I agree, I don't think syslog as part of the name is the biggest problem. If we
just did sed /rsyslog/rocketlog/g throughout the codebase, documentation, and
website, we would loose the existing name recognition and not solve most of the
problems we have.
It would make it even harder for people to get their systems updated and I think
it would be non-trivial to get all the distros to follow the name change.
David Lang
On Thu, 30 Jan 2014, Radu Gheorghe wrote:
Hi Rainer,
Here are my 2 cents. Not a definitive opinion, I'm not getting upset if
we'll go in the opposite direction :) Still, here they go:
I think that there are some realities that we need to face:
- syslog is a fuzzy term. People tend to mesh the message format(s) with
daemon(s) and protocol(s). There's lots of confusion and understandably so
- lots of people think of syslog in general as sucky or dead or legacy,
or... As you also noted
- again, as you noted, rsyslog tends to fall into the same bucket. I've
seen people complain about it in various ways. Usually two things:
1) documentation, and also about the rsyslog.com site itself (where they
look for docs) which has lots of commercials and "hints" to professional
services. Many connect the two saying docs are intentionally sucky to get
you to pay
2) somehow related to the above, people seem to treat rsyslog like some
very limited and very dead project. For example, if some default setting
doesn't fit their use-case they tend to complain rather than search for an
obvious solution on Google. And few people are aware that the version
they're using is 10 years old or so (or are aware of any of the changes
rsyslog has gone through since). By contrast, if someone has trouble with
Logstash, one instantly looks at the [nice] docs on how to fix things in
their config, and if you use a version from one year ago, everyone can tell
you that it's ancient and you should move on. This is how things should be
for rsyslog, too, IMO.
Changing the name (and the logo) is, in my mind, a way to try and "reset"
people's minds about what rsyslog is. To me, that's a workaround that
doesn't fix the core of the problem, which is that the syslog ecosystem
(daemons, message formats, protocols) is misunderstood.
Sure, syslog isn't the solution for everything, but I think a lot of people
will be fine with it if they knew what the options really are. To make this
work, I see two action items:
- write better docs, whatever that means
- push them, so people use them more, become happy with rsyslog and spread
the love
As you can see, changing the name would be much easier than making good
docs and spreading them around. So it might actually work. But I wouldn't
do it, because I don't think it's the "right" solution.
The only valid argument I see for renaming is that rsyslog is not *only*
about syslog. But most of its features are syslog-related, so the name
isn't misleading. Logstash isn't only about logs since some time now, and
it doesn't seem to have a problem with that.
Best regards,
Radu
2014-01-30 Rainer Gerhards <[email protected]>:
Hi folks,
let me ask a crazy question: would it make sense to *rename* the rsyslog
project (like into something like "logrocket";)) ? I know it's totally
crazy as it is well-known, but there is a lot of propaganda these days
against syslog in general and folks like to bash at rsyslog because it is
doing syslog.
Not only have the systemd folks declared that there is end of line for
syslog, also the logstash community seems to aggressively market the fact
that "syslog is the old legacy that logstash replaces". Plus, there is a
lot of wrong information in all Wikipedias etc (and due to Wikipedia policy
I can't even update it, as I am a stakeholder -- they prefer folks without
knowledge of the field ;)). All around the Internet you find the smell of
syslog being old style dinosaur technology.
In spite of this... may it actually be worth going through the pains of a
project name change? The alternative is to continue trying to convey that
rsyslog is not only syslog and that syslog in itself is far from being
dead...
Feedback would be very welcome. Note that there is no immanent change, and
I am actually hesitant to do it, bit I would really like to hear about your
*feelings*.
Thanks,
Rainer
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