[Conkeror] Change the name of Conkeror, quickly! (Discussion)

[Axel Beckert]

Hi,

On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 02:43:56AM +0100, Deniz Dogan wrote:
> The main reason for *me* wanting to change the name is that it is
> pronounced the exact same way as Konqueror, a KDE web browser and file
> manager, with a much bigger user base. This has confused people I've
> talked to about the browser a lot

Here, too. Wouldn't be as worse if it wasn't a web browser, too.

But remember: Firefox changed its name twice before it was known as
Firefox, once because of a legal threat by Phoenix Inc. (because they
called it Phoenix initially and Phoenix offered a web browser feature
in some of their BIOSes) and then because there was another Open
Source project called Firebird (a database system, not a web browser)
and so they renamed it finally to Firefox.

> I have no law degree, but I suspect that some legal issues may arise
> from this as well.

Not sure about that. I would expect that if someone sees it as a
problem, the lawsuit would have been already made. IMHO and IANAL.

> Of course, there are reasons for keeping the name as well, but
> personally, I don't think they make up for the fact that another
> browser is called the same thing. One of the reasons for not
> changing the name that comes up frequently is that it would be "too
> difficult" to change the name.

Not too difficult. But a lot of work and loss.

> Sure, it would be difficult *now*, but consider how difficult it
> would be if the user base was to grow drastically in the future.

That's an argument indeed.

> Then we would have quite some (chest)nut to crack.

Not sure if it would be really more difficult. We already have two
websites, a mailing list, a git repository, an Ohloh project page[1]
(summasummarum 5 URLs to change -- and "Good URLs never change"), a
Debian package (no big deal though, software renames have well known
procedures in Debian).

  [1] https://www.ohloh.net/p/5294

But the later we change the name the bigger the impact would be, there
you are right.

Another thing which bothers me with the rename is the domain
conkeror.org. If we have to use another domain (which seems
unavoidable), we need a proper redirect from conkeror.org(*) and we
have to keep them for a long time, not only until conkeror.org expires
-- because people are lazy and never change their links. So if we let
conkeror.org expire, it will get catched by link spammer and will
cause quite some harm.

(*) The redirect has to be a "301 moved permanently", not a "302
    found" nor a "307 moved temporarily" nor one of those ugly "meta
    refreshes" -- only a "permanent Redirect" can change bookmarks,
    feed readers or search engines to change the saved URL.

Additionally, I don't know if we are able to make redirects on
repo.or.cz or conkeror.mozdev.org. Same counts for the ML (well, we
could perhaps make the new ML the only susbscriber) if we rename
conkeror. The Ohloh project page is probably not important here, since
only a very few people link there and most links pointing there are
Ohloh internal links.

> Another reason for not changing the name is that the name is nice. I
> agree, it is a nice name

The current name has indeed some meaning and history. We would
probably throw away that one, too. Well, I guess some of us wouldn't
be too unhappy if we could throw away this beer story that way. ;-)

> it's just that it's already taken that bothers me.

s/it's/its pronounciation/

		Regards, Axel
-- 
Axel Beckert - abe at deuxchevaux.org, abe at noone.org - http://noone.org/abe/