a note on 9.10.0rc2: eleven, twelve; dig and delv(e)

[/dev/rob0]

On Wed, Apr 30, 2014 at 01:22:24PM -0700, Doug Barton wrote:
> I mulled over your response and considered not pursuing this 
> further, but apparently I can't help myself. :)

It's okay, we can forgiv. :)

> On 04/27/2014 12:00 PM, Evan Hunt wrote:
> >On Sun, Apr 27, 2014 at 07:36:22PM +0100, Chris Thompson wrote:
> >>I rather liked "delve", but the truncation to "delv" does indeed 
> >>seem suboptimal in those respects, and quite ugly as well.
> >
> >I found that my initial "ugh, ugly" reaction wore off after I'd 
> >typed it the new way a couple of times.
> 
> Human beings' ability to adapt is remarkable. That doesn't mean 
> that every thing we adapt to is a good thing.
> 
> >But, indeed, if I'd known this was going to be a problem a month 
> >ago, I would have happily put it to discussion and a vote.  
> >Unfortunately the bug report came in only a couple of days before 
> >the originally- scheduled publication of 9.10.0, and I decided it 
> >would be better to live with an imperfect name than deal with the 
> >fallout of changing it after it was officially released.
> 
> I'm not seeing any official releases for 9.10, only release 
> candidates.

That was true. But look again. :)

> Apologies if I've missed something obvious here. If I'm right about
> this not being released yet, it means you still have plenty of time

It was not obvious; just released.

> to come up with another name. As much as the thing may seem to be 
> settled from your perspective (dealing with it day to day) the 
> exposure that 9.10 has received to date is only a tiny fraction of 
> what it will be after the official release.
> 
> I encourage you(pl.) to reconsider your decision to actually 
> release as is.
>
> >Anyway, now it can hang around and comiserate with resolv.conf.
> 
> Evidence of prior bad decisions does not provide justification
> for future bad decisions. :)

:)

There really was no perfect answer here.

Part of the legacy of GNU is that we have operating systems which 
consist of tools provided by various and sundry independent people 
and organizations. ISC and the Xapian project are two such groups. 
Each one has a userbase.

If ISC had stuck to the "dig and delve" idea, sure, there's a nice 
ring to it. And maybe there wouldn't be a lot of userbase overlap.

But there would be some overlap! And people who type "delve -h" who 
get Xapian delve's help when they wanted ISC's, or vice versa. Each 
project would be getting more cries for support.

Large distributors like Debian can't let this go. If they ship both 
BIND and Xapian-tools, they have to resolv ;) the name conflict. 
There can only be one /usr/bin/delve in their distribution.

What should Debian do? They think it's fair to leave the name with 
the one which has been using it longer. And while "Eleven, twelve; 
dig and delve" is a cool way to name the new tool, the name "delve" 
also seems to fit for a search engine's tool.

ISC might have the bigger userbase, but there it is. Released as 
"delv", the Domain Entity Lookup and Validation tool. And Unix 
continues to ... evolv ... while humor degrades. :)
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