Summary of my arguments _pro_ name change

[Gábor Lehel]

On 6/1/06, Mark Kretschmann <markey at web.de> wrote:
> Let me summarize my arguments _pro_ name change, which I've been pondering on
> for some time. I've been uncomfortable with the current name for about a
> year, and increasingly so since Amarok has been getting more press and I'm
> seeing the name misspelt.
>
> 1) Misspelling of the name is inevitable. In many languages (e.g. French) it's
> downright an error and unacceptable to start a sentence without a capital
> letter. So in official media it is always going to be spelt "AmaroK" at the
> start of a sentence, and possibly also in mid sentence. We're provoking this
> misspelling.
>
> Here are some excerpts from the Helix engine desktop file:
>
> Comment[et]=AmaroKi plugin
> Comment[fr]=Module pour AmaroK
>
> 2) It was a funny idea when Amarok was young, but nowadays it just seems
> quirky.

That's not a bad thing.

>
> 3) The name is unusual enough not to require additional attention from special
> capitalization.

Sure, but it doesn't hurt, either.

>
> 4) Amarok is intended to be a software for all desktops, not just KDE. The
> capital K suggests that it's a KDE only application.

Meh. The people who the capital K would make a difference for would
uninstall it immediately after they see it uses Qt, anyways. Let's not
cater to idiots.

>
> 5) Changing the name earlier is easier than later, considering that our
> popularity is still growing.

With the Windows port, this is probably true.

>
> 6) The Amarok logo does in no way reflect the current spelling. If anything,
> it looks like "amarOk".

Then fix the logo :).

>
> 7) The various misspellings hurt name branding. There should be one brand
> "Amarok", and misspelling weakens our brand.

Making our brand less distinctive also weakens our brand.



In the end, I think the only really valid argument (for me) is (1),
and I don't think it's strong enough. Not starting a sentence with a
capital letter is a downright grammatical error in English too, and
that's the language we came up with the name in.

For me, it's like this:

- amaroK is cooler than Amarok
- people misspell amaroK as Amarok
-- that sucks, because it looks less cool
- if we correct people to have it spelt correctly, cool is gained
- if we do nothing, cool is maintained, or at worst gradually diminished
- if we officialize the misspelling, all cool is lost

-- 
Work is punishment for failing to procrastinate effectively.