On Thursday 24 March 2005 14:58, Randy Williams wrote:
> Greetings All,
>
> Lourens has a fine point, let's get a name for this critter.  However,
> for the time being as this product is quite a departure, lets focus on
> names that do not include Tech Source or its current product line.  This
> product will need to be able to stand on its own, by its merits in order
> to succeed.

Okay, that makes sense I guess. You probably won't be able to prevent people 
from adding TechSource to the name though, just like they talk about the ATI 
Radeon and the nVidia Geforce.

> My first impression is that we choose from the third group, with
> "harbinger" being my favorite.  Although OpenGlass is certainly very
> neat as well.

Timothy preferred Harbinger as well. To be honest I'm less and less 
enthusiastic about OpenGlass, although I don't really know why yet.

I can see two potential problems with Harbinger. The first has been brought up 
here before, and that is that it is not an oft-used word, and as such many 
non-native English speakers may not know it. I'm Dutch and I consider my 
English to be pretty good, but the only place I've seen the word before is in 
the lyrics to Machinae Supremacy's song Ninja. I looked up its meaning when I 
first heard that song about a year ago. There is also the expression 
"harbinger of sorrow" which I guess we do not want to be :-).

The second is that Harbinger implies that we are the new kids on the block (or 
actually, we're not there yet at all, as a harbinger is someone who is sent 
ahead) and as everyone knows, you don't buy version 1.0 of anything.

Maybe I'm just thinking way too much. The problem is that connotations is the 
name of the game, and they are often personal and therefore hard to predict.

> Also, I or Tim will be contacting the Maximum PC folks to see if we can
> get either a follow-up or a correction to the "homey" description the
> article leaves with the reader.  If they are amicable then we should be
> able to receive more detailed press going forward.

At the risk of going beyond naming and into marketing...I haven't seen the 
article, but perhaps we should look at Linux. Linux in itself is just an 
out-of-control hobby project, a pile of C in a repository. What makes it 
professional is that Red Hat and IBM and Novell are selling it and providing 
support. I think the same goes for this project. On the one hand there is the 
community project centered around this mailing list and the wiki, which gives 
the project the open and friendly atmosphere that we need to attract 
developers and users. On the other hand there is TechSource, who have 
experience with graphics cards and professional support. That's the angle we 
need to convince the beancounters.

Lourens

PS: I drew this yesterday: 
http://nova.student.utwente.nl/~lourens/gfx/opengraphics.png
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