Re: Change the name

On Friday 14 September 2007 14:25, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> Bruce Momjian wrote:
> > Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> >> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> >> Hash: SHA1
> >>
> >> Bruce Momjian wrote:
> >>> Chris Travers wrote:
> >>>> Suppose as an alternative to "changing" the name, we just start
> >>>> promoting "Postgres" as an alternative version of PostgreSQL in the
> >>>> course of advocacy efforts, essentially promoting it to equal footing
> >>>> with PostgreSQL.
> >>>>
> >>>> I personally don't think that this would cause any substantial
> >>>> confusion, and would avoid the work involved in a full name change.
> >>>> Then, down the road, if we want to, we can revisit the decision.
> >>>>
> >>>> This would seem to give everyone what they want.
> >>>
> >>> Yea, that is another approach, making "Postgres" as a nickname more
> >>> visible. Can anyone see a good way to do that?
> >>
> >> Amend FAQ... that's all.
> >>
> >> Most people use it anyway ;)
> >
> > Is this something we can do now, no matter the outcome of the discussion?
>
> Why not? I have zero problem with the FAQ amendment I suggested.
>
> Q. What is the official name of the project?
> A. PostgreSQL, but we accept Postgres as an official shortened version.
>
> I have not seen a single argument against the above and it has been
> mentioned by other people (although the wording my be slightly different).
>

Unfortunatly I took a fair amount of sales and marketing classes in college,
so I guess I have to chime in here. The argument against it is weakening the
brand, and adding confusion to the market place. . We already suffer from
this now, and promoting two names only makes this worse.

Why does this matter? When you go to google to search for answers to your
problems, you get different results depending on which version of the name
you choose. This is bad for community members and especially bad for new
users. The same problem happens in places like monster.com. Or for folks
trying to set up news alerts.

Honestly I can't believe that people would think the solution to having a poor
project name is to have two project names. Especially when the two project
names really means we continue on with four project names, as people continue
to use postgres-sequal and postgre. Furthermore, it is obvious that an FAQ
entry cannot solve this problem, if it could, we wouldn't have the problem to
begin with, since the "how to pronounce" question has been there for years,
along with an MP3 example.

--
Robert Treat
Build A Brighter LAMP :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL