as a scientist, i am getting somewhat bristly at all the rumor,
innuendo, and hyperbole around names. i've not seen any definitive or
measurable steps that can be take to ensure success. we're also ignoring
the silent majority which seems to like etch just fine. my personal
opinion is that the name is not the gating factor for success. apache
pig? really. success and web hits will derive from being truly useful
and trusted. it doesn't work the other way around.
simply dictionary word names and result counts on google certainly don't
count. several apache projects are named with dictionary words with
significantly larger search result counts than etch.
to state the obvious, what counts is that people can find you. i've seen
studies and information on how to try to game google's system. many of
them contradict each other, but everyone can agree that you better be on
the first page and with something clearly definitive near the top of the
first screen. from their info, two things matter:
1) links from various "definitive" sources to the etch page. this can
come from links from reviews, cisco.com, java.sun.com, apache home page,
microsoft csharp page, python, ruby, wikipedia, about.com, etc. these
things are not present now, but will be shortly if we could get past this.
2) names must be memorable enough so that a casual reference in a
conversation can be turned into a successful search later. examples of
this might be "etch", "etch protocol", "etch java", etc. if you search
for "etch service description language" or "etch protocol" right now you
get to the right place. nothing is more off-putting than a name which
you cannot spell having only heard it. word combinations are also out
for the same reason, because people enter them as two separate words.
finally, if your name is intentionally misspelled, watch out. google
will suggest a better spelling and people often automatically take its
advice.
the important thing right now is, i think, that searching now for etch
doesn't not reveal anything which is obviously competing technology
(east tennessee children's hospital is #1, debian #2, etch a sketch #3).
nothing obviously confusing comes up. therefore, plenty of room for etch
to elbow its way to the #1 spot, esp when combined with other keywords.
when choosing the name etch, we thought it important to choose a short
word which wasn't already a tech name. it needed to connote writing and
communication. it need to be easy to remember, etc.
i really like the name etch, obviously, it is short and memorable and
mnemonic, i haven't seen anything which would indicate that a successful
and useful technology would not be adopted just because of its name.
changing the name now seems fussy and would muddy water enough to
confuse the small toe hold we already have (cio.com article, cisco video
presentations, existing cisco customers, etc.). it isn't worth it right
now without definitive proof that the new name is better.
let's hear from the silent majority!
scott out
Grant Ingersoll wrote:
On Aug 8, 2008, at 4:28 AM, James Dixson (jadixson) wrote:
Simple put: a name change is work. Before I can accept the need to do
work, I want to clearly understand the benefits of doing it.
Etch, while new to open-source, does have some awareness in a technical
community ( http://developer.cisco.com/web/cuae ). We have been publicly
pitching and distributing etch in our community for several months now.
People have been using the technology and for our current community Etch
!= Debian. Granted, a couple of months is a short amount of time, but it
is something. Imposing a name change on our current community, with the
reasoning that the future community, would be unable to differentiate
between "Apache Etch" and the etch release Debian, would be disruptive.
I don't think the argument is necessarily that the future community
can't distinguish between Apache Etch and Debian, I think the argument
is that the future community won't be able to find it, period, which
means the future community may well be smaller than it would be w/ a
more distinctive name.
Put it this way, you search for Hadoop, the top 10 on Google is all
Apache Hadoop. You search for Etch and you will be lucky to crack the
top 10, me thinks, but who knows maybe you'll get enough rank to
displace the Etch-a-Sketch and it will be a non-issue.
Of course, the work thing I understand, too, although it seems like a
global search and replace wouldn't be that bad. You also certainly
could change it over time, even after being accepted into incubation,
I think, just as long as it's done before first release.
FWIW, I like the name Etch :-)
-Grant
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