Comment Good Call, I hope the idea gains traction. (Score 1) 946
From an empirical perspective, all people who I have introduced Linux to have hit multiple roadblocks with naming & icon issues. "Gee, couldn't they have picked a name less offensive than gimp ? why in the world ... ?" "why is the button shaped like a foot ? All I want to do is start something.. foot means nothing to me." "The icon for that is a penguin. Is that a game? I'm not supposed to play games at work." I am personally ok with things as they are, but we are not considering just ourselves, are we ? The goal of pleasing a larger userbase than what we have now is to introduce the topic of marketing.
I personally have settled on a minimalist desktop/no g/k desktop. The beauty and flexibility of Linux lets me change my desktop framework at whim to a variety of work oriented layouts. No one will ever be able to take those options away from me.
However, there exists the objective of growing a bigger usebase and mindshare. I am glad some desktop developers have taken the direction of naming things more sensibly. There are new (as in never used a computer before) users and other OS users. Windows has the biggest base to target, so lets go for that. To steal developers and users, I think making things named & iconed very similarly would be of great benefit for attaining this goal.
There is the risk of incurring lawsuits from monopolies. But that is what monopolies to to maintain that status; it is inavoidable. Or another way of saying it is if certian projects are incurring lawsuits from monopolies, then a threat has been touched on & progress is being made. I would argue that the terms 'keyboard' 'speaker' 'camera' 'email' 'image' 'picture' 'game' are a generic terms and the words and iconic descriptions of them cannot be copyrighted.
I personally have settled on a minimalist desktop/no g/k desktop. The beauty and flexibility of Linux lets me change my desktop framework at whim to a variety of work oriented layouts. No one will ever be able to take those options away from me.
However, there exists the objective of growing a bigger usebase and mindshare. I am glad some desktop developers have taken the direction of naming things more sensibly. There are new (as in never used a computer before) users and other OS users. Windows has the biggest base to target, so lets go for that. To steal developers and users, I think making things named & iconed very similarly would be of great benefit for attaining this goal.
There is the risk of incurring lawsuits from monopolies. But that is what monopolies to to maintain that status; it is inavoidable. Or another way of saying it is if certian projects are incurring lawsuits from monopolies, then a threat has been touched on & progress is being made. I would argue that the terms 'keyboard' 'speaker' 'camera' 'email' 'image' 'picture' 'game' are a generic terms and the words and iconic descriptions of them cannot be copyrighted.
