Advice on project name change request
Hallo mentors,
I come to you to ask for advice on how to best handle the situation I'm about to describe, hoping you can provide some insights.
I am the developer and maintainer of soothsayer [1], a GPL-licensed intelligent predictive text-entry system, which I am also packaging for Debian [2].
Recently, I received an email from a software company called Applied Human Factors [3], who have been selling an application called "Soothsayer Word Prediction" for the past 12 years.
They kindly and respectfully requested that I change the name of my soothsayer project, so that it is not confused with their "Soothsayer Word Prediction" product.
I understand their concern and I find their request very reasonable.
I intend to comply with their request and change my project's name, despite the fact that the soothsayer name had begun to receive some attention [4].
I would like some advice on the following items:
- how different should the new name be? I considered using names such as "predict" or "guess", but they are already taken, so I thought about using "soothie" (short for soothsayer, sort of :-) ), but would this name be different enough? I'm currently leaning towards using "presage" as the new name.
- what is the best way to ensure that users looking for soothsayer project will easily find the new project name and that the publicity (such as the review on Linux.com [4]) that soothsayer received will not be wasted?
- how should this name change be handled in the BTS? Should I retitle the ITP? Or close it and open a new one?
Finally, how strong a case do Applied Human Factors have here? This is just out of curiosity, I fully appreciate that their request is justified and I intend to honour it.
Cheers,
- Matteo
[1] http://soothsayer.sourceforge.net/
[2] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=468820
[3] http://www.ahf-net.com/
[4] http://www.linux.com/feature/135093
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