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

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Posted by S. Y. on
I've always liked YADA (Yet Another Dumb Acronym), but that's probably already taken. 😉

Joel is right: more often than now, the most powerful brand names are very short and phonetically strong. It's not limited to Internet stuff. The classic example is George Eastman's "Kodak". You need to come up with short, phonetically simple names like Starbuck's, Nike, Amazon, Apple, Coke, etc. In fact, you're better off with a short, easy-to-remember acronym (GM, HP, IBM, CNN) rather than a slightly longer name. (Heck, I personally think that part of Quokka.com's failure was due to the fact that nobody could even remember how to spell the damned site's name.) Then again, all of those companies mentioned have spent billions on branding, marketing, advertising, etc.

Personally, I think the "Open" part can be tossed since it no longer it no longer has the same meaning as when OpenACS needed to be differentiated from ACS Classic. Also, if you did an alphabetical listing or search on community toolkits, etc. anything with "Open" would get piled in with the rest of the billion other things called OpenWidget, OpenFooBar, OpenCollabToolBox, etc.

While "collaboration" is a nice little square on your buzzword bingo card, it has less meaning to lots of folks who don't collaborate whatsoever on ACS/OpenACS sites. The photo.net bboard is mostly a camera equipment chat room and Wineaccess.com was never much about collaboration (well, the sites are more about recreation than work, so the "labor" part of "collaboration" doesn't have much place there). Plus, I think if you asked a hundred people to spell "collaboration" and "community" more people would get the first one wrong.

My $0.02, which is a relatively accurate valuation of my opinion.