Proposal request for ideas on naming Fedora releases.

[Joe Zeff]

On 08/11/2012 12:41 PM, Eddie G. O'Connor Jr. wrote:
> As far as I can see, there's no imminent harm to giving a new release of
> an OS a name, if anything it gives it an identity, something to
> associate it with, such as when two developers are talking and one says
> have you seen the splash screens for "Verne"?....with the two of them
> BOTH knowing what Fedora 16's "name" is. If someone doesn't think an OS
> release shouldn't' be named they can just ignore the name and go ahead
> and call it by whatever makes them happy! Remember Linux is all about
> "Freedom Of Choice"...whatever you choose to do, (within bounds of
> course!) is fine!

I have no problems, personally, in naming releases.  I'm sure it's  much 
easier for the devs to refer to them by name, especially in 
conversation.  And, for some distros, such as Ubuntu, the userbase tends 
to use the names, not release number, making the names even more 
important.  My objection to the name for F17 is that it sounds immature, 
rather as though it had been picked by a thirteen-year-old boy suffering 
from testosterone overload for the first time.  Yes, I understand that 
it was picked to honor the memory of a well-liked Fedora developer, but 
that's what it looks like to me.

Names can be a good thing, but an ill-chosen one can be a PR nightmare. 
  I think that the only reason we've not had trouble over Beefy Miracle 
is the fact that most people who know anything about Fedora tend to 
ignore the names and those who don't mostly know why it got the name. 
This time, we got lucky and didn't end up with a metric butload of bad 
publicity.  In the future, I think that some of the more mature devs 
might want to take a little time to make sure that we use a little 
common sense and avoid such names.

YMMV, and if it does, please remember that the above is only my opinion 
and you're free to ignore it if you want.