(Whoops! Apologies for mixed up subjects and poor threading; I'm not on
dev@)
I just wanted to add one other comment about this previous note:
James Hayton wrote on Feb 20, 2012:
Maybe a crazy idea, but since the end result of any legal stuff would
be somebody changing the name of something, why doesn't Apache
CouchDB just re brand itself? I mean we need a website makeover,
etc... Why don't we just ditch the name and come up with something
better with a new vision, new leadership, etc... Lets put a few
features in that people have been asking for, include the big couch
code (clustering), create a new website and call it something
different. (CouchDB 2.0 Becomes AwesomeDB lol)
I understand that alot of people have quite a bit invested in the
name CouchDB, at this may not be something realistic, but this just
seems like at least another option we should discuss.
Just my .02.
James
If the bulk of the Apache CouchDB PMC truly wanted to consider a rename
(and discussed and [VOTE]d on the matter, then we'd certainly help that
to happen. The PMC *is* who gets to decide the project direction.
But I'm confident that's *not* the case, since several folks have spoken
out against it. I personally think it would be a really bad idea to
change the CouchDB name - especially since CouchDB is arguably the first
project that gave such brand recognition to the "Couch" name in the
noSQL database arena.
In most trademark issues, I'd think more people would ask why the
*follow-on* products don't change their names, rather than the original
product. But in this case, I'm hoping that the pain of renaming is not
necessary, and we can reduce user confusion by both improving our own
story, as well as asking other Couch-named products to better
differentiate themselves and better give us - this PMC, the committers,
and the ASF - the credit we deserve for building and shipping Apache
CouchDB itself in the first place.
- Shane
