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Comment by ohbtvz | Hacker News Reader

Let's be real for a minute. A couple of hobbyists have named their pet project "rune". Should the name be then forsaken for all eternity?

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Let's be real for a minute. What you're actually saying is these hobbyists don't really matter and they don't even deserve to name their projects. Only Real Projects created by Real Programmers at Real Big Tech corporations get the cool names.

This is the kind of disrespect that pushed people to create trademark laws.

The actual issue here is you acting like a name collision is a huge problem. It isn't, it's an everyday occurrence on Github alone. We just add a bit more info, like the account name in the case of Github or the year of release for movies/series/games etc.

If a name really isn’t such a big deal, then it shouldn’t be a big deal to change it to something else that wasn’t already taken. If there’s resistance to that idea, then maybe names are a big deal after all.

For a language dev, the name of the language is all you really own about it. These days, developers expect their languages and tools to be free, and of course open source and permissively licensed. The name and logo of the language is really the only IP most PL devs actually fully control, and costs actual money and time to maintain (registering and defending trademarks, domains, etc.)

To just step on names like Google has repeatedly done shows a crass disregard for what independent language devs go through.

We are talking about "rune", a common English noun. It's not like Google called it Zig or Jai. And how many github repos are just called "Lisp"?

Google isn't exactly innovative with their naming: Fuchsia, Dart, Pixel, Go, Drive, Ara, ... Aside from rare short-term experiments like Stadia everything outside a basic dictionary should be safe.

I'm not going to defend Google, but this specific case isn't one that I'd lose my mind over.

name collision becomes a problem when at least one of the entities is willing to bring lawyers to bear. not saying that's happening here, but certainly more of a concern in a situation where you have a hobbyist going up against a big company.

Hobbyists do deserve to name their projects. And other people can name their projects the same thing. Not a big deal.

(By the way, the reverse scenario here should be okay, too. If Google makes a project with with a common noun name, then others should be able to use that noun to name their projects.)

If Google can just stomp on anyone's name and that's fine by you, then what does it mean to say that hobbyists "deserve" to name their projects? What you're really saying is that whoever has the loudest voice backed by the most money gets claim over the name, regardless of who had claim to it first. In that world, hobbyists get whatever is leftover by by big corps, and don't really "deserve" anything.

> What you're really saying is that whoever has the loudest voice backed by the most money gets claim over the name, regardless of who had claim to it first.

No, I’m saying that nobody has “claim over the name”. Naming collisions happen all the time, and I don’t know why we get so bent out of shape about it. There are two multibillion-dollar software companies called Epic. There are a million businesses called AAA. I’ve been to three different breakfast restaurants called Sunrise.

Yes, actually, or at least until abandoned by the original authors. That's pretty much the norm in the PL community. There are enough names out there that no one needs to step on any toes. Although I guess Google engineers don't care much about community norms.

But in the spirit of being real: what are you trying to do by calling the Rune devs "a couple of hobbyists"? Is that an attempt to minimize them, as if they are not a corporation therefore they don't have any naming rights to their projects? "A couple hobbyists" are how many great language you know and love started out. Their rights are important too. We don't want the norm to be big corporations snuffing out hobbyist projects by making them unsearchable, like Google did to Go!. That's bad for everyone.

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