned supreme mixed in with gobs of chutzpah, ego and flair. Any brand identity for Ars Digita arose from successful projects completed against insane schedules for lavish prices, not from the cheesy descriptive product name.

I think that, since the OpenACS project is keeping the ACS Classic torch alive, it should adopt a name in keeping with the original pioneering spirit. I don't have any earth shattering suggestions to offer, but I do like the association with Alex.

My suggestion is to change the name of the project to The Panda Web Publishing System. If people care about its origins, they can find it in The Book. For everyone else, there's a clear identity for the product (it's a big, overweight grass-eating hairball that looks like it's taken 10 rounds with Tyson) and it's a nice homage to everybody's favourite web personalities as well as a statement of our agreement with their vision. (I really hate that word but I can't think of anything snappier right now.)

Or something like that. There will be some obstacles to overcome if the panda motif is chosen. For a start, panda.org and panda.net are unavailable. Furthermore, there are a number of other software packages calling themselves Panda this and that. It may well be even more overused than Oasis (I haven't checked).

Since IANAL, my remedy for these issues would be to simply base the domain name on something other than the primary product name. The latin for Panda is Ailuropoda melanoleuca, so we could build a project identity around ailur.org. And all function names could begin with am_. Yah, I like it more and more...

In some ways, it's going to be a shame if a new name actually does come about, as many are bound to be disappointed. Still, it was nice to get all that off my chest. Thanks for listening, and have a happy new year.

It's not clear to me from this thread so far whether there will be a shortlist of names on which we can all vote or whether a secret cabal will read every comment and pick the one with the most persuasive argument. Any calls for due process appear to be drowned out by everybody's favourite suggestion.

I know that Neophytos has an idea he wants to write about by later this week and I for one am interested in what he has to say. I'm sure others will come up with things of interest, too. I doubt I'm the only person curious to see what other ideas will spring up over the next few days.

If we get to a point where there's one strong winner - a consensus builder - it will become fairly obvious, I think. If not, we can run a poll or something like that.

But right now why shouldn't we just keep the ideas rolling and worry about "due process" later?

I think you're saying pretty much the same thing.  Clearly we want to make sure that people searching for OpenACS find it.  And actually people who look for ACS ...

Paul,

I think you're already seeing some "coalescing" of opinions around variants of "Pueblo" and "Oaks". I'd guess this should continue as-is for another five to ten days (to allow people to get back from Christmas and New Year's celebrations) and then to get a poll together for the four or five most popular names in this discussion.

In the spirit of J.R.Tolkein, we could create a mythology around the original meaning of OACS. The mythology could provide a creative exploration for the meaning of OACS, while providing a great resource for matching meaning to individual client preferences--a sales tool.  "A" can mean Architecture, ArsDigita, advanced, archival, active, alternative, Alex, Adam, avatar etc.  Each client could promote one meaning over another... adding to the mythology or hype.

For any acronym change, two syllables (more than two letters) seems appropriate, as in "linux", "dotcom" etc. Also, OACS seems fairly unique on the web, whereas many 2 or 3 letter acronyms could obscure someone's interest in quickly finding related information.

That being said, IM-almost-hereritcal-O the least interesting piece of the stack in the OACS is the ACS stuff, meaning the tcl code and the datamodel. Sure, that stuff is a great help, is tested and works nicely (most of the time) but the real power of the system lies in AOLserver and the true use of true RDBMSs.

A rather complicated database or web application usually can take advantage of some OACS code, but it usually requires a large amount of custom development. These two pieces provide the true RAD environment, rather than something like the news module. So I think it's important to somehow stress that what makes the OACS so strong is the strong foundation of a great webserver app and strong DBs.

I agree with Michael that stressing something like a "community toolkit" is kind of passe. "Knowledge management" and "groupware" are hot now, but could go the way of "community" soon as well.

Names like Pueblo, Oasis or Agora are very attractive to me because they provide a bit of mystique in their metaphorical connotations. The best name that I've heard so far, in fact, is Zocalo (Pat Colgan's idea). To paraphrase Urban Parks Online (yes, a gratuitious Musea plug, sorry), Zocalo is the nickname for the Plaza de la Constitucion de Oaxaca. Here is a description:

Strolling down the pedestrian walkway, Macedonio Alcala, one arrives at the daily fiesta that is the zocalo. Children run after their globos (large tubular balloons), plastic helicopters and Pokemon balloons which are all sold by vendors in the open space next to the Cathedral. There are activities for all ages in the plaza, a characteristic that demonstrates why this space has always been a primary social place. Sitting on benches, parents enjoy the soothing sounds from the fountains as they watch their children play. Vendors circumambulating the zocalo sell corn, chapulines and fruit to customers at the shoe shine stands scattered throughout the plaza. Friends gather on the benches to discuss events they read about in newspapers bought by the nearby newsstands. Every night, musicians serenade customers eating at the cafes and on Thursday nights the Banda Musica del Estado performs classical music and old popular Mexican songs.

Since Zocalo is a place where people come to do anything from commerce to relax to romance, it would seem to be a nice metaphorical name, much like the other suggestions.

That being said, Zocalo sounds WAY TOO MUCH like Zope, our closest cousin in the open source development world. It would probably cause too much confusion.

Other ideas in this vein, though, might be something like Carnival. When I mention this idea to Roberto, our community Brazilian, he asked whether we would have naked dancing ladies, too. I could not argue, since I thought his idea would be a feature, not a bug.

talli

PS
What about the color scheme? Since the new OACS site has been built, it would be nice to keep the same color scheme so that a whole lot of work doesn't have to be done over again, but I'm only saying that in a selfish effort to avoid more work.

'The problem with OpenACS or OACS is that they both still look too much like "ACS," which is exactly the confusion we're trying to avoid' (Michael Feldstein).

I agree that as OpenACS evolves away from ACS, there will be a need to differentiate more clearly between the systems. Is OACS ready to make that distinction?

At this point, most of the work is still porting software and critical documentation--not new modules.

thoughts on changing name:

weaknesses:

1. changing names can be a sign of whimsical support --lacking dedication to objectives etc.
2. changing name away from ACS reduces message that OpenACS is alternative to ACS
3. Loss of ACS as a keyword for finding OpenACS as a viable alternative.
4. the greater the distinction between the two systems, the less likely we can use (now) proprietary (copyrighted) documentation to support the project.

strengths:

1. creates new distinct identity for project
2. helps everyone differentiate between the OpenACS and ACS
3. gatekeepers can write their own OpenACS books...

I offer the following words to the creative pot:

• phronesis - evolving community-centric knowledge (origin Greek?)
• Cadre or Cader - Means "framework". Essentially, OpenACS strives to be machine/OS/DB/other software independent... leaving a power framework at the core. Seems a nice acronym could be made from it as an alternative to the other great choices.

holiday cheers

So I don't agree with you, unless you can show me evidence to the contrary.

talli

I agree that a name change is a good idea. I also recommend that an old domain and site openacs.org be kept and a script written to do an automatic redirect if possible so that all links to anything old, as might be cached in GOOGLE, will be found, such as this thread:

www.openacs.org/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=0003Ye

becomes

www.oacs.org/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=0003Ye

AND

if it really is a 404, then a nice explaination page and redirect to the new site.

As far as a name, I LOVE anything with Oaks in it. My father goes by the name Okie because of our last name O'Connor, I volunteered for the E911 committee in my town so I could rename my Fire Road 47 into "Great Oak Lane". My house is surrounded by some really "great" oaks!

Because oaks.com is taken, I like oacs.com is a good short name. 'Oaks with a "C" ' We may want to add another syllable to it...

I'd also encourage buying the .com .net .org names too just like the ZOPE people did.... especially the .com.

.info could be the documentation site! and .biz could be the commercial big customer site.

-Bob

Ok...first off I have to respond to the latest post. A seal?!? Youdo know what a seal looks like right? It's that thing that balances a ball on it's nose? Oh well...guess I'm a little attached to that logo (Eve likes it...that's good enough for me darnnit! :)  )

I too like the name OACS, but as far as it being pronouced "Oaks" well...you're going to run into troubles without having oaks.com owned. Also, kill the idea of any domain names with a "-" in them...VERY unprofessional.

Having had to sell the OpenACS a NUMBER of times I've never ONCE had any client ask about aD. I really don't think they have much market share. To be completely honest I think we could stick with OpenACS and have it not mean ANYTHING!

It seems to me we have two discussions going on here...a rename for the "company" and a rename for the "product". If that is the case, we could rename only one of them if that would help. This thread has become extremely long and cumbersome. I just stumbled across it a day ago so maybe I haven't read correctly, but is there an impending legal reason to change the name(s)? Or just a perceived marketing issue?

As a marketing type person I would advise against a rename unless it is REALLY (i.e. legally) necessary. But, I'm glad to redesign the logo...I can make it look like a seal if you want. ;)

Scott

We get asked about aD a lot, so I guess it depends who your clients are. Ours tend to have read Philip's book, or are being advised by someone who has, and are specifically seeking out someone who uses the ACS. As such, they always want to know about our relationship to aD, aD's involvement in the OpenACS project, etc etc.

I'm not sure that a name change would make all that much difference as far as those discussions go, but hopefully it would make it clearer that no, we're not still following in their footsteps and no, there probably won't be a Java port. :)

I of course, meant no offense. I have nothing but TONS of respect for what I consider "technical" people. I know that many people have the ability to cross over and play the other side of the fence too. I am somewhat in the middle myself, that's why I'm here. I don't even use the word "creative" to decribe marketing types because I feel that implies that "technical" people aren't! I think that's hogwash and I've spent many hours trying to convince a number of Photoshop/Flash/Macintosh types that creativity doesn't just mean how many filters you can use. I've noticed that the REALLY creative ones get it immediately.

Maybe it's my client base, but MOST of the clients I've spoken with have never coded even page of html in their lives. I'm not dealing with mom and pop shops, I'm talking about larger corporations (www.royal.com for example).

I like the idea of "repurposing" the meaning of ACS. There is precedence for that as well. I can't think of anything right now...but I know it's been done.

Let's keep the conversation rolling...

Scott

While a lot of people we sell to are technically challenged, and are happy to have you run the show and make recommendations, you will find the odd manager who wants to stick his finger in the pie so to speak. These people tend to want to display their knowledge (or lack therof). Good or bad, you will find such a manager waxing lyrical about this product or other (because he has read the marketing spiel) and will totally badmouth something like openACS because he does not know a thing about it, and is not really technically competent to evaluate it objectively.

Like they used to say, no one ever got fired for buying IBM. With the right branding, one would be in a position to deal with impossible/ignorant manager by saying "what do you mean you don't know what openACS is?". In fact, if selling the brand is done correctly, these "suits" will be afraid to challenge the openACS least they show their ignorance.

I have a friend who is doing a lot of IT/Oracle consultancy work in South Africa, and he says that the way he swings a lot of deals, is by (subtley of course) telling the managers that choosing his solution will make them look good. 😊

Just my £0.02 worth

I may put up a poll soon to ask some metaquestions, i.e. should we ...

1. Leave project and toolkit name alone

2. Leave project name for now, OACS 3.2.5 name alone forever, change name of 4.x

3. Change the world, ditch "the seal" (the seal? :) :) )

4. Change name but keep the same/similar acronym (OpenACS or OACS)

Something like that.  Would this be useful in steering things?  If 90%  choose #4, for example, people can stop trying to come up with brand-new names (my personal vote is for #2 at the moment).

😟

Pluribus doesn't really do anything for me personally. It has too strong of an association with America for me, and sounds awkward plur-i-bus.

I doubt we're all going to agree, however. We do seem to have coalesced around a few possibilities, though

That's nearly enough for an OpenACS social.  Probably enough.  SE Portland?  The Dirty Dog (lucky lab)?  The bridgeport brewpub on Hawthorne?  The Bagdhad (with a good movie, of course, the beer and food  suck).

Wow ... this could happen.  We could pick the name and RULE, eh?

I'd love to meet in person and have a social breaking of "bread". Let's followup by email.

Cheers, PDX!

I know - I kept pumping up the importance of brand, and developing our own, but luck, oftentimes, plays an important part in getting traction.

Hitching our star to the GNU wagon methinks is also a valid strategy. And if we want to develop our own unique brand, we can always create module names as Michael suggested.

Also, using GCS might help facilitate pushing to get the system as part of standard linux distributions.

I know we have a lot of Debian folks out there in the community, maybe they can package it up and submit it. Somebody doing SUSE and RedHat might help as well.

I'm not making a pejorative statement, it's just a factual one.

How about I set up a couple of polls over the weekend?

FWIW, Fulcrum is the name of a product that indexes and provides search capabilities from a large variety of sources. App servers like SilverStream (a product best avoided) use Fulcrum to provide full-text searches in the absence of things like interMedia. You can read the brochure (PDF).

There could be some conflicts over that name.

not quite sure of how to make an acronym from it yet, as an off the wall thought...

SERVer Internet Tools Under a Dynamic Envronment  =)

Visit our home page and cast your vote.  If there's a strong showing for a name change I may run some followups (folks - e-mail me your strong feelings as to whether or not we need to, please!) to help push things home.

Don, I think that the poll shows that >50% seem to be in favor of "Open Architecture" (with or without "Oaks", i.e. I'm lumping) and it also shows that >65% seem to be in favor of "OpenACS". The choice for "Open Architecture says "don't change anything else".

A new pronunciation idea:

Pronounce it Wacks! (because it wacks the hell out of the competition!) Can be used as a verb, as a noun.. very flexible grammatically.

Oacs

Of course, this rhymes with Wax.