[hydra-dev] Ciao Hydra

[Malcolm C. Davenport]

Hello, for the last time, to the Hydra development mailing list!

Shortly after project Hydra was begun and the "Hydra" moniker was  
attached to it, we determined that a more appropriate name would be  
required at the time that the project was publicly announced.  Among  
the many reasons for this determination were concerns about building a  
"Hydra" brand separate from the "Asterisk" brand - which would  
necessitate entirely new web properties, trademarks, forums and  
mailing list sites, logos, conferences and trade shows (HydraCon?),  
etc.  Because of this, we decided that both the names Hydra and  
Asterisk Hydra, because people would simply refer to it as "Hydra" and  
drop the "Asterisk," are unacceptable.

Since we plan on people using Asterisk and Hydra in concert for the  
foreseeable future, and we want them using the same websites and  
forums and mailing list infrastructure, then we want a name that  
incorporates both the branding of Asterisk while differentiating it to  
denote what we're building with this new system. Thus, we've settled  
on the name Asterisk SCF, or Asterisk Scalable Communications  
Framework.  We intend to refer to it as Asterisk SCF; not Asterisk  
Scalable CF, or ASCF, or any other alternate abbreviation.  Where  
appropriate, due to whitespace constraints, we'll note it as asterisk- 
scf, AsteriskSCF, or some similar notation.

As this mailing list has noted, Asterisk SCF is not Asterisk 2.0.   
Perhaps one day a future version of Asterisk, 3.0?, might be built on  
top of Asterisk SCF; but Asterisk SCF is a framework that could be  
built into any number of things:  Asterisk 2.0, 3.0, or Big Bob's  
Magical Telephony Machine.  Asterisk SCF is also not something that's  
completely different from Asterisk.  It's philosophically similar, but  
with a scope that's greater in scale.  We are building the last  
communications platform you'll ever need for any type of communication  
we can envision for as far into the future we can see, and it's open  
source, there for anyone to use.

We mentioned in the original meeting in Huntsville that Hydra was a  
temporary name, and though it might have some appeal there are good  
reasons that we would need to change it before we publicly released  
the project announcement.  We realize that naming is a big deal, and  
that this hasn't involved the community.  We're sorry that was the  
case, but anyone who has tried to manage naming will know that even  
getting consensus from a handful of people is difficult, and adding more  
voices typically means that almost everyone is disappointed that their  
name was not chosen.  Naming is a zero-sum game - there can be only  
one name for the project.  Since Digium ultimately will have to spend  
significant amounts of money registering and defending the trademark,  
and even more creating marketing material around the name, we  
regrettably, but I hope understandably, decided that this would be a  
task we would have to wrestle with internally.  It took way too long  
even with just our own debating.

Over the next several days and weeks, we will begin updating Hydra  
content, including this mailing list, into Asterisk SCF content.  So,  
you'll see references to "Hydra" on the wiki scrubbed and replaced  
with "Asterisk SCF," and you'll see this list change from hydra-dev  
into something like asterisk-scf-dev.  We'll have an alias in place so  
responses to older threads don't get lost.

Note that we're not publicly announcing Asterisk SCF with this e-mail.
That's for later.  This is just the announcement that a name has been
chosen.


Goodbye Hydra, hello Asterisk SCF.
-- 
--------------------------------------------------
Malcolm Davenport
Digium, Inc. | Senior Product Manager
445 Jan Davis Drive NW - Huntsville, AL 35806 - US
Tel: +1 256 428 6252
Fax: +1 256 864 0464
malcolmd at digium.com