Re: App Naming Nazi (was: Re: Gstreamer)

[Alex Perez]

> "MoviePlayer.app" isn't optimal because it plays more than just movies, 
> you can also play OGG Vorbis or MP3 streams and, if you like, you can even 
> do some CPU hogging by visualising audio-only streams.
Agreed, you should use MediaPlayer as your app name.
> 
> Then I had this great idea: "If it plays any media streams, why not simply 
> call it 'MediaPlayer.app' instead of 'MoviePlayer.app'?" But then again, 
> this picture appeared before my minds eye: Me standing in front of an army 
> of lawyers, from a far distance I could hear the sound of a hammer being 
> slammed on a big desk, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer grinning at me 
> gloatingly, and myself only being capable of one thought: "How the heck am 
> I supposed to ever be able to pay those billions of dollars I've just been 
> condemned to?" - And all this just because I wanted to call my open source 
> media playing application such that the name reflects what the app does: 
> Playing media. Nah, that's not it.
Microsoft holds the trademark to "*Windows* Media Player" not "Media 
Player," which is a generic term. People tend to overreact when it comes 
to lawsuits. Calm, logical thinking should prevail. See the 
aforementioned.
> 
> Then I finally came back to my senses and stopped thinking about a name 
> for something that currently is nothing more than a proof-of-concept and a 
> bunch of ideas, so I simply wrote "GPlayer.app" and pressed the send 
> button.
That's the problem, really, nobody gives much thought to naming, and it 
causes these sorts of problems because folks just turn into naming-sheep.