Thank you for such a detailed response Marvin! Everything you mention makes a lot of sense. Needless to say, we don't want to squander cycles, break any rules, or throw velocity into disarray all due to a name.
To that end, I am going to work with JB to amend the proposal with respect to renaming. I'm also going to clarify a name change would be an immediate-term to-do item so it does not block creation creation of lists, repositories, and so on. Best, James I am going to work with JB to amend the proposal to indicate On Thu, Jan 21, 2016 at 9:30 AM, Marvin Humphrey <mar...@rectangular.com> wrote: > On Wed, Jan 20, 2016 at 3:30 PM, James Malone > <jamesmal...@google.com.invalid> wrote: > > If we need to rename, we would ideally choose a new name, change the > > project name at that time, and start our refactoring with that new name. > Is > > is acceptable for us to flag a name change as something we need to do as > a > > near-term (1st month) item in incubation (if accepted)? If a rename is > > required I'd like to add it to our to-do roadmap but also not block our > > proposal on a renaming. I ask so we can address this concern in the best > > way possible. > > That's acceptable. Project naming issues do not block entry into the > Incubator, they block graduation from the Incubator. > > Because "dataflow" is descriptive, it will be hard to defend as > a trademark. The Wikipedia article on trademark distinctiveness explains > things well: > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark_distinctiveness > > A weak mark both increases the amount of volunteer effort that goes > into dealing with infringement cases and makes bad outcomes more likely. > It is not an absolute requirement that Apache projects have defensible > names, > but painful past experience has taught us that mishandled branding can deal > surprising amounts of damage to a project community. > > But beyond that, the issue of "Google Cloud Dataflow" vs. "Apache > Dataflow" is > a blocker. One or the other will have to be renamed, and since the > software > is being donated but apparently not the brand, it sounds like renaming the > prospective Apache project will be required and you should add that task to > your roadmap. > > Changing names in the middle of incubation is disruptive because it > requires > renaming infrastructure resources, impacting both the Apache Infrastructure > team and also the podling's developer and user communities. My suggestion > would be that immediately after the VOTE to enter incubation concludes, you > only create a dev mailing list and deal with the renaming immediately, > delaying the creation of other resources until after the renaming is > resolved. > However, the exact plan is something you can work out with your Mentors. > > Marvin Humphrey > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org > For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org > >
