Re: New year, new name!

[taylanbayirli@gmail.com (Taylan Ulrich Bayırlı/Kammer)]

ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès) writes:

> Hi, Guix!
>
> As you know, we’ve been having this lengthy discussion about what to
> call the Guix-based standalone distro.  RMS and others have argued that
> we can’t reasonably call it “the GNU system”, and many people have
> proposed alternative names.
>
> Long story short, I’m tempted to refer to the standalone distro as
> “Guixotic”.  The name was proposed by RMS; it’s a play on words that
> makes fun of criticisms that have depicted the GNU project as
> “quixotic”.  And it has the advantage of starting with “Guix”.  (The
> other name that I liked is “Geist”, which someone proposed on IRC, but
> it lacks those traits.)
>
> As I see it, we would change the baseline on the Guix logo to, say,
> “dependable, hackable, liberating”.  And we could have an alternative
> logo with “otic” appended¹, and with a different baseline, say, “GNU’s
> reference distribution”.  (I count on Nikita or Felipe for this.  ;-))
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Ludo’.
>
> ¹ Bonus points to anyone who comes up with a stylized gnuish Quixote.  :-)

Happy new year! :-)

A while ago I had the idea that we might be able to convince RMS to
sanction Guixotic as *an* (rather than *the*) official distribution of
the GNU system, using a de-emphasized code-name (guixotic it is) to
refer to it in filenames, technical docs, etc. but otherwise have it
listed mainly as "a distribution of the GNU system" on a hypothetical
gnu.org/download page.  (The download link would also be preceded by
said code-name or "model name", but it wouldn't have a logo, page, or
any such branding of its own.)

Might be a bad analogy but: think of it like Opel and Astra perhaps (the
car brand and model), except if Opel had no other model.  Astra has no
logo or fame of its own, and you usually say you have an Opel if people
ask you.

Makes sense?

I think it deserves such special status over projects such as gNewSense
because GuixDistro is much more under GNU's control than any of those
distros that are "GNUified" as an afterthought.

I didn't further bother anyone with that after mentioning it on IRC, but
I still think it might be worth a shot.  The situation with GNU/Linux
distros and how most people think Linux is the main component is pretty
nasty.  If we brand Guixotic as a stand-alone GNU/Linux distro with a
fancy name and logo of its own, on a page of its own, it will become
"yet another Linux distro" in the minds of the masses.  This might be
because they're misinformed, but the fact doesn't change.  Any special
branding we apply to Guixotic will be actively harmful, I think.

Taylan