[openbeos] Re: Name suggestion

Michael Phipps wrote:

There is something of a stigma of failure. And if that were the only issue, I would say that it pretty well balances with the positive side (i.e. popularity, etc). The issue is legal. Cloning BeOS and naming ourselves .*Be.* is a recipie for a lawsuit.

Naming the OS without "Be" in it is a bad idea. your will lose the goodwill
and recognition the name has (think of all those apps that start with
Be---). I don't thing there is a bad stigma with the name -- after all The
Register was giving kudos to the Be team who are now basically the
PalmSource team.



Kudos, respect and acknowledgement of the great effort that has been put into the foundation of OBOS does not suddenly spring forth by just adding the miracle letters B and E into a product name. This can be done by using a few more letters (perhaps even a few words to form a few sentences) to write an acknowledgement in the about OBOS dialog, it can be done by using the red and blue colours on a portion of the new names logo, it can be done as a 'thanks to' section on the Welcome to OBOS.html that opens up on first running. Think a little laterally.

Furthermore, think 5-10 years down the track, how much would still be based on BeOS ?

There _may_ be a legal case to be had.. but i think it would be very hard to defend in the unlikely event that such action would be pursued.

The selection process should be based purely and simply on the goal of finding a good name (regardless of whether it has Be in it or not - the two reasons above do not really invalidate the use of it either way). Is it memorable, does it sound cool, does it lend itself to some good branding/logo design, is it marketable*.

* marketable is highly subjective, it may also be entirely not the point of OBOS - but marketing does have a huge impact on the success or failure of a product, to ignore this aspect entirely would be short sighted IMHO.

Regards,
Nick



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