From: Todd Benson Date: 2007-07-11T01:27:45+09:00 Subject: Re: Religion (was: god 0.1.0 released) On 7/10/07, James Edward Gray II wrote: > On Jul 10, 2007, at 10:29 AM, Lyle Johnson wrote: > > > > > On Jul 10, 2007, at 10:23 AM, James Edward Gray II wrote: > > > >> On Jul 10, 2007, at 10:20 AM, Trans wrote: > >> > >>> Sure, "God" is > >>> not a "bad" word, but it's just as emotionally heavy. In the end, > >>> you > >>> could use any such name, if you really wanted, but you'd probably be > >>> doing yourself a disservice b/c some people simply won't approach > >>> your > >>> project b/c of it. > >> > >> It seems to be drumming up business to me. > > > > Only if you believe there's no such thing as bad publicity. > > See the Grand Theft Auto games. No doubt. I agree the publicity works for a popularity contest. One could argue that such a thing might attract some brilliant contributors, even; or, as the case may be, shoddy ones. The namespace (set of all useful names) of shared libraries/apps/gems is a limited resource. Some names carry more weight than others, as evidenced by Mr. Burch's and others' replies, and so, unintentionally become commodities. I'd like to think we're all smart enough to say "a word is just a word," but that just isn't the case. The word "god" is especially weird because it has an exceptional amount of baggage surrounding it. I think it would be prudent and polite to use weird and heavy names as objects/variables/etc. inside of an application or library, and not as the name of a library. But I know that will never happen. How could it? First one to lay claim to a name gets it, right? I keep thinking of the pour lost souls typing in http://www.god.com to find solace because some guy(s)/gal(s) homesteaded that territory. Todd