[Twisted-Python] suggestions for naming to help us preserve a Twisted trademark
Hello, Twisted community: I'd really like "twisted" (and our various "dot product" subprojects) to be a trademark that the software freedom conservancy can protect and defend. For similar reasons, I'd like to have an unambiguous naming convention for projects which are *part* of Twisted versus those which are built on it or are compatible with it. There are a few projects out there that just call themselves "py- whatever" but use Twisted (for some reason, none come to mind at the moment); that's fine, of course. The jabber transports which use Twisted are pyMSNt, pyICQt; I'm not sure if the "t" stands for "transport" or "twisted" :). There are also a few projects out there called "Twisted Whatever" which aren't part of Twisted; I can only hope that more projects will want to advertise their association with Twisted in this way. I'd like to suggest, however, that new projects use the word "Twisty" in this context rather than the hopefully trademarked "Twisted". i.e. if you are making an implementation of the protocol Bloobloo and want to give it a name associated with Twisted, please describe it as "Twisty Bloobloo: an implementation of bloobloo for Twisted", and name your packages similarly (twistybloobloo.stuff). Sun has a great webpage about how to use their trademarks in this capacity: http://www.sun.com/policies/trademarks/. I'm aware of 3 projects which are currently called "Twisted X" but are not actually a part of Twisted. The first is Twisted Goodies, which was named with our explicit permission. I appreciate that Ed asked first, and so he is welcome to continue using that name. (I'd still prefer that it be changed to "Twisty Goodies" just to help establish the convention and reduce potential user confusion, but realistically there has not been any actual user confusion about that package, and packages with our explicit permission I don't believe weaken our copyright claim.) Two other things that I'm aware of using names like this, however, do not have our permission, and if those authors are listening here (or if someone who knows the authors here could get in touch with them) I'd really like their names to be changed: Twisted SNMP and Twisted Storage. Most of all though I hope that all 1000-odd subscribers to this list have their own soon-to-be-released project which can make use of this new convention ;). Also, if a graphic designer out there could help with a modified version of the logo that could be used in the way that the Debian "open use" images, that would be helpful: http://www.debian.org/logos/#open-use
On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 9:15 AM, <glyph@divmod.com> wrote:
Hello, Twisted community:
I'd really like "twisted" (and our various "dot product" subprojects) to be a trademark that the software freedom conservancy can protect and defend. For similar reasons, I'd like to have an unambiguous naming convention for projects which are *part* of Twisted versus those which are built on it or are compatible with it.
[...]
I'd like to suggest, however, that new projects use the word "Twisty" in this context rather than the hopefully trademarked "Twisted". i.e. if you are making an implementation of the protocol Bloobloo and want to give it a name associated with Twisted, please describe it as "Twisty Bloobloo: an implementation of bloobloo for Twisted", and name your packages similarly (twistybloobloo.stuff). Sun has a great webpage about how to use their trademarks in this capacity: http://www.sun.com/policies/trademarks/.
Some thoughts: 1. The first Google result for "Twisty" for me is Twistys.com (NSFW), which is all about pictures of scantily clad women. 2. I *still* encounter resistance to Twisted because the name conjures up images of insanity, perversion, confusion or "unprofessionalism". I don't think "Twisty" helps with this problem. I'm not sure that this is a big deal though. 3. Do we have lawyers? What do they say? Can you paste/link their advice rather than summarizing? 4. In my present situation, most of the things I'm tempted to name "Twisted%s" are just Deferred-using APIs. It'd be nice to have a standardish name for these, and "TwistyFoo" is as good as "DeferredFoo", "AsyncFoo" etc. I hold out a hope that the name will become an anachronism once Deferreds and Failures are in the stdlib. jml
On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 6:11 PM, Jonathan Lange <jml@mumak.net> wrote:
2. I *still* encounter resistance to Twisted because the name conjures up images of insanity, perversion, confusion or "unprofessionalism". I don't think "Twisty" helps with this problem. I'm not sure that this is a big deal though.
I would never include either of those terms in my own project names for exactly the reasons stated above. If anyone wants to change "Twisted" to something with less negative connotations, I'd be all for it. How about "Nexus?" I know, I know, we'd lose google-juice and such. Y'all have fun debating twisty stuff. :-P ~ Nathan
why? I mean, if you trademark 'Twisted' and developer X goes and calls his bit of code 'twisted foo' are you going to pursue him in court? To what end? If you make it clear you're against people using 'twisted' for twisted derived products then 99% of the people who are writing twisted related things will respect your wish, because heck, you're a person deserving of respect in our community. The 1% of people who will say stfu, well, who will care about their project anyway. It just seems like a waste of your time. Another thought, Twisted is a collective noun for everything that twisted is, the reactor, deferreds, protocols etc. If someone was to fork twisted, or implement it in a new language, I don't see how you could stop them referring to it as 'Twisted Blah', what else are they going to call it? How do they refer to the thing that is Twisted without using the word to describe it> I know people are going to get shirty about the idea of forking/rewriting anyway, and why would we worry about assisting people pursuing that use case, but thats why you picked the license right? to give people those liberties? trademarking just seems to rub the wrong way, makes people suspicious, goes against the ethos man ;) my 2c tjs On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 9:15 AM, <glyph@divmod.com> wrote:
Hello, Twisted community:
I'd really like "twisted" (and our various "dot product" subprojects) to be a trademark that the software freedom conservancy can protect and defend. For similar reasons, I'd like to have an unambiguous naming convention for projects which are *part* of Twisted versus those which are built on it or are compatible with it.
There are a few projects out there that just call themselves "py- whatever" but use Twisted (for some reason, none come to mind at the moment); that's fine, of course. The jabber transports which use Twisted are pyMSNt, pyICQt; I'm not sure if the "t" stands for "transport" or "twisted" :). There are also a few projects out there called "Twisted Whatever" which aren't part of Twisted; I can only hope that more projects will want to advertise their association with Twisted in this way.
I'd like to suggest, however, that new projects use the word "Twisty" in this context rather than the hopefully trademarked "Twisted". i.e. if you are making an implementation of the protocol Bloobloo and want to give it a name associated with Twisted, please describe it as "Twisty Bloobloo: an implementation of bloobloo for Twisted", and name your packages similarly (twistybloobloo.stuff). Sun has a great webpage about how to use their trademarks in this capacity: http://www.sun.com/policies/trademarks/.
I'm aware of 3 projects which are currently called "Twisted X" but are not actually a part of Twisted. The first is Twisted Goodies, which was named with our explicit permission. I appreciate that Ed asked first, and so he is welcome to continue using that name. (I'd still prefer that it be changed to "Twisty Goodies" just to help establish the convention and reduce potential user confusion, but realistically there has not been any actual user confusion about that package, and packages with our explicit permission I don't believe weaken our copyright claim.)
Two other things that I'm aware of using names like this, however, do not have our permission, and if those authors are listening here (or if someone who knows the authors here could get in touch with them) I'd really like their names to be changed: Twisted SNMP and Twisted Storage.
Most of all though I hope that all 1000-odd subscribers to this list have their own soon-to-be-released project which can make use of this new convention ;).
Also, if a graphic designer out there could help with a modified version of the logo that could be used in the way that the Debian "open use" images, that would be helpful: http://www.debian.org/logos/#open-use
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-- Timothy J Stebbing
Hi Glyph, I think trademarking "twisted" is a good idea, if only to have a prior claim in the (unlikely) event someone else should try to claim it for something in the context of software. I'm not enthusiastic about "twisty" as a naming standard for anything -- partly from jml's observations and partly just some aversion to it that I don't understand myself -- if I don't mind "twisted", why would "twisty" bother me? I dunno. (Subconscious association with titty twisters? <shudder>) My $.02. Steve P.S. So, did you decide the list was getting too quiet? ;)
On 12:52 am, waterbug@pangalactic.us wrote:
I think trademarking "twisted" is a good idea, if only to have a prior claim in the (unlikely) event someone else should try to claim it for something in the context of software.
Thanks.
I'm not enthusiastic about "twisty" as a naming standard for anything -- partly from jml's observations and partly just some aversion to it that I don't understand myself -- if I don't mind "twisted", why would "twisty" bother me? I dunno.
I am not particularly enthusiastic about the term myself, personally. I think we need some word to fill that role (the one that "Py" fills for Python) but please feel free to suggest something else. It doesn't have to be a full word - "Py" isn't. "Twi"? (Quick, someone come up with a home lighting control project that uses twisted so we can have "TwiLight".)
On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 11:43 PM, <glyph@divmod.com> wrote:
On 12:52 am, waterbug@pangalactic.us wrote:
I think trademarking "twisted" is a good idea, if only to have a prior claim in the (unlikely) event someone else should try to claim it for something in the context of software.
Thanks.
I'm not enthusiastic about "twisty" as a naming standard for anything -- partly from jml's observations and partly just some aversion to it that I don't understand myself -- if I don't mind "twisted", why would "twisty" bother me? I dunno.
I am not particularly enthusiastic about the term myself, personally. I think we need some word to fill that role (the one that "Py" fills for Python) but please feel free to suggest something else. It doesn't have to be a full word - "Py" isn't. "Twi"? (Quick, someone come up with a home lighting control project that uses twisted so we can have "TwiLight".)
I think "Twi" is problematic because it's on the cusp of becoming a word, or even worse, too easily mistaken for an acronym (and a rather pedestrian sounding acronym due to the closeness to the airliner TWA). Also Twi SNMP, Twi Storage, and Twi Goodies all sound (and read) horribly as project names. My vote is for just "Tw" or the word "Twist". -- \\\\\/\"/\\\\\\\\\\\ \\\\/ // //\/\\\\\\\ \\\/ \\// /\ \/\\\\ \\/ /\/ / /\/ /\ \\\ \/ / /\/ /\ /\\\ \\ / /\\\ /\\\ \\\\\/\ \/\\\\\/\\\\\/\\\\\\ d.p.s
glyph@divmod.com wrote:
On 12:52 am, waterbug@pangalactic.us wrote:
I think trademarking "twisted" is a good idea, if only to have a prior claim in the (unlikely) event someone else should try to claim it for something in the context of software.
Thanks.
I'm not enthusiastic about "twisty" as a naming standard for anything -- partly from jml's observations and partly just some aversion to it that I don't understand myself -- if I don't mind "twisted", why would "twisty" bother me? I dunno.
I am not particularly enthusiastic about the term myself, personally. I think we need some word to fill that role (the one that "Py" fills for Python) but please feel free to suggest something else. It doesn't have to be a full word - "Py" isn't. "Twi"? (Quick, someone come up with a home lighting control project that uses twisted so we can have "TwiLight".)
I'm also not really fond of Twisty, why not just "tw"? For "Twisted Goodies" & "Twisted Storage" that would make it "twGoodies" and "twStorage", just my 2 cents. Gabriel
On 30/05/2008, at 4:34 PM, Gabriel Rossetti wrote:
glyph@divmod.com wrote:
I am not particularly enthusiastic about the term myself, personally. I think we need some word to fill that role (the one that "Py" fills for Python) but please feel free to suggest something else. It doesn't have to be a full word - "Py" isn't. "Twi"? (Quick, someone come up with a home lighting control project that uses twisted so we can have "TwiLight".)
I'm also not really fond of Twisty, why not just "tw"? For "Twisted Goodies" & "Twisted Storage" that would make it "twGoodies" and "twStorage", just my 2 cents.
The "tw" prefix is already used by ToscaWidgets-related packages, see http://tinyurl.com/5sjyhu Cheers, CM
Chris Miles wrote:
The "tw" prefix is already used by ToscaWidgets-related packages, see http://tinyurl.com/5sjyhu
'twd' says twisted to me... Si
On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 10:25 AM, Tim Stebbing <tjstebbing@gmail.com> wrote:
why?
I mean, if you trademark 'Twisted' and developer X goes and calls his bit of code 'twisted foo' are you going to pursue him in court? To what end?
If someone sold a networking library that was called "Twisted" and was not actually Twisted, I would be unhappy and want them to stop. If the law could help, then that's great. The same would apply if a company sold "Twisted Enterprise" based on the real thing. My understanding is that if it's common for people to make projects called "Twisted Foo", then it becomes harder to use the law to protect against this. IANAL, of course.
trademarking just seems to rub the wrong way, makes people suspicious, goes against the ethos man ;)
So does reply-before-post :P More seriously, Emacs, Apache, Linux, Python, Debian and Ubuntu are all trademarked. The Emacs trademark is held by the FSF, bastions of ideological purity. So far, I've encountered only one person who finds this suspicious. Hi Tim :) jml
More seriously, Emacs, Apache, Linux, Python, Debian and Ubuntu are all trademarked. The Emacs trademark is held by the FSF, bastions of ideological purity. So far, I've encountered only one person who finds this suspicious. Hi Tim :)
'other people do this thing so we should also do this thing' is not a great argument. I'm not against the idea, I just have some questions we're yet to have answered. AFAIK if someone infringes you're trademark you are obliged to enforce your trademark or lose it, the afore mentioned two people Glyph is not happy with who are using the word 'Twisted' would need to receive a C&D off the bat. Does Twisted Labs have the resources to put into maintaining their trademark? As I mentioned on IRC, we've used Python(R) as part of our name in the past, notice this list is called 'twisted-python', isn't that being a bit hypocritical to now say 'people who use twisted cannot append or propend the word twisted to their project name'? -- Timothy J Stebbing
On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 12:16 PM, Tim Stebbing <tjstebbing@gmail.com> wrote:
More seriously, Emacs, Apache, Linux, Python, Debian and Ubuntu are all trademarked. The Emacs trademark is held by the FSF, bastions of ideological purity. So far, I've encountered only one person who finds this suspicious. Hi Tim :)
'other people do this thing so we should also do this thing' is not a great argument. I'm not against the idea, I just have some questions we're yet to have answered.
That's not what I said. You said "trademarks make people suspicious". I provided counter-examples, demonstrating that your statement is not true in the general case. jml
AFAIK if someone infringes you're trademark you are obliged to enforce your trademark or lose it, the afore mentioned two people Glyph is not happy with who are using the word 'Twisted' would need to receive a C&D off the bat. Does Twisted Labs have the resources to put into maintaining their trademark?
I found almost the exact opposite to what you're stating here when I looked into acquiring trademarks for some company stuff a while back. You're not obliged to do anything; it simply provides you with a legal grounding if you wish to challenge a party that you believe has infringed upon your trademark (assuming it's to your detriment; you wouldn't pursue a 'Twisted Fruits', a company down the street that brands their produce with a big 'Twisted' sticker). It's up to you to enforce your trademark, there's no governing body that does it; such a body only comes in to play to arbitrate disputes. I've never heard of an obligation to enforce your trademark "or lose it" as you put it.
Timothy J Stebbing
Trent.
On Jun 10, 2008, at 1:35 PM, Trent Nelson wrote:
AFAIK if someone infringes you're trademark you are obliged to enforce your trademark or lose it, the afore mentioned two people Glyph is not happy with who are using the word 'Twisted' would need to receive a C&D off the bat. Does Twisted Labs have the resources to put into maintaining their trademark?
I found almost the exact opposite to what you're stating here when I looked into acquiring trademarks for some company stuff a while back. You're not obliged to do anything; it simply provides you with a legal grounding if you wish to challenge a party that you believe has infringed upon your trademark (assuming it's to your detriment; you wouldn't pursue a 'Twisted Fruits', a company down the street that brands their produce with a big 'Twisted' sticker).
It's up to you to enforce your trademark, there's no governing body that does it; such a body only comes in to play to arbitrate disputes. I've never heard of an obligation to enforce your trademark "or lose it" as you put it.
IANAL, but I did read a lot about this on slashdot ;-)... When such a dispute occurs, you have to prove that you've been performing due diligence in protecting your trademark. I don't think it's necessary to send the aforementioned projects C&Ds quite yet, but they should be contacted and told of our intentions to protect the Twisted trademark. IIRC, this is to prevent people from registering everything they can think of, and then suing the next person to use that mark. It would be nice if we had something like that for patents... -phil
On Friday 30 May 2008 01:25:19 Tim Stebbing wrote:
why?
I mean, if you trademark 'Twisted' and developer X goes and calls his bit of code 'twisted foo' are you going to pursue him in court? To what end?
There's also defensive trademarking. If Linux (for example) had been trademarked early, this would never have happened: In the United States, the name Linux is a trademark registered to Linus Torvalds.[59] Initially, nobody registered it, but on August 15, 1994, William R. Della Croce, Jr. filed for the trademark Linux, and then demanded royalties from Linux distributors. In 1996, Torvalds and some affected organizations sued him to have the trademark assigned to Torvalds, and in 1997 the case was settled.[60] ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux#Licensing.2C_trademark.2C_and_naming ) Michael.
glyph@divmod.com wrote: [...]
Two other things that I'm aware of using names like this, however, do not have our permission, and if those authors are listening here (or if someone who knows the authors here could get in touch with them) I'd really like their names to be changed: Twisted SNMP and Twisted Storage.
I guess an important question is why these projects decided to put “Twisted” in their name. For Twisted SNMP, which AIUI is a library that implements the SNMP protocol for Twisted, the reason seems to be fairly obvious: it's an obvious name, and shorter than “SNMP implementation for use with Twisted”. It's a library that builds on/extends the Twisted library. I guess calling it “Twisty SNMP” or even a literal “Mike's SNMP for Twisted” would be fine as well. Twisted Storage appears to be an application. I'm not sure why they put Twisted in their name; I'm sure Twisted is a useful platform for them to build on, but I don't see it as being any fundamental to their application. It could just as easily be called “Python Storage”. Frankly if I were them I'd try to find a more independent and distinctive name — what if they one day rewrite half their code to use something else? :) So I guess they chose to include Twisted because they like Twisted, and want to borrow some of Twisted's reputation for their own project. We probably ought to actually ask them why, it might be useful to know. One last thought: what should Debian packages like “python-twisted-snmp” be called? I'm guessing that's an ok name as is: in much the same way that “python-twisted” is a reasonable name for a package *for* Python without implying that Twisted is part of Python, “python-twisted-snmp” seems like a reasonable name for a package *for* Twisted, without necessarily implying that it is part of official Twisted. -Andrew.
On May 29, 2008, at 7:15 PM, glyph@divmod.com wrote:
I'd really like "twisted" (and our various "dot product" subprojects) to be a trademark that the software freedom conservancy can protect and defend.
On May 29, 2008, at 8:25 PM, Tim Stebbing wrote:
why? [snip snip] trademarking just seems to rub the wrong way, makes people suspicious, goes against the ethos man ;)
I have a similar predilection against trademarking, but when I really think about it, I only feel this way because of the actions of those who abuse the intent of trademark law. However, it's clear that legally, if Twisted wants any ability to protect against blatant misuse of the name, this is the only recourse. The problem is that there's no clear policy on trademarking for OSS projects. If Twisted were to approach its trademark policy in a way similar to the MIT license, I think I would be okay with it. E.g., no license fees, pragmatic enforcement, etc. A good example of what I wouldn't want to see is the whole Firefox/ Iceweasel debacle. On May 29, 2008, at 7:15 PM, glyph@divmod.com wrote:
For similar reasons, I'd like to have an unambiguous naming convention for projects which are *part* of Twisted versus those which are built on it or are compatible with it. [snip snip] I'd like to suggest, however, that new projects use the word "Twisty" in this context rather than the hopefully trademarked "Twisted". i.e. if you are making an implementation of the protocol Bloobloo and want to give it a name associated with Twisted, please describe it as "Twisty Bloobloo: an implementation of bloobloo for Twisted", and name your packages similarly (twistybloobloo.stuff). Sun has a great webpage about how to use their trademarks in this capacity: http://www.sun.com/policies/trademarks/.
I have to say, personally, there's pretty much no way I would ever name a project 'Twisty' anything ;-). Of course, I understand this wouldn't be a requirement, but if this is to be a useful marketing technique, whatever the prefix is needs to be obvious, but also inconsequential. That's the thing that's great about the Java convention, once you're familiar with it, you pretty much stop seeing the J. Same with the tired but successful iSomething. I think a one- or two-letter prefix is pretty much the best option On May 30, 2008, at 3:18 AM, Chris Miles wrote:
The "tw" prefix is already used by ToscaWidgets-related packages, see http://tinyurl.com/5sjyhu
When choosing which prefix to use, I would suggest against being too concerned with which obscure software project already uses it. ToscaWidgets is still in alpha according to their webpage, which hasn't been updated in ages. I don't mean to deride another project, but considering the high rate of failure of most OSS projects, unless it has a community inertia as large as or larger than Twisted's, I say every project for itself. Still, though, as far as I can tell, there's no projects using a T prefix. I kind of like the idea of tStorage and tSNMP, to use the recent examples. I am curious, though, what would Divmod do? You guys have some of the most significant Twisted projects, and would probably be the best people to set the example, but you already have great names for your projects. tMantissa or twdAxiom just don't seem very stylin' ;-)... -phil
On 03:31 pm, phil@bubblehouse.org wrote:
I have to say, personally, there's pretty much no way I would ever name a project 'Twisty' anything ;-).
OK, OK, I get it. Everybody hates "Twisty" :). I should have been more careful to separate the specific suggestion of "Twisty" (which was just something that popped into my head) in my original message from the need for a word like this. I wasn't totally set on it.
Of course, I understand this wouldn't be a requirement, but if this is to be a useful marketing technique, whatever the prefix is needs to be obvious, but also inconsequential. That's the thing that's great about the Java convention, once you're familiar with it, you pretty much stop seeing the J. Same with the tired but successful iSomething.
You've convinced me. I still think "Twi" sounds okay (better than "Twisty") "Tx" (evocative of "TwistedmatriX", "Transmit", "Twisted multipleXed"?) "T"? I'd suggest "Tw" but I feel like it has to be pronounceable, and "Tw" forces the first letter of your project to be a vowel (whereas "Tx" could be pronounced "Tix").
I think a one- or two-letter prefix is pretty much the best option
OK. I guess your suggestion is a lower-case "t"? :)
I am curious, though, what would Divmod do? You guys have some of the most significant Twisted projects, and would probably be the best people to set the example, but you already have great names for your projects. tMantissa or twdAxiom just don't seem very stylin' ;-)...
Divmod is really enmeshed into the core Twisted community. If we had an implementation of protocol X for Twisted, we'd distribute it in one of our libraries or applications in order to prove it out, then contribute it to Twisted proper. We've done this a few times already. This sidesteps the naming issue, because then it's just "Twisted X" at the end of the day. In fact it usually isn't even that; we developed and contributed the IMAP protocol and that's part of twisted mail, we developed and contributed the JUICE protocol which became twisted.protocols.amp (although that will probably need to grow its own twisted.amp "dot product" at some point in the near future). I started trying to explain here why other people should do this if we don't, but it turned into a small novel about community dynamics. I think I'll save that for a future blog post. Suffice it to say that not everything that gets done in the world is as awesome as the stuff Divmod does, and naming conventions like this are for smaller, less heliocidal projects, which implement a protocol or two, or maybe bind to an existing non-Python library. And now, for something completely different:
On May 29, 2008, at 7:15 PM, glyph@divmod.com wrote:
I'd really like "twisted" (and our various "dot product" subprojects) to be a trademark that the software freedom conservancy can protect and defend.
A good example of what I wouldn't want to see is the whole Firefox/ Iceweasel debacle.
I was talking to James Knight about this yesterday (another core Twisted developer if the name does not immediately ring a bell) and he made a very good point about trademarks to me: "Tou especially don't want to discourage people from using the word "Twisted" to refer to Twisted." I think the Iceweasel thing is kind of silly, and isn't really necessary to protect the Firefox trademark, since Iceweasel *is* Firefox. If anything it weakens it a little bit, because now there are multiple ambiguous names which one can use to refer to Firefox, rather than one clear trademark. So I don't want anything like that to ever happen to Twisted. (When I say "weaken" here I'm not talking about the legal sense, but the branding / marketing sense. For all I know it might be bad for the legal sense too, but I'm not a lawyer.) On the other hand, Debian has recently had some rather high-profile examples of how they insert bugs into their packaging that are not present in the software itself[1], and Twisted has had issues with this too[2]. I can sympathize, a little bit, with the Mozilla folks' desire to use trademarks as a weapon to say "stop breaking our stuff!". I don't think that this is the right way to go about it, and clearly it doesn't work if they just do it anyway and give it a different name. While I think the Firefox patches which precipitated the Iceweasel debate are far, far from this point, there *is* some point where patching becomes so intense that distributors really shouldn't use the same name for their software. [1]: http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1571 in case you're living under some kind of magic rock that prevents all computer security related things from reaching you. [2]: I couldn't help but think of this bug - http://bugs.debian.org/cgi- bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=474630 - where some debian developers have specifically discussed re-introducing bug #2339 in a patch. I feel like there's a parallel thread that should be started here about how we communicate with packagers. For example, I am pretty sure that there are bugs in Twisted which would prevent *any* system packager (debian, redhat, gentoo) from getting a clean test run from an installed package, and yet we basically never hear about it. Why is that? What use is our test suite if the actual way twisted is installed always breaks it? How can we convince packagers to build and install stuff and tell us when it fails the tests? This has nothing whatsoever to do with trademarks, of course.
I have to say, personally, there's pretty much no way I would ever name a project 'Twisty' anything ;-).
OK, OK, I get it. Everybody hates "Twisty" :). I should have been more careful to separate the specific suggestion of "Twisty" (which was just something that popped into my head) in my original message from the need for a word like this. I wasn't totally set on it.
I like Twisty. It's cute. Much better than some lame microsoft-like 2-3 letter prefix to the name of the package. Of course, I think any package called PyBlah is fairly lame too. jack.
On Fri, 30 May 2008 15:31:36 -0500, Jack Moffitt <jack@chesspark.com> wrote:
I have to say, personally, there's pretty much no way I would ever name a project 'Twisty' anything ;-).
OK, OK, I get it. Everybody hates "Twisty" :). I should have been more careful to separate the specific suggestion of "Twisty" (which was just something that popped into my head) in my original message from the need for a word like this. I wasn't totally set on it.
I like Twisty. It's cute. Much better than some lame microsoft-like 2-3 letter prefix to the name of the package. Of course, I think any package called PyBlah is fairly lame too.
jack.
Seconded, for whatever such secondment is worth ;) I've heard so many people tell me that they won't use library A, or framework B, because the "name doesn't sound professional". The rationale is usually one of the following: 1. If the name is unprofessional, the code/community must also be unprofessional. 2. People I work with/for will ridicule me for promoting the use of any product with such a silly name; worse, I will lose credibility within my organization for having promoted the use of said product. Now, I'm not denying that these things happen, but my own perspective is that anyone who adopts either of the rationales stated above should not be attempting to use Python, much less Twisted, for their work. If you need acceptance and buy-in from people for whom a silly name is a deal-breaker, then you should just make your life easier and stick with products that you know will meet with ready acceptance inside your organization. Me? I like TwistyDownloader, TwistyMessaging, TwistyTweets, etc. Silly? Sure. Readily identifiable as being part of the Twisted branding universe? Yes. The latter is what counts, in my book, not some misguided need for "seriousness" or "professionalism". Heck, "Twisty" evokes fond memories of interactive fiction, at least for me. What more could a geek want? L. Daniel Burr
On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 4:56 PM, L. Daniel Burr <ldanielburr@mac.com> wrote:
On Fri, 30 May 2008 15:31:36 -0500, Jack Moffitt <jack@chesspark.com> wrote:
I have to say, personally, there's pretty much no way I would ever name a project 'Twisty' anything ;-).
OK, OK, I get it. Everybody hates "Twisty" :). I should have been more careful to separate the specific suggestion of "Twisty" (which was just something that popped into my head) in my original message from the need for a word like this. I wasn't totally set on it.
I like Twisty. It's cute. Much better than some lame microsoft-like 2-3 letter prefix to the name of the package. Of course, I think any package called PyBlah is fairly lame too.
jack.
Seconded, for whatever such secondment is worth ;)
I like Twisty. And trademarks are good in this case, otherwise the community could get ripped off with a cheap knock-off. I don't think Twi- sounds as good as Py- as a prefix. As for seriousness, there are so many stupid names in the tech industry no one blinks at an eccentric name like Twisted (BenQ -> QISDA, Andersen Consulting -> Accenture, etc.). I've had people blink at the name Python, but they're usually so out of touch with technology that it doesn't even matter. Cheers, Christian
On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 3:56 PM, L. Daniel Burr <ldanielburr@mac.com> wrote:
On Fri, 30 May 2008 15:31:36 -0500, Jack Moffitt <jack@chesspark.com> wrote:
I have to say, personally, there's pretty much no way I would ever name a project 'Twisty' anything ;-).
OK, OK, I get it. Everybody hates "Twisty" :). I should have been more careful to separate the specific suggestion of "Twisty" (which was just something that popped into my head) in my original message from the need for a word like this. I wasn't totally set on it.
I like Twisty. It's cute. Much better than some lame microsoft-like 2-3 letter prefix to the name of the package. Of course, I think any package called PyBlah is fairly lame too.
jack.
Seconded, for whatever such secondment is worth ;)
I've heard so many people tell me that they won't use library A, or framework B, because the "name doesn't sound professional". The rationale is usually one of the following:
1. If the name is unprofessional, the code/community must also be unprofessional.
2. People I work with/for will ridicule me for promoting the use of any product with such a silly name; worse, I will lose credibility within my organization for having promoted the use of said product.
Now, I'm not denying that these things happen, but my own perspective is that anyone who adopts either of the rationales stated above should not be attempting to use Python, much less Twisted, for their work. If you need acceptance and buy-in from people for whom a silly name is a deal-breaker, then you should just make your life easier and stick with products that you know will meet with ready acceptance inside your organization.
Me? I like TwistyDownloader, TwistyMessaging, TwistyTweets, etc. Silly? Sure. Readily identifiable as being part of the Twisted branding universe? Yes. The latter is what counts, in my book, not some misguided need for "seriousness" or "professionalism".
Heck, "Twisty" evokes fond memories of interactive fiction, at least for me. What more could a geek want?
These are all really good points. I'm not a big fan of the "Twisty" name, but did a great job casting it in a nice light. However, twisty.whatever isn't a good namespace to cram a bunch of stuff. tx, on the other hand, is. It's a quick type that I won't mind doing repeatedly for any Twisted-based project code I write. How about "TX, pronounced 'Twisty'" ... d
Jack Moffitt wrote:
I have to say, personally, there's pretty much no way I would ever name a project 'Twisty' anything ;-). OK, OK, I get it. Everybody hates "Twisty" :). I should have been more careful to separate the specific suggestion of "Twisty" (which was just something that popped into my head) in my original message from the need for a word like this. I wasn't totally set on it.
I like Twisty. It's cute. Much better than some lame microsoft-like 2-3 letter prefix to the name of the package. Of course, I think any package called PyBlah is fairly lame too.
How about Gnarly? Gnarly gnetworking? Gno, that's gnot right. regards Steve (Stephegn) -- Steve Holden +1 571 484 6266 +1 800 494 3119 Holden Web LLC http://www.holdenweb.com/
On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 4:07 PM, Steve Holden <steve@holdenweb.com> wrote:
Jack Moffitt wrote:
I have to say, personally, there's pretty much no way I would ever name a project 'Twisty' anything ;-).
OK, OK, I get it. Everybody hates "Twisty" :). I should have been more careful to separate the specific suggestion of "Twisty" (which was just something that popped into my head) in my original message from the need for a word like this. I wasn't totally set on it.
I like Twisty. It's cute. Much better than some lame microsoft-like 2-3 letter prefix to the name of the package. Of course, I think any package called PyBlah is fairly lame too.
How about Gnarly? Gnarly gnetworking? Gno, that's gnot right.
regards Steve (Stephegn)
Okay, that was downright hilarious. d
On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 2:03 PM, <glyph@divmod.com> wrote:
On 03:31 pm, phil@bubblehouse.org wrote:
I have to say, personally, there's pretty much no way I would ever name a project 'Twisty' anything ;-).
OK, OK, I get it. Everybody hates "Twisty" :).
Seriously. I groaned audibly upon hearing about it :-)
I should have been more careful to separate the specific suggestion of "Twisty" (which was just something that popped into my head) in my original message from the need for a word like this. I wasn't totally set on it.
Of course, I understand this wouldn't be a requirement, but if this is to be a useful marketing technique, whatever the prefix is needs to be obvious, but also inconsequential. That's the thing that's great about the Java convention, once you're familiar with it, you pretty much stop seeing the J. Same with the tired but successful iSomething.
You've convinced me. I still think "Twi" sounds okay (better than "Twisty") "Tx" (evocative of "TwistedmatriX", "Transmit", "Twisted multipleXed"?) "T"? I'd suggest "Tw" but I feel like it has to be pronounceable, and "Tw" forces the first letter of your project to be a vowel (whereas "Tx" could be pronounced "Tix").
I think a one- or two-letter prefix is pretty much the best option
Man, I think you totally hit it on the nose with your "tx" suggestion: tx.snmp, tx.storage. I maintain the Twisted-JSONRPC package, and I will change the namespace from twisted.web.jsonrpc to tx.jsonrpc. Not only does it have a cool sound, entails "TwistedmatriX", is associated with "transmit", but it could also stand for "Twisted eXtensions" (in the "add on" sense). I think this one's a winner. d
On May 30, 2008, at 8:14 PM, Duncan McGreggor wrote:
On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 2:03 PM, <glyph@divmod.com> wrote:
You've convinced me. I still think "Twi" sounds okay (better than "Twisty") "Tx" (evocative of "TwistedmatriX", "Transmit", "Twisted multipleXed"?) "T"? I'd suggest "Tw" but I feel like it has to be pronounceable, and "Tw" forces the first letter of your project to be a vowel (whereas "Tx" could be pronounced "Tix").
I think a one- or two-letter prefix is pretty much the best option
Man, I think you totally hit it on the nose with your "tx" suggestion: tx.snmp, tx.storage. I maintain the Twisted-JSONRPC package, and I will change the namespace from twisted.web.jsonrpc to tx.jsonrpc. Not only does it have a cool sound, entails "TwistedmatriX", is associated with "transmit", but it could also stand for "Twisted eXtensions" (in the "add on" sense).
I was about to second this point before I left work tonight, but got distracted. I like it even better with the dot notation, e.g., tx.whatever. -phil
2008/5/31 Duncan McGreggor <duncan.mcgreggor@gmail.com>:
On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 2:03 PM, <glyph@divmod.com> wrote:
On 03:31 pm, phil@bubblehouse.org wrote:
I have to say, personally, there's pretty much no way I would ever name a project 'Twisty' anything ;-).
OK, OK, I get it. Everybody hates "Twisty" :).
Seriously. I groaned audibly upon hearing about it :-)
I should have been more careful to separate the specific suggestion of "Twisty" (which was just something that popped into my head) in my original message from the need for a word like this. I wasn't totally set on it.
Of course, I understand this wouldn't be a requirement, but if this is to be a useful marketing technique, whatever the prefix is needs to be obvious, but also inconsequential. That's the thing that's great about the Java convention, once you're familiar with it, you pretty much stop seeing the J. Same with the tired but successful iSomething.
You've convinced me. I still think "Twi" sounds okay (better than "Twisty") "Tx" (evocative of "TwistedmatriX", "Transmit", "Twisted multipleXed"?) "T"? I'd suggest "Tw" but I feel like it has to be pronounceable, and "Tw" forces the first letter of your project to be a vowel (whereas "Tx" could be pronounced "Tix").
I think a one- or two-letter prefix is pretty much the best option
Man, I think you totally hit it on the nose with your "tx" suggestion: tx.snmp, tx.storage. I maintain the Twisted-JSONRPC package, and I will change the namespace from twisted.web.jsonrpc to tx.jsonrpc. Not only does it have a cool sound, entails "TwistedmatriX", is associated with "transmit", but it could also stand for "Twisted eXtensions" (in the "add on" sense). I really like tx. too and you perfectly explained why :)
jkk
On 12:14 am, duncan.mcgreggor@gmail.com wrote:
Man, I think you totally hit it on the nose with your "tx" suggestion: tx.snmp, tx.storage. I maintain the Twisted-JSONRPC package, and I will change the namespace from twisted.web.jsonrpc to tx.jsonrpc. Not only does it have a cool sound, entails "TwistedmatriX", is associated with "transmit", but it could also stand for "Twisted eXtensions" (in the "add on" sense).
Thanks for the encouragement :) but a minor point: I think it's important that these packages use 'py' in the same way most projects do, since sharing namespaces in Python is such a pain. i.e. in pygame you do 'import pygame', in pygtk you do 'import gtk'. The existence of the separate 'py' library / namespace complicates matters somewhat, but that's a single entity that has nothing to do with 99% of the PyFoo projects out there. So these names would be 'txjsonrpc', 'txsnmp', 'txstorage', et. al. It seems like different people have different ideas for this convention, which sounds great to me too. If we have a few "Twisty XYZ" libraries and a few "TxABC" libraries that's fine by me :). The whole point here is that it's a suggestion and a convention, not a mandate from the core team like so many things in the Twistedverse.
On Sat, May 31, 2008 at 2:27 PM, <glyph@divmod.com> wrote:
On 12:14 am, duncan.mcgreggor@gmail.com wrote:
Man, I think you totally hit it on the nose with your "tx" suggestion: tx.snmp, tx.storage. I maintain the Twisted-JSONRPC package, and I will change the namespace from twisted.web.jsonrpc to tx.jsonrpc. Not only does it have a cool sound, entails "TwistedmatriX", is associated with "transmit", but it could also stand for "Twisted eXtensions" (in the "add on" sense).
Thanks for the encouragement :) but a minor point: I think it's important that these packages use 'py' in the same way most projects do, since sharing namespaces in Python is such a pain. i.e. in pygame you do 'import pygame', in pygtk you do 'import gtk'. The existence of the separate 'py' library / namespace complicates matters somewhat, but that's a single entity that has nothing to do with 99% of the PyFoo projects out there.
Hrm. I really like the idea of the community sharing a namespace. But maybe that's just my software hippy/commune side coming out...
So these names would be 'txjsonrpc', 'txsnmp', 'txstorage', et. al.
As a name, I don't know what appeals to me more... txJSONRPC, TxJSONRPC, txjsonrpc. As a namespace, I really do like tx.jsonrpc ;-)
It seems like different people have different ideas for this convention, which sounds great to me too. If we have a few "Twisty XYZ" libraries and a few "TxABC" libraries that's fine by me :). The whole point here is that it's a suggestion and a convention, not a mandate from the core team like so many things in the Twistedverse.
Now that, I am totally in favor of :-) No mandates, just encouragement. Most of all, encouragement to participate and share Twisted-based code/projects :-) d
On Sat, May 31, 2008 at 3:51 PM, Duncan McGreggor <duncan.mcgreggor@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sat, May 31, 2008 at 2:27 PM, <glyph@divmod.com> wrote:
On 12:14 am, duncan.mcgreggor@gmail.com wrote:
Man, I think you totally hit it on the nose with your "tx" suggestion: tx.snmp, tx.storage. I maintain the Twisted-JSONRPC package, and I will change the namespace from twisted.web.jsonrpc to tx.jsonrpc. Not only does it have a cool sound, entails "TwistedmatriX", is associated with "transmit", but it could also stand for "Twisted eXtensions" (in the "add on" sense).
Thanks for the encouragement :) but a minor point: I think it's important that these packages use 'py' in the same way most projects do, since sharing namespaces in Python is such a pain. i.e. in pygame you do 'import pygame', in pygtk you do 'import gtk'. The existence of the separate 'py' library / namespace complicates matters somewhat, but that's a single entity that has nothing to do with 99% of the PyFoo projects out there.
Hrm. I really like the idea of the community sharing a namespace. But maybe that's just my software hippy/commune side coming out...
So these names would be 'txjsonrpc', 'txsnmp', 'txstorage', et. al.
As a name, I don't know what appeals to me more... txJSONRPC, TxJSONRPC, txjsonrpc. As a namespace, I really do like tx.jsonrpc ;-)
I've been playing with this for a couple days now, and as the only way (that I know of) to support a large, shared namespace in python is to require the use of setuptools, and given that so many object to its use, I've bailed on tx.jsonrpc and have simply used txjsonrpc and txJSON-RPC in my project. d
On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 10:31 AM, Phil Christensen <phil@bubblehouse.org> wrote:
On May 29, 2008, at 7:15 PM, glyph@divmod.com wrote:
I'd really like "twisted" (and our various "dot product" subprojects) to be a trademark that the software freedom conservancy can protect and defend.
On May 29, 2008, at 8:25 PM, Tim Stebbing wrote:
why?
[snip snip]
trademarking just seems to rub the wrong way, makes people suspicious, goes against the ethos man ;)
I have a similar predilection against trademarking, but when I really think about it, I only feel this way because of the actions of those who abuse the intent of trademark law. However, it's clear that legally, if Twisted wants any ability to protect against blatant misuse of the name, this is the only recourse.
I had almost the same experience. When Steve Holden first let me know that this discussion was happening, I was like "ah, shit." But then, when Glyph talked to me about it, he talked me down. As Phil said, this is the only recourse if we want to have the ability to legally protect *our* (the community's) investment in Twisted. The thing is, this thread got derailed early on, and there is another really important point here that Glyph pointed out to me. Trademark issues aside, we want to provide a mechanism (for starters, a naming convention) by which *more* community members can participate without having to under go the arduous (for a beginner) review process, code scrutiny, etc. In the same way that naming a project "pySomething" is not only an indication of its programming language, but (even more?) that it is a resource of the Python community, naming a project <twisted prefix>Something will do the same for coders who are creating Twisted "community resources." d
I'm late to the party, but if people are flinging pennies around, here's two of mine. Instead of lawyering up the Twisted franchise, maybe you could instead use the DivMod brand to bless things that you want to be able to be authoritative about. There's already a sort of informal understanding of territoriality; "This DivMod stuff is ours. You can use it if you recognize that we make a living off this and we'll defend it. This other Twisted stuff is everyone's, and we're just custodians." Bringing the law into our comfortable community w/out taking an arms-length approach (eg, give the trademark to a not-for-profit) is kind of alienating. But maybe I exaggerate. Mike.
On 02:58 pm, mike@mkp.ca wrote:
(eg, give the trademark to a not-for-profit)
That is exactly what we intend to do. I thought I mentioned it in the initial post; if not, sorry about that. The whole point of having a defensible trademark is having something that the SFC can do something about :).
On Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 11:10 AM, <glyph@divmod.com> wrote:
On 02:58 pm, mike@mkp.ca wrote:
(eg, give the trademark to a not-for-profit)
That is exactly what we intend to do. I thought I mentioned it in the initial post; if not, sorry about that. The whole point of having a defensible trademark is having something that the SFC can do something about :).
So DivMod would not have any influence whatsoever over who is prosecuted? That sounds more reasonable. Sorry, I can't seem to make myself go past this kind of thread without saying something 100% useless. It's a disease of some kind.
On Jun 5, 2008, at 10:58 AM, Mike Pelletier wrote:
I'm late to the party, but if people are flinging pennies around, here's two of mine.
Instead of lawyering up the Twisted franchise, maybe you could instead use the DivMod brand to bless things that you want to be able to be authoritative about. There's already a sort of informal understanding of territoriality; "This DivMod stuff is ours. You can use it if you recognize that we make a living off this and we'll defend it. This other Twisted stuff is everyone's, and we're just custodians." Bringing the law into our comfortable community w/out taking an arms-length approach (eg, give the trademark to a not-for-profit) is kind of alienating. But maybe I exaggerate.
This is a feeling a few other people have expressed. It's understandable to feel like this is "lawyering up" the community, but it's important to be pragmatic about the environment we're in right now. Free software/open source has made a lot of ground in the last few years, but I think it's fair to say that the GPL/MIT/etc licenses still have yet to be truly tested. For some projects, like, say Firefox, the threat of potential infringers is almost nonexistent, since practically *everyone* knows what firefox is, and that would be a huge community for a potential infringer to piss off. Nonetheless, the Mozilla foundation has several trademark registrations. Also, did you catch the part where this trademark *would* be held by a non-profit? If you check out glyph's first post to this thread, the Twisted trademarks would be formally held by the Software Freedom Conservancy. -phil
participants (20)
-
Andrew Bennetts -
Chris Miles -
Christian Simms -
Drew Smathers -
Duncan McGreggor -
Gabriel Rossetti -
glyph＠divmod.com -
Jack Moffitt -
Jonathan Lange -
Kuba Konczyk -
L. Daniel Burr -
Michael -
Mike Pelletier -
Nathan -
Phil Christensen -
Simon Pickles -
Stephen Waterbury -
Steve Holden -
Tim Stebbing -
Trent Nelson