The opendarwin .com debacle

Jordan K. Hubbard jkh at apple.com
Thu Oct 22 10:54:50 PDT 2009


Ultimately, I don't think anyone is going to be able to "force" the darwinports.com 
  folks from doing what they're doing (and I really wish the original  
poster had managed to keep the notion of opendarwin / darwinports  
separate in his head, since they're really not related issues, yet  
there's opendarwin in the subject on this whole thread).   Those who  
were around back when macports was chosen as the new name will know  
that this was, in fact, one of the big reasons for doing so.  This  
"problem" has been around for as long as MacPorts has been renamed.

The real problem at this point, however, is not darwinports.com and  
all this chest-thumping and hand wringing is giving me nothing but  
feelings of deja-vu since we have done it all before.  It didn't help  
then and it's utterly unlikely to accomplish anything now.  The real  
problem here is one of branding.  Why/where are users even hearing the  
name "darwinports" when it's been essentially dead for over 3 years?   
Projects rename themselves all the time and somehow manage to make the  
name change stick.  What this project needs to ask itself is why the  
name change has not stuck as successfully here and then fix that  
problem rather than re-fighting old battles.

- Jordan





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