On Wednesday 14 July 2010 00:50:37 Otso wrote:

Hello,

This issue shouldn't be unfamiliar to people following this mailing list. Even enthusiasts on this list tend to shorten openSUSE to oS, OS, os or plain suse. I do not know how valuable openSUSE is as a brand name, or how affected Novell is with it, but please consider these points before trashing the idea of renaming: 1) openSUSE is pain to pronounce understandably for non-native english speakers. I experienced this first time lately when trying to explain what distro I'm using to an american person face-to-face. I had thought I had perfect pronouncication. Even for native speakers, it's a mouthful. 2) It's even worse to write. SMS'ing someone to install Gentoo is easier than telling them to get openSUSE. Same applies to fast IRC/MSN/Facebook etc chattings, and BBS's + chans. It's a pain. 3) Plain SUSE doesn't exist. There's SLED/SLES, and then there's openSUSE. Reverting back to good old SUSE is thus an option. Make it officially something like SUSE Linux Community Edition (SLiCE... just came up with that one btw!) 4) Does it actually need an obvious referrer to rest of SUSE family? Fedora doesn't have referrer to RedHat (aside fedora being a hat, which isn't obvious for ~5 billion humans). We could just shorten it to Opsus, Osus, Suso or something similar. New shorter name from scratch, with some referrer to origins? Why not. 5) As long as it's easy to say, write, remember and isn't insulting in any language, it'll also be globally accessible, searchable and mentionable with a lot less hassle.

I consider SUSE a good brand, we should not move away until the benefits are far superior than the hurts - like with the wiki migration, it hurts and there are for sure things we can do against that - but it's far superior, so worth it;) Fedora had a name before Red Hat bought the Fedoraproject - and they decided to stick with it. IMO it's too late in the game to change it, Andreas -- Andreas Jaeger, Program Manager openSUSE, aj@{novell.com,opensuse.org} Twitter: jaegerandi | Identica: jaegerandi SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg) Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany GPG fingerprint = 93A3 365E CE47 B889 DF7F FED1 389A 563C C272 A126

Hi Otso, I strongly disagree with your points.

This issue shouldn't be unfamiliar to people following this mailing list. Even enthusiasts on this list tend to shorten openSUSE to oS, OS, os or plain suse. I do not know how valuable openSUSE is as a brand name, or how affected Novell is with it, but please consider these points before trashing the idea of renaming:

SUSE and openSUSE is a strong, well-established brand, especially in Germany and I'd say in Europe in general. It became a strong brand in other regions of the world when Novell bought SUSE.

1) openSUSE is pain to pronounce understandably for non-native english speakers. I experienced this first time lately when trying to explain what distro I'm using to an american person face-to-face. I had thought I had perfect pronouncication. Even for native speakers, it's a mouthful.

Have a look: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SUSE_Linux_distributions At the beginning of this article the pronounciation is mentioned. It's not that difficult ...

2) It's even worse to write. SMS'ing someone to install Gentoo is easier than telling them to get openSUSE. Same applies to fast IRC/MSN/Facebook etc chattings, and BBS's + chans. It's a pain.

I only say: Think before you type. And don't type fast, type correctly. It's as almost everywhere: Fast and correct mostly never match. So take just a few seconds and think before you type.

3) Plain SUSE doesn't exist. There's SLED/SLES, and then there's openSUSE. Reverting back to good old SUSE is thus an option. Make it officially something like SUSE Linux Community Edition (SLiCE... just came up with that one btw!)

The decision for renaming it openSUSE had been made when the project opened for a larger community of contributors (if I'm correct). So "open" makes perfect sense to me.

4) Does it actually need an obvious referrer to rest of SUSE family? Fedora doesn't have referrer to RedHat (aside fedora being a hat, which isn't obvious for ~5 billion humans). We could just shorten it to Opsus, Osus, Suso or something similar. New shorter name from scratch, with some referrer to origins? Why not.

I say: Yes! Why should we leave our way where the relation between openSUSE and SUSE Linux Enterprise is obvious? I think both parts benefit from this.

5) As long as it's easy to say, write, remember and isn't insulting in any language, it'll also be globally accessible, searchable and mentionable with a lot less hassle.

Well, in most cases you don't have to care about uppercase and lowercase. And in case of the big search engines, even "opensase" or "opensusse" will show up with the correct results (and many other mistypings will as well). Regards, Peter -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org

Otso wrote:

1) openSUSE is pain to pronounce understandably for non-native english speakers.

I disagree, I have never had a problem pronouncing it, understandably or otherwise.

5) As long as it's easy to say, write, remember and isn't insulting in any language, it'll also be globally accessible, searchable and mentionable with a lot less hassle.

Hmm, how about 'openSUSE'? -- Per Jessen, Zürich (24.9°C) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org

On Martes, 13 de Julio de 2010 17:50:37 Otso escribió:

Hello,

This issue shouldn't be unfamiliar to people following this mailing list. Even enthusiasts on this list tend to shorten openSUSE to oS, OS, os or plain suse. I do not know how valuable openSUSE is as a brand name, or how affected Novell is with it, but please consider these points before trashing the idea of renaming:

Shorten a name is not a brand or name problem but people habit. Consider a name Suzy and someone will write "S" or JC for John Paul. So the name is not a big deal on this situation.

1) openSUSE is pain to pronounce understandably for non-native english speakers. I experienced this first time lately when trying to explain what distro I'm using to an american person face-to-face. I had thought I had perfect pronouncication. Even for native speakers, it's a mouthful.

I am non-native English speaker with no problem to pronounce openSUSE. It does not have a bunch of consonants without vowels. Can you give us some right examples here.

2) It's even worse to write. SMS'ing someone to install Gentoo is easier than telling them to get openSUSE. Same applies to fast IRC/MSN/Facebook etc chattings, and BBS's + chans. It's a pain.

I understand the lower capital letter for "open" before "SUSE" maybe give you a hard time when you start writing a sentence on some devices with an automatic type writer corrector. Because type writer correctors will try to make you start writing a sentence with capital letters. And some type writer correctors may complain because "open" and "SUSE" are bounded as a word and this is not a dictionary word but a trademark or brand (you should add this word to your type writing corrector to stop bother you).Otherwise I can not explain what this could be a problem.

3) Plain SUSE doesn't exist. There's SLED/SLES, and then there's openSUSE. Reverting back to good old SUSE is thus an option. Make it officially something like SUSE Linux Community Edition (SLiCE... just came up with that one btw!)

Plain SUSE is past. And because that we have openSUSE to differentiate the old from the actual. Changing names or at this case a brand will hurt more than it can help to make a good positioning or give this Linux suite a better mindshare. We should work on how to make it sticky and unforgettable for the one who already use it or for the potential users (users: newcomers, power users, admins, developers, etc.)

4) Does it actually need an obvious referrer to rest of SUSE family? Fedora doesn't have referrer to RedHat (aside fedora being a hat, which isn't obvious for ~5 billion humans). We could just shorten it to Opsus, Osus, Suso or something similar. New shorter name from scratch, with some referrer to origins? Why not.

Referral name can help or hurt depends on your point of view. I would like thinking it can helps despite other people say about alliances, licensing, patents, etc..Novell has shown to the world it is not a company on papers but it has solid products working more than excellent. Maybe RedHat has become better ubiquity on some environments than Novell but the competition has not finished yet. It changes at any moment. And this is not an issue to change a name. Despite Red Hat and Fedora refers to hats but not software they can make a mindshare, why names like SUSE or openSUSE not ? Once again, it is not the name what hurts our growing or mindshare.

5) As long as it's easy to say, write, remember and isn't insulting in any language, it'll also be globally accessible, searchable and mentionable with a lot less hassle.

Do you think it is that hard to say, write, remember or offensive name ? Well, maybe we should include "oS" for all the search engines and make a S.E.O. (Search Engine Optimization) too to make it available for those who love shorten the names. ;-)

Take it easy, Otso

Be happy -- Ricardo Chung a.k.a. amonthoth openSUSE Ambassador for Panama http://en.opensuse.org/User:Amonthoth http://es.opensuse.org/Usuario:Amonthoth http://twitter.com/amon0thoth1 http://www.opensuse.org/en/ http://es.opensuse.org/Grupos_Locales_de_Usuarios -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org