[kwlug-disc] Naming of apps, RE: Riot -> Element

[Andrew Sullivan Cant]

This is interestingly related to the conversation in Monday's meeting
about non-profits and NGOs being resistant to using free software.

One material point, was that upstream organizations can make it
difficult by requiring proprietary software and formats. (e.g.,
requiring Excel for funding related data) That's not really optics issue
for individual projects.

The other points mentioned seemed to all fall into an issue of risk
perception and project optics. Proprietary solutions, mostly Microsoft,
feel normal and non-risky. "Nobody got fired for buying IBM" Even if it
blows up in their face, it will seem like they still made a reasonable
choice.

I would guess this applies even more too many non-profits/NGOs who are
already resource constrained. Taking on the additional risk by using
"weird" software is hard. Reducing that perceived risk with:
* "normal" feeling project names
* being in "normal" sales channels beside other "normal" software
* "normal" looking sales process (someone in a suit and an invoice)


Andrew





On 2021-02-02 5:50 p.m., Hubert Chathi wrote:
> On Tue, 2 Feb 2021 17:26:59 -0500, Mikalai Birukou via kwlug-disc <kwlug-disc at kwlug.org> said:
> 
>> Yesterday Paul enlightened me, at least, that Riot was renamed to
>> Element. Why?  Let's guess :) .
> 
> Element has a blog post about why it was renamed:
> https://element.io/blog/the-world-is-changing/  It lists a few different
> reasons, one of which is, yes, the negative connotations of the word
> (which was not the original intention).
> 
> Hubert
> (who works for Element)
> 
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