dmd’s new name

[ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès)]

ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès) skribis:

> Walter Bright <walter@digitalmars.com> skribis:
>
>> The D programming language compiler has been called dmd since about
>> 2000 or so. In order to avoid confusion, may I request that the Gnu
>> dmd ("Daemons-managing Daemon") change its acronym?
>
> For the record, GNU’s dmd has been around since ~2003¹.
>
> Changing names is obviously an annoyance, technically and otherwise.
> We’re not opposed to the idea, but that would take a bit more discussion
> among developers.

You might remember this discussion from March 2015.

  https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2015-03/msg00176.html

I proposed to Richard Stallman that we change the name to “GNU Shepherd”
and recently got the green light.

Rationale:

  1. A shepherd looks after sheep (or gnus ;-)), and GNU dmd looks after
     daemons.

  2. “Shepherd” ends with a ‘d’, which makes it a good name for a daemon.

  3. It’s a pun in the same spirit as “GNU Hurd”.

  4. We might even rename ‘deco’ to ‘herd’ because it’s the very command
     that allows users to herd their daemons.

Hope you like it.  :-)

Ludo’.