On Sun, Dec 14, 2003 at 12:02:44PM -0500, Nathan Hawkins wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 13, 2003 at 04:27:27PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
> > > > Well, no offense, but that's ugly as hell, and is going to square the
> > > > amount of confusion people experience when trying to decode our OS
> > > > names.
> > >
> > > Agreed, unfortunately - it is, and I suspect it may well. Suggestions for
> > > better naming welcome, of course (or even a direction to go in).
> >
> > We might use names from Christian demonology (since the BSD mascot
> > is the cute and devilish "daemon"), with the first letter shared by the
> > demon's name and the corresponding BSD flavor.
> >
> > Thus:
> >
> > Debian FreeBSD -> Debian Forneus (BSD)
> > Debian NetBSD -> Debian Naberius (BSD)
> > Debian OpenBSD -> Debian Orobos (BSD)
> >
> > I got these names from the Wikipedia <URL:
> > http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_specific_demons_and_types_of_demons>.
> >
> > Moreover, none of these names are currently registered with the USPTO,
> > so we'd be set in that department.
>
> I'm not opposed to anything else you've said. I do believe these
> particular names are a bad idea, however. One of the reasons the BSD
> mascot is considered "cute" is that it has no real connection with
> demons, in name, or otherwise. Which to people of several religions are
> _not_ cute.
>
> Your proposal would change that. I oppose it, and I would oppose it just
> the same if you wanted to call them Loki, Kali or Hitler. (To pick a few
> at random.) Using names of evil, real or imagined, is not something
> that would be helpful to Debian. That kind of publicity we don't need.
Feel free to propose alternatives from, say, the origional mythology which
spawned the concept of daemons as beings which were not inherently good or
evil, then.
This is a serious invitation; I'll be looking through the various sources
we have here for interesting ones. But so far, Branden's proposal is the
only one with any concrete names that avoids questions of trademark. If
folks are going to object, based on the names in question, that's fine, but
they should be willing to offer alternatives.
Of course, my personal email is one of the more obvious targets for
fanatics or fundamentalists to send hate-mail to, and (assuming I don't
just miss them in spam), I can think of about 2, maybe 3, such emails in
the past year. So maybe I'm just not quite so worried about it as some
folks.
Even so, I don't (and I sort of doubt Brandon does) have any real
attachment to the names proposed, if someone can come up with alternatives
in the same basic concept, but which are less liable to offend anyone.
Unfortunately, my experience with the topic tends to indicate that the
same folks who care are very likely to consider there mere *concept* of
a 'daemon' to be anathema, evil, foul, unclean, and all sorts of other
descriptives.
(And we all know that penguins are just flat-out unnatural; I mean, c'mon.
A bird that *swims*?)
ObHumor: Yes, that was a joke. :)
--
Joel Baker <fenton@debian.org> ,''`.
Debian GNU/KLNetBSD(i386) porter : :' :
`. `'
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