Let me second that libreoffice is a really poor choice, for all the
reasons Graham enumerates. Also, "libre" is not a word that means
anything to most English-only speakers, and its pronunciation is the
same as Libra, the astrology sign. Libreoffice is difficult to
pronounce, and difficult to understand for anyone outside of the open
source community.
Furthermore, the connection of "libre" to open source software isn't
exactly a pea in a pod, either. I have been an open source software
advocate since before Raymond coined the term, and I use "OSS",
sometimes "FOSS", and hardly -- if ever -- "FLOSS". When I'm talking
about the reasons open source is great, I don't want to have to explain
gratis vs libre. That's a foreign language lesson that causes eyes to
glaze over -- I've found that "free speech, not free beer" is a much
more direct and enlightening explanation.
Were I starting from scratch in coming up with a name, and I had to keep
"office" in it, off the top of my head I can think of:
Office Suite Office
Homer Office
Clean Office
Neat Office
Office Doctor
Dr. Office
Office Freedom
OpenOffice.org/index.html (just kidding!)
No doubt, some of these have trademark issues. Without "office" in the
name, there are many good possibilities, but the marketing problem gets
harder.
And really, the difficulty of the marketing problem to me suggests that
sticking with libreoffice may be the best solution. It's already been
announced, the domains acquired, and changing it again seems unhelpful
to the cause.
----Jon
On 10/02/2010 06:04 PM, Graham Lauder wrote:
> On Sunday 03 Oct 2010 14:35:19 Ron House wrote:
>> On 02/10/10 23:41, Mirek M. wrote:
>>> Well, "Open Office" was usually the spoken term used to refer to
>>> OpenOffice.org, and I'd say that's much easier to pronounce than
>>> LibreOffice. And it flows much more nicely.
>>> "LibreOffice" is hard to pronounce the French way because there are two
>>> (written) vowels next to each other. That's one thing the French language
>>> tries to avoid, by having special forms for the few adjectives that come
>>> before nouns that start with a vowel, like "bel", "vieil", and "nouvel".
>>> So LibreOffice doesn't really fit in with French pronunciation either...
>>>
>>> But you don't need professionals to know if a name sounds good. I'd say
>>> "Firefox" and "Inkscape" are great names, but I'm sure those projects
>>> didn't spend millions of dollars on coming up with a name. And just look
>>> at how the name "Google" came about: it was made up by a daughter of a
>>> mathematician.
>>>
>>>
>>> I liked it, too, at first, but I'm afraid that pronunciation will be an
>>> issue...
>>>
>>> Anyway, if nobody else thinks it's an issue, then it should stay.
>> Hmm, I joined the list to find out about compiling the source, but this
>> discussion took my interest. Apologies for butting in late.
>>
>> Names are a hard thing, but one lesson I have learned in 30 years of
>> software development is: for widespread acceptance a good name matters
>> much more than good content. (Sad but true.)
>>
>> Examples: "Object-oriented programming" : All the ideas were there in
>> Simula 67 (yes, that's 1967), but until the cool name, OOP, was
>> invented, no one took any notice. Then "Extreme programming", "Open
>> Office", "relational database" (just a cool name for the bad idea of
>> busting up all the objects and losing the natural hierarchies). I could
>> think of dozens if I spent another ten minutes at it.
>>
>> Another key lesson: Insiders are very, VERY bad at picking good names
>> for their own 'children'.
>>
>> This is not meant as an insult, but the key movers and shakers here, to
>> whom we all owe the very existence of this wonderful project, are most
>> likely the least able to judge a good name.
>>
>> And "LibreOffice" is a very poor name.
>>
>> Reasons:
>>
>> 1/ "Libre" is an insider's term. Ask any but a romance language speaker
>> or a free software supporter what it means. Seriously, ask your mum,
>> your boss, your students, the guy serving at the local deli. The name is
>> doomed to misunderstanding and obscurity. Geeks will give you lots of
>> good feedback and you'll judge you got it right, but you haven't, and
>> you need to actually try the little experiment I just gave if you want
>> to see why.
>>
>> 2/ As Mirek explains, the pronunciation breaks the rules, and showing
>> disrespect for the rules of the linguistic source of a term doesn't seem
>> like a sensitive or a politically wise thing to do.
>>
>> 3/ Also as Mirek points out, the adjacent vowels make the word hard to
>> roll off the tongue by a speaker of any language. (It occurs to me as I
>> write this that (2) and (3) could be fixed by calling it "OfficeLibre".)
>>
>> Thus my only disagreement with Mirek's comments: "If nobody else thinks
>> it's an issue..." - the people here (again, with apologies) are all
>> self-selected for their in-depth knowledge of the field, love of the
>> software, love of the ideals, and understanding of the jargon. All of us
>> (myself included) are almost certain to have a useless opinion on what
>> would actually be a good name.
>>
>> So, this is just a recommendation, but one which I know is worth
>> doubling the support base: Get a better name. Even something pedestrian
>> like "Free Office" would do much better. And of course, if someone could
>> conjure up that rare animal, the magic name, well who knows...?
>>
>> And PS: Don't worry about having already announced the name: it was
>> stated it was temporary and it's a name destined for forgetability in
>> any case.
>
> Ron speaks well, the only issue is coming up with something else. It may
> default to LibreOffice simply for lack of a better idea.
>
> That would be tragic. I wasn't going to comment on this until I came up with
> a reasonable alternative that is not already encumbered in some way.
> Unfortunately I'm empty of ideas.
>
> The other issue is of course is that in true FOSS fashion, if the decision
> was
> to look elsewhere the argument would go on for months. Sun hired a company
> to do promotional work a year or two ago, perhaps we could ask them to come
> up
> with a shortlist.... as a donation of course, looking to a possibility of
> paid
> promotional work in the future.
>
> I do however like the short version: LibO
>
> Cheers
> GL
>
>
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