Topic: What's in a name?

[BrianB]

I have not seen this one posted yet, and I sure it is open to discussion.

What will the community supported e-smith/SME be called?

I don't think Mitel wants us to call it SME esp. as the inevitable forking brings us farther from Mitel's product due to in part, as Dan put it in his address to Devinfo list members. "(Mitel) has decided to focus our developers on our  commercial products" So clearly we are on our own. Which I think is good (and will possibly reduce the "its in the commercial version if you want to buy it" postings

How about  Free-smith? It gives some credit to the original authors while separating us totally from Mitel.

The product did start as e-smith and I believe most of the development (at least in the free version) was done while still e-smith.

thanks,
BrianB

[%sig%]

[Ron]

How about

SME-SMITH.....

[%sig%]

[Robert Harlow]

FreeSME?

[%sig%]

[Ray Mitchell]

How about something generic like

GPL sme server

Regs
Ray

[Thad]

I like Freesmith....or something else without the dashes.

[Peter]

The problem in the real commercial world is anything that say FREE is viewed with suspicion and at best contempt.

Peter

[Mike]

Why change it at all?
SME Server is just fine

[ssbn]

I agree with Peter. I don't think my clients would like it if I trained them how to run freesmith. How about (Business Management Server 6.0) or BMS 6.0

[Del]

How about esmith, no dash?

[Rick Evans]

BMS 6.0 sounds fantastic if you ask me. It gives the product an immediate sense of professionalism.

Peter certainly has it right, how are you going to install Free-Smith on a clients machince? I am not in the IT business (computers are more of a hobby for me) but I do own a construction company of the size that is perfect for this software. If someone tried to bring in Free-Smith to run my company I would be more than cautious. Here's the mentallity in a nut shell, if you change you current server platform you are making a long term commitment that needs to remain current for as long as practile. Free-Smith just sounds like someones hobby that may be overshadowed by the "next thing". You hate to think like that, but there is no stopping human nature.

"BMS 6.0" is focused and simple.

[Rick Jones]

Quite a lot depends on what names Mitel actually holds the rights to. Since e-smith was originally a separate company it acquired back in 2001, I suspect it still holds the rights to the name "e-smith".

I'm not sure about "SME Server" though. Mitel doesn't seem to be using that name any more, a search on mitel.com indicates it now uses the name "MAS" - Managed Application Server.

If anyone in the development group has Mitel's ear it might be worth checking on their attitude.

Although BMS sounds good, I feel it lacks continuity, and has also been used elsewhere (I'm know I've come across at least two products tagged "BMS").

I quite like SME-Smith, it combines the two prior names nicely (not sure about how best to mix upper/lower case

The most important thing is probably to be snappy and memorable (think Redhat, SuSe, Mandrake - all 2-syllable "words"). That comes back to e-smith or some variant, if it's not a problem with Mitel. I'm not too keen on the hyphen personally, perhaps "ESmith" would work better?

(PR firms get paid a fortune for this kind of rambling

Rick