Rename application

[thesoftwarephilosopher]

We should rename it to something unique for the sake of avoiding future trademark issues.

Fundamentally, this application is just set of APIs that give you high-level access to lower-level internal APIs to inspect and manipulate applications, windows, screen brightness, audio devices, battery state, the mouse cursor, global hotkeys, keyboard events, etc, and the glue that holds them together.

There are some uses more common than others, but I don't want to name it after any of those names, since it wrongfully scopes the app in a user's mind (thus causing them to consider anything outside of that common use to be "conceptual bloat").

Conclusion

Mjolnir

[chdiza]

Is there a desire to stay with the mythology theme?

[thesoftwarephilosopher]

@chdiza Not at all.

[chdiza]

hydrawm?

[jhgg]

IANAL, but unless there's another Hydra that's a programmable window management solution, we should be in the green.

[thesoftwarephilosopher]

@jhgg I don't want to take any chances. I'd rather use something that has no results in www.trademarkia.com or something. Especially now while it's still quite early in the project. Remember, Firefox used to be named Phoenix at some point but had to change their name for the same reason. Fortunately they did it quite early.

[thesoftwarephilosopher]

Can I name it Jarvis.app?

[thesoftwarephilosopher]

Hmm. This project already has a bit of publicity from a few blogs and news sites. Naming it at this point may confuse new users looking for a project called "Hydra". Although I suppose a note on the readme would take care of that...

[asmagill]

For what it’s worth, I do like the name and the icon (not as sold on the menu icon, but I can’t think of anything better, so…)

Never having wanted to trademark a name before, what constitutes sufficient due-diligence to make sure it isn’t a problem?

On Jul 27, 2014, at 10:59 PM, Steven Degutis notifications@github.com wrote:

Hmm. This project already has a bit of publicity from a few blogs and news sites. Naming it at this point may confuse new users looking for a project called "Hydra". Although I suppose a note on the readme would take care of that...

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

[thesoftwarephilosopher]

My biggest reason for wanting to avoid the name Hydra is to not infringe on an existing trademark. But this involves a little bit of confusion for new users looking for an app called "Hydra" and finding something else. It could be assuaged with a prominent note in the README, but it's still not ideal. So perhaps we should keep the name tentatively until we find out whether we even need to worry about it.

[thesoftwarephilosopher]

I'm still working on the rename. I'm hoping to come up with a name that describes what the application does, at least somewhat. Random mythological names were fun back when I wasn't taking it very serious (Zephyros, Phoenix, Leviathan) but it's time to pick something that fits and stick with it forever.

[chdiza]

Darn, I was just about to suggest "Medusa"!

[thesoftwarephilosopher]

Here are my notes so far from brainstorming:

Finding a good name is top priority for me now.

Because I don't want to wait any longer before renaming it -- Hydra was a temporary name, representing my experimental new branch of Phoenix; it should not have remained for this long.

So I'm taking notes on all that my wife and I have brainstormed so far.

Anyone is free to offer suggestions, but don't take offense if I don't accept them; suggestions are a dime a dozen, so don't get too attached to one.

The goal of this brainstorming was to find analogies and metaphors that fit what this app does, and hopefully using those analogies we'd find a good name.

So, when I was brainstorming with Nikki last night, I was explaining that I look at Hydra as letting you create and customize your own perfect environment.

We came up with the metaphors of Engineer, Architect, Toolbox, Workbench...

Then I thought: Hydra is just like the Broom scene in Fantasia; you're automating your routine chores, almost magically.

Then she came up with and insisted on "Wizard's Staff", although that phrase feels too complex for a name, with two non-hyphenable words and an apostrophe.

So I looked up what Gandalf's staff was named, and sure enough, he had many and named none.

We also looked up Spellbook, which is not trademarked for similar software, but has no reasonable domain name, using the pattern name{.io,.com,app.com}

Also we looked up Grimoire, which is like a spell book, but @arrdem took it, plus it also fails the domain name test. And it's kind of a stretch. But it felt a little less childish than Spellbook.

I looked up Robot synonyms and found Bot, Droid, Android, and Golem -- that last one looked interesting but it turns out to have negative connotations: an inanimate object brought to life, but whose nature leans towards hostile when not under direct control by the user. (Obviously those other synonyms are taken.)

We also started trying to take the path of "building block" which accurately describes Hydra's modules and its overall functionality.

So we came up with Atom, Electron, Neutron, Quark...

Obviously Atom is taken.

Nikki says Electron feels like a very powerful word (because of "tron" at the end, which feels "strong"), but I can't agree -- I think it just sounds like the 80s.

Anyway, I concluded that I didn't want to name it based on the size of it. It kind of fits, since the goal is to be modularized and small, but it doesn't give the idea of what it can do.

Oh also, along the wizardry path, we looked up Potion and Elixir, both of which turned out to be programming languages :D

Although Potion was abandoned by _why, but someone else picked it up; also it fails the domain name test (obviously) and is probably trademarked.

Looking for synonyms for Wizard right now, I found Warlock (too evil sounding), Mage (fails every test), Magus (too obscure), and Maestro.

This last one made me think of another analogy, namely, that you're conducting your desktop environment like an orchestra.

Obviously Maestro is already taken though.

I'd like to avoid compound boring words like DeskHack. It's just too cheesy and hard for even me to take seriously.

We also can't use names with OSX or Mac in them, since that's trademarked too. Besides, it feels a bit too uninventive to have names with abbreviations tacked onto the end to make it unique (i.e. HackUX). I'd like to find a memorable name that's a real word and fits what this does well. I may be asking for too much, but I'm going to keep trying anyway.

[chdiza]

I'm hoping to come up with a name that describes what the application does

So what does Hydra do? From what I understand, fundamentally what Hydra does is: takes pieces of system functionality that are mostly unavailable and/or comparatively difficult-to-do-in-the-GUI, and makes them (and combinations derived from them) accessible via hotkey.*

In the beginning it mostly just made window manipulation available via hotkey, but now it does much more.

[*] Or, via the commandline with hydra-cli. If there weren't such a thing as hydra-cli, then hotkey should've remained eternally part of Hydra-core and not an extension.

[arrdem]

Sorry :smiling_imp:

[chdiza]

"Wand"; "Marionette"; "Geppetto"; "Sorcerer"

"Alchemist" is taken (unsure whether it's trademarked), but one could use other languages' words for "alchemist" if they're recognizable to English-speakers. Google translate reveals that in Norwegian and Sweidish one gets "Alkymist" and "Alkemist", each of which looks even cooler than the English.

[thesoftwarephilosopher]

Oh that reminds me, we also looked into Alchemist and Apothecary, but they failed some tests.. forgot which ones, probably the domain name or trademark tests.

[thesoftwarephilosopher]

I think variations in spelling would probably make this harder to google if anything.

[chdiza]

Hydra involves taking control over what was previously either uncontrollable or not easily controllable.

I'm having a tough time coming up with good single-word names that reflect this. "Coup" and "Junta" for example might have overly negative connotations (even though I kinda like the former).

OTOH those are names for the act of taking power, or for the things in power. A wand is an instrument, or piece of equipment, used in taking power. Like Hydra. In that vein...

"Harness"; "Saddle"; "Stirrup"; "Spur"/"Spurs"; "Yoke"; "Rein".

I'm kinda liking "Stirrup" and "Yoke". Things on this list don't describe what's being harnessed/yoked, but then again, neither do "Wizard", "Wand" and the like.

[thesoftwarephilosopher]

On that note, an early idea I had was Prometheus... I'm taking the power from Apple and giving it to power users ;) but I'm pretty sure that fails the trademark and domain tests.

[chdiza]

"Bullwhip"

[chdiza]

"Imhotep" (sorcerer to the Pharaoh in the movies, genius dude in real life).

[thesoftwarephilosopher]

If only I were more cultured like @technomancy this wouldn't be so hard. :trollface:

[chdiza]

"Heka". See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_religion#Magic

[thesoftwarephilosopher]

Pretty obscure, but seems to fit pretty nicely.

[fent]

ADH2 (All Dogs go to Heaven 2)

[thesoftwarephilosopher]

Summon.app would have been cool, but it's got trademarks in software, and the closest domain name is not ideal (summonapp.io)

[thesoftwarephilosopher]

(Same with Conjure)

[thesoftwarephilosopher]

Naming things is hard. This is why I gave up in the first place.

[chdiza]

"Viceroy"; "Scepter"

[chdiza]

"Viceroy"; "Scepter"

[chdiza]

Maybe a bit biblical, but: "Aaron". If only his staff had a name!

[thesoftwarephilosopher]

Hex.app is short, but seems to be stretching the "automagic" metaphor a bit. Also the only reasonable domain name for it is hexapp.io

I'm using https://domai.nr/ btw which @keithbsmiley showed me earlier - very cool site.

Also I'm testing under this pattern:

• name.com
• nameapp.com
• name.io

I think any other domain names would be hard to remember. Maybe name.org, but do people actually use those these days?

[DomT4]

@sdegutis is correct on the trademark issues. Legally speaking, under US Trademark Law you have to actively & deliberately defend and police your trademark. If you don't do so you stand a great deal of chance of losing your trademark.

Theoretically, under the law, as long as you aren't in the same field as the original trademark then you're relatively safe to use the same name, but if you can avoid the issue entirely it can save on a whole ton of paperwork down the line.

There have been far too many cases of larger companies expanding into a new area and taking the trademark with them into that area, and often bullying a smaller trademark holder into giving up the name. Trademark law is a mess, and desperately in need of reform.

[thesoftwarephilosopher]

Unfortunately the trademark issue probably means we need to choose a more obscure word/name, which has the risk of being harder to remember/pronounce/spell.

[thesoftwarephilosopher]

What about Mjolnir? It seems to pass every test. mjolnir.io is available, the search sites I'm using don't see any trademarks for it... Sure it's hard to spell, but......

[thesoftwarephilosopher]

I'm kind of really liking Mjolnir.

[arrdem]

https://github.com/halgari/mjolnir

[thesoftwarephilosopher]

@arrdem A Clojure library and an OS X GUI app are so disparate that I can't see anyone getting confused by it; also, I really can't imagine either of us going after the other for trademark enforcement, seeing as we're both open source projects.

[thesoftwarephilosopher]

@arrdem The trademark issue is to avoid big-name companies like Nokia or Google or Apple or whoever going after us to say "nope, that's the name of one of our products; change your name now"

[arrdem]

shrug your tooling man. tb's mjolnir doesn't have a boatload of google-fu so I'm sure you'll be fine I'm just sayin' that's what comes to mind for that name.

[thesoftwarephilosopher]

So, iff we go the Mjolnir route.. what's the etiquette on naming two different things the same name? Has this happened before in software, two disparate tools/libraries having the same name with no confusion?

[thesoftwarephilosopher]

Btw the idea for Mjolnir is that it's this very versatile tool that lets you do a lot of different things. Kind of generic still, I know, but at least it's unique, mostly untaken, unlikely to be trademark-infringing, and at least somewhat descriptive.

[chdiza]

So, iff we go the Mjolnir route.. what's the etiquette on naming two different things the same name? Has this happened before in software, two disparate tools/libraries having the same name with no confusion?

http://www.macupdate.com/find/mac/flux

[chdiza]

I love "Mjolnir" except that I'm finding it very hard to type. Not looking forward to invoking mjolnir-cli's binary :)

[thesoftwarephilosopher]

Yeah good point.. plus it's not very descriptive.. the metaphor is kind of a stretch.

[chdiza]

Well, I like it as far as the metaphor goes. There just won't be a way to get very descriptive without doing the kind of compound-name cheese you want to avoid. "Magicwand" and the like aren't very descriptive either.

If we're looking at trusty instruments of fictional characters, then: "Excalibur" (already the name of a defunct LaTeX spell-checker, but whatever).

[thesoftwarephilosopher]

Well so far I'm okay with Mjolnir... I'll sleep on it.

[thesoftwarephilosopher]

For what it's worth @halgari has expressed his indifference to us using the name Mjolnir. The only thing left is to think about whether it would be confusing to users.

[thesoftwarephilosopher]

This is admittedly very hard to pronounce. And spell. Those are two pretty big reasons against Mjolnir so far.

[fent]

You're right, "mjolnir" is mostly on the right hand side in querty keyboards. Something like "element", which alternates each key with left/right would be ideal.