Re: Changes in formal naming for NetBSD porting effort(s)
On Mon, Dec 15, 2003 at 12:19:10PM -0700, Joel Baker wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 15, 2003 at 08:15:04AM -0700, Joel Baker wrote:
> > Actually, given that I'm a long-time and deep-seated Tolkien geek, I rather
> > like the notion of using the Valar - they're fictional, and Tolkien's work
> > isn't yet out from under copyright, but they *are* reasonably well-known
> > (Okay, not as well as Pratchett, but better than Christian demonology),
> > and if we're liable to get in trouble over using just the names, we should
> > probably strongly reconsider our use of Toy Story character names for
> > tagging distributions...
> >
> > Suppose it's time to dig out my reference books and see if I can come up
> > with a suitable set of names out of that mythos.
> >
> > Besides, using Tolkien names is a long geek tradition.
>
> Having cheated and grabbed an online resource for it from Google, the
> following possibilities show up (my apologies for the lack of accents;
> I can't easily input UTF-8 on this terminal):
You mean you had to look this up? ;-)
> FreeBSD:
> No primary Vala names begin with 'F', but many alternate names do, as do
> a great many other names of honor in the Tolkien mythos
There's no particular reason to stay with 'F'. We're already changing
the name beyond recognition. 'V' would be close enough, the phonetic
difference is small.
> NetBSD:
> Namo (Vala of destiny, prophecy, and the Halls of the Dead)
> Nessa (Valie of the woods)
> Nieliqui (daughter of Orome; see OpenBSD)
> Nienna (Valie of pity and lament; Gandalf/Mithrandir was one of her students)
>
> OpenBSD:
> Omar (Vala of music)
> Orome (Vala of the hunt, teacher of elves)
Last I heard there was no longer an OpenBSD port.
> This is by no means a complete list; it includes none of the Maiar, nor any
> of the names of characters elevated from less powerful races. Personally,
> while I can't speak for the FreeBSD or OpenBSD folks, I'd cast a vote for
> Nienna, for the NetBSD port using kernel+libc; the name is one of the
> better known ones, and is a far cry from anything remotely 'evil'.
>
> It also leaves at least 3 other 'N' names available for the port currently
> known as Debian GNU/KNetBSD.
This is a solution I can live with. Just to clarify something, am I
correct in understanding that we're only being asked to change the
official name of the system, not what uname says or config.guess says?
Would TNF be ok with describing the system as "Debian GNU/Nienna, based
on the NetBSD(tm) kernel?" People will still need to know that the
system is based on NetBSD.
If we use different names for the libc vs glibc ports, we should
probably set the names for dpkg and apt to match. (i.e. netbsd-i386 ->
nienna-i386.)
---Nathan
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