Re: The naming question (Postgres vs PostgreSQL) - Mailing list pgsql-advocacy

Hi,

I am not going to comment on what the project or software should be
called. However, I do think that there should be only one name in
advocacy. There can be a period when there are two names used, but I
don't see that as a long term solution. Name, logo etc. are things that
should not have too many versions. For example with having both Postgres
and PostgreSQL, we will end up in discussions that what is the
difference between PostgreSQL inc, PostgreSQL community, Postgres
community and Postgres inc. Each having different kind of elephants on
their logos. It will not look very trustworthy. More like one is real
and the others are scam. Just don't know which is the original and real
one. And then having all the prints with different versions etc. (Just
because X likes the other one better, the next T-shirts are with one
brand. But the booth is under a name that is different.) And after all,
how can you get consistent results from a database that is called
differently on different occasions? ;-)

Rgs,

Jussi








Bruce Momjian wrote:
> Andrew Sullivan wrote:
>
>> I have been avoiding voting on this topic.  But. . .
>>
>> On Tue, Aug 28, 2007 at 01:23:17PM -0400, Robert Bernier wrote:
>>
>>
>>>>> How many people feel we should adopt 'postgres' for the '9.0'
>>>>> reference documentation (let's leave the issue of the tons of work
>>>>> involved out of the debate for the moment)?
>>>>>
>> First, discussing this without reference to the work it would cause
>> and such like is foolish.  You don't commit to doing something only
>> because it would be a nice idea; you also do it recognising that
>> spending the time doing that thing entails you don't have other time
>> for other things you might like.  So how much work it might be is a
>> _critical piece of information_ for deciding what you should do.  The
>> glib responses in this thread suggest to me that at least some people
>> haven't worked through that.  Moreover,
>>
>
> OK, let's look at the items required for a name change.  Right now our
> FAQ says "Postgres" is an acceptable name for "PostgreSQL", so the idea
> of allowing Postgres as an alternative is already done.  Our backend
> binary is called "postgres", which we got from the Berkely days and
> never changed to "PostgreSQL".
>
> Items to change include:
>
>     1)  URLs, can use redirection
>     2)  Documentation, search/replace
>     3)  email list names, keep pgsql-*
>     4)  web site content, search/replace
>     5)  tarball names
>     6)  source code copyright notice
>     7)  postgresql.conf, rename
>
> The user API has nearly zero change, which is good;  nearly everything
> is "pg".  (We still call our C library libpq because it was originally
> PostQUEL.)
>
> As you can see, it isn't much.  Renaming sounds like a monumental
> change, but in fact the name is kind of just what we call ourselves.
>
> I think an interesting approach would be to change the software name to
> Postgres but keep the community/project name as PostgreSQL Global
> Development Group.  That would allow us to keep using both and minimize
> changes.  It would allow the places we don't change to remain accurate.
>
>