Project Naming

[mk e]

Jared, I think you have got the wrong idea.

It's not the name so much, as the "brand". It's like having two versions of Firefox, both browsers, but each designed for different hardware and with unique code bases. Why call them both Firefox?

And that is exactly what they do...

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all.html


There are 2 hardware bases , 3 OSs and it looks like about 50 languages. The reason they are all called firefox is because they are all browsers. Normally the marketing type like to expand the brand name as much as possible because it improves recognition and brings all the benefits that better brand recognition bring.
When I put the plus on my version (which should have been 5554) I was thinking FreeEMS was the brand name for open design, open source ECU. By all using the same brand people learn the name and know what to search on then pick the flavor when they get to the web site vs having to know the flavor to find the web site. MS for example looks set to have MS on 4 versions soon and this is why they keep the MS brand instead of a new name for each one
That said I completely respect Fred’s view that FreeEMS specifies the process base and he gets to make the call. I do see his point that people could be confused by various flavors. I would guess nearly the same number of people can be reach with various brand names with good cross linking to the various flavors once someone finds one of the pages as a starting point.

[sry_not4sale]

Jared, I think you have got the wrong idea.

It's not the name so much, as the "brand". It's like having two versions of Firefox, both browsers, but each designed for different hardware and with unique code bases. Why call them both Firefox?

And that is exactly what they do...

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all.html

There are 2 hardware bases , 3 OSs and it looks like about 50 languages.

Although they all share the same code base, and are all essentially the same thing
http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla/source/

Firefox is written in C, which is compatible with all hardware it supports, and is built to be compatible with multiple OSs from the ground up (using XPCOM (Cross Platform Component Object Model)).

The reason they are all called firefox is because they are all browsers. Normally the marketing type like to expand the brand name as much as possible because it improves recognition and brings all the benefits that better brand recognition bring.

I think the reason they are all under the same name is that they all behave exactly the same, have almost identical features, and all look and feel the same. That's essentially the point I was trying to clarify - but there isn't really any point arguing about it now that Fred has made his decision

[mk e]

- but there isn't really any point arguing about it now that Fred has made his decision

you are quite right.

[Fred]

Finally back to this! (just clearing out old tabs in firefox)

It's more than a name and more than a brand, it's important to keep the different aspects of a system unambiguous, and equally, different systems unambiguous.

You really need to be around on car forums where guys talk about MS to comprehend this fully.

A typical conversation might go :

A) Which version of MS do you have?
B) I have MS 2
A) Then you need to do XYZ
B) There is no option for XYZ in the tuning software
A) There must be, you are supposed to be using ms 2, are you using extra or b&g
B) I don't know, how do i tell
B) Extra
A) ms2extra has xyz option right under abc menu
B) that menu isn't there!
A) are you sure you have ms2??
B) it says right there on the board ms 2.2 - yes
A) no, silly, that is the board revision, not the ms version, which chip do you have
B) oh, ms1
A) that explains it! ok, do 123 instead...

This highly typical exchange lasts days and can be even worse than illustrated with firmware type, firmware version, processor type/version, board version/type all confused into "i have a ms" - this sucks for everyone, badly. I want it all to be crystal clear.

If we want an umbrella name (this may be a good idea) we can use/creat something like "open ecu society" or similar to which each project belongs.

Fred.

[MotoFab]

You really need to be around on car forums where guys talk about MS to comprehend this fully.

A typical conversation might go :

A) Which version of MS do you have?
B) I have MS 2
A) Then you need to do XYZ
B) There is no option for XYZ in the tuning software
A) There must be, you are supposed to be using ms 2, are you using extra or b&g
B) I don't know, how do i tell
B) Extra
A) ms2extra has xyz option right under abc menu
B) that menu isn't there!
A) are you sure you have ms2??
B) it says right there on the board ms 2.2 - yes
A) no, silly, that is the board revision, not the ms version, which chip do you have
B) oh, ms1
A) that explains it! ok, do 123 instead...

This highly typical exchange lasts days...

You totally nailed it, Fred!

I'm thinking that if you go with names instead of numbers, that's 85% of the battle right there.

Most of the issues are caused by people doing the common thing of truncating their communications. MegaSquirt 2.2 and MegaSquirt 2 both get truncated to numbers. The main reason this can happen is that the primary name for everything is MegaSquirt. Numbers are in many cases the only portion of the name that's different.

Using different primary names avoids almost all of that. Different primary names for hardware and firmware. People will not use the term FreeEMS when talking about Vanilla, they will truncate to Vanilla.

Jean wanted to have something to differentiate hardware from firmware. You can do that with different classifications of names. Vanilla is food related. Shark is animal related. Firmware can be names of food, and hardware can be names of animals, for example.

But rather than be limited to a class when naming something, the names merely need to be different. They can be creative, or descriptive, so long as they are a single word, and uniquely different. That means no secondary names, Vanilla - Sprinkles version. Vanilla will have versions of course, but when people have switched to numbers during a conversation, it usually indicates the topic has become limited just the single subject.

The combined effect of the single-unique-name requirement, and that people will naturally truncate the version number instead of the name, will fix everything.

- Jim

[Fred]

Jim, thank you very much for articulating what I was thinking! More about your post later, 4am now...

Great post.

Fred.

[MotoFab]

Thanks Fred.

I think the idea of recalling the typical historic snags, and taking simple steps which have a good chance of reducing those snags, pays long-term benefits. It will take you a short amount of time to sort out how the FreeEMS collective will name things. And about the only method that will fail is to not come up with a method.

Something additional occurred to me. A developer, or developer group, can reserve name classifications. For instance, the name Vanilla for the base code, can go on to include Chocolate, Strawberry, Pistachio, etc., by reserving the classification Ice Cream Flavors.

A key element is the names are not descriptively related to whatever they are naming. This nearly demands that the unique name be used when discussing any particular product.

Predators
Dogs
Birds
Airplanes
Countries
Fish
Colors
Hooved Animals
US Presidents

You can make lists of pre-approved names so that if developers prefer, they can just choose a pre-approved name at will, without having a name-approval session.

- Jim

[sry_not4sale]

The theme idea does sounds fun (we use animal noises at work for server names - oink, woof, roar...), however it is one more thing you have to explain to people when they first start getting into FreeEMS.

Namespaces can be more of a mouthful, but I feel that it means one less thing for people to learn and a peg lower the barrier-to-entry becomes. And the lower we can get that the better - both this project and MS have very high barriers-to-entry currently imho.

[Fred]

With respect to the Vanilla example, and just to be clear even though I think I know that you meant it as an example, my branch of the firmware will ALWAYS be called FreeEMS (-Vanilla) and that suffix is to make it clear that this is the original. MS have a de facto suffix of B&G for their Vanilla code, I'm preempting that.

Within vanilla, each significant release (all of them at the moment) gets a name for it specifically. eg Doxygenated for the current 0.0.19 release http://freeems.sourceforge.net/doxygen/doxygen-v0.0.19/

I think this thread deserves a diagram and I will draw one up as soon as my PC runs Debian and NOT Xandros.

Fred.

[Fred]

This thread needs a diagram. I will draw one up when I get a chance.

Fred.