[Laconica-dev] Renaming

[Evan Prodromou]

I want to give a heads-up to people on this list about a change that's 
coming in the next few days. I've already talked 1-on-1 with most of the 
contributors to the software.

One of the things that we've had problems with in the past is confusion 
about names. Around this software we have:

    * Laconica: the Open Source microblogging software
    * Identica: large site running the software
    * Control Yourself: company that leads development of the software
    * status.net: upcoming hosted service for running your own instance
      of the software

I like these names; I made them all up. But I don't like having to 
explain to people which is which.

We're going to change the names to be as similar as possible. The new 
names will be:

    * StatusNet: the Open Source microblogging software
    * Identica: large site running the software
    * StatusNet, Inc.: company that leads development of the software
    * status.net: upcoming hosted service for running your own instance
      of the software

The StatusNet name is straightforward, simple, and gets across what the 
software does. Identica is its own community, and our best-known name, 
so it makes sense to leave it as-is.

Next steps are going to be:

    * We're going to move the Web sites around these names to status.net
      -- so laconi.ca will go to status.net/source and
      controlyourself.ca will go to status.net/blog.
    * We'll release StatusNet 0.8.1 - the first version of the software
      with the new name.
    * We'll upgrade status.net (and identi.ca) to StatusNet 0.8.1.
    * We'll have a big blog post on the issue.

Later down the line we'll...

    * Change the gitorious project name
    * Change the mailing list names and hosts

I'm letting people know now because we're going to start committing 
changes to the testing branch in git.

Thanks for your understanding. I really believe that this change will 
help uptake and adoption of this software.

-Evan

-- 
Evan Prodromou
CEO, Control Yourself, Inc.
evan at controlyourself.ca - http://identi.ca/evan - +1-514-554-3826

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