Re: Possible new name for "deity"
On Wed, 4 Mar 1998, Paul Slootman wrote:
> FWIW: I'm also against trove. I shudder to think about the times I'll
> have to explain to people here in the Netherlands how to spell it, and
> probably also why it's called that. My vote goes to adam, or perhaps
> padam (the 'p' for package, as it only handles packages). I think that
> padam is easily pronounced (and spelled when necessary) in most
> languages.
I've tried to keep away from all this non-sense. For me Deity is fine.
English is not my native language (as you can probably tell from my posts)
and Deity means nothing to me. It's just a name. I look it up in the
dictionary, and I smile. That's all. You are being (as usual) English
centric. I can live with that. I can pronounce Deity as if it was an
spanish word, and it sounds ok. I can spell it from its phonetics, except
for the funny "y" at the end, but that's just a minor inconvinience.
Deity has just one problem. Ask yourself this: can you think of ANYTHING
that can be irrevocably *DRAWN and immediatly RELATED* to the word Deity?
No. No matter what you come up with, it's going to be hard for somebody
somewhere to relate that thing you thought of to Deity and it's
translations. Why do I raise this issue? Because if Deity targets itself
as a Linux wide thing, it NEEDS a logo. And a good one. One that ppl
relates to the word. Think Red Hat. Windows. Apple. Don't think Sony (that
musical note on the CD's). Mitsubishi. Silicon Graphics. The former are
all good logos: they don't relate to what the product does. They are
related to the product name. The product name doesn't relate to what the
product does either. Ther other logos are good ones, too. I particularly
like SGI's. But it doesn't relate to the words Silicon Graphics directly.
Mitsubishi relates to it's logo... once you have decyphered that the logo
is actually a diamond. And once you are told Mitsubishi means diamond. Get
the point? (BTW, the only truly great logo in the wolrd is McDonald's...
ask a four-year-old what those arcs are, and anywhere in the western
hemisphere he says "McDonald's" 75% of the time. The logo is nothing
sensical. But it works. And, FWIW, I hate McDonald's)
"Trove" is *not* nice. First, it sounds awkard <sp> if pronounced "in
spanish" (tro' ve) and some "sick mind", somebody who doesn't speak proper
Spanish, may associate it with a conjugated verb and not a noun.
I don't like Adam (nor Padam) for "personal" reasons. Adam invariably
refers the reader to certain religion's or religions' beleives. I don't
like that. Deity may have religious connotations... for a fanatic person.
I'm a SF&F fan, and the term deity is not religious in the common sense of
the word. Even god isn't, but god is not a good name for a package
manager.
What I like... when I read Paul's post the first time I read "Panda"
instead of "Padam" (don't ask why). I like Panda. It's an endangered
species, I know. But it's a cute animal. According to the Webster
dictionary it's a French word with himalayian roots. That means, it's
almost certain that every language with a latin alphabet refers to this
animal as a Panda (what would be the point of translating such a word?),
that means, there's a known pronunciation, it's something everybody knows
or has a concept about what the heck it is, and I can't think of anybody
on its right mind who thinks a Panda is not cute ;-)
Now to the cute part... I THINK the Linux penguin is cute. And I HATE the
Linux penguin BECAUSE it's cute. But I have seen what that can do. A
girlfriend of mine loves it. One day she saw IT on my desktop, and she
wanted to know what had such a cute logo: "An Operating System" "Oh,
really? That's gotta be good" "Yes, it is, but it's not because of the
penguin" "Never mind, that penguin is soooo nice... how do you say that
thing is called? An O.S.? ..." See? She knows barely enough about
computers to know that MS is bad (guess who thaught her that?) but she
wants to know what Linux is... because of the logo. I don't know how many
ppl in the world think like her. But if that's the power of cuteness, I
can live with it.
Now, connect the dots...
Good "logoable" word -> Good logo -> Good promotion -> WDF!
Still not convinced? Think of this. RH swithes to Deity. Deity has a logo.
RH boxes bear Deity's logo with a legend "Uses Deity Technology" or
whatever. Deity is promoted as a good thing, and people start wondering
what the heck that is. They find out it's something that came out of the
Debian Project (it's not propietary technology, it "came from". There's a
difference). We get good publicity in maganizes. I hate it, but that's how
the freaking computer market works. Live with it.
Thanks for reading this much.
Marcelo
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