Re^3: It has been suggested to rename Perl 6 in order to boost its marketing potential. Which name would you prefer?

[woolfy]

Improving the Perl 6 marketing effort can be done in many more effective ways, and I have been doing that myself by making available, to many people, at quite some Perl- and other open source events, marketing materials as stickers, buttons, tuits, brochures, books, Camelia stuffed toy butterflies, pens, and more. And by sponsoring events where talks, presentations, and other information about Perl 6 was given. And other ways of sponsoring. By the way, I have done the same for Perl 5 (and in this case, instead of stuffed toy butterflies, I have sold many stuffed toy camels). I have sponsored books to be written.

And lots more need to be done, both for Perl 5 and for Perl 6. Things like articles written in blogs, magazines, newspapers and elsewhere. Educational materials made available for schools, universities, training and other institutes. Reacting to misinformation, insults, and other negative writings against Perl (both 5 and 6). Showing our good will: no flame wars, less code obfuscation, modern Perl, best practices, friendliness, welcoming newbies, presence at open source events, good documentation, good examples, and much more. I would like to see many more people doing the same and more.

A name change is artificial. It is not real marketing. It is giving in to people who don't like what has happened in the past, to people who claim that Perl 6 has damaged Perl 5. If the name of Perl 6 was changed to anything else, everybody will know "ah, that was Perl 6". The 8 books that are finished now ("Learning Perl 6" is finished, but not published as of this moment) need to be renamed. A name change will do more harm than good.

Perl 5 has its own future: so much code has been written, has to be maintained, that it will be used for decades to come. If Perl 6 will continue to be developed like it is now, gaining more modules, gaining more ways to execute Perl 5 code without much that has to be changed, getting faster every year, at some point it may be deemed the next major release of Perl (at the moment, it has the potential, but quite some things need to be done).