Gnome 3: Genome?

[Rob Aronson <aronson rob gmail com>]

I may be going about this the wrong way, and if so I apologize in
advance.  I started a thread in the Ubuntu community forums about
changing the name of the Gnome project to "Genome" to coincide with the
release of Gnome 3.  Since the interface is getting a update, I reasoned
that the project itself, and the public perception thereof, should also
get an update.  Below if the relevant portion of that thread (note: the
url is http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1214808 , but let me
first warn you that the discussion degraded early on, which is what
brought me here).  Again, I apologize if I'm breeching any points of
etiquette here.  No offense is intended.


Gnome 3: Change project name to "Genome." 

________________________________________________________________________
I recently ran across a post where a new user mistakenly (either typo or
otherwise) referred to Gnome as "Genome", and it got me thinking...

"Gnome" as the noun it has become, or as the acronym (GNU Network Object
Model Environment) for which it was intended, no longer describes or
makes sense of what the interface has evolved into. People have been
saying this for a long time, and for a long time, I've wholeheartedly
agreed. This is especially true for the end user. Speaking for myself,
the Gnome "foot" has no correllation to anything related to my desktop
experience. It only conjurs up images of Stallman's feet for some weird
reason, and although I love the guy and think he's absolutely brilliant,
this disturbes me on a deep level. Likewise, the word "gnome" for me
immediately associates the Travel Gnome from the Travelocity
commericials--again, absolutely no correlation to my computing
experience.

>From Wikipedia's article on Gnome:

Quote:
The name “GNOME” was proposed as an acronym of GNU Network Object Model
Environment by Elliot Lee, one of the authors of ORBit and the Object
Activation Framework.[citation needed] It refers to GNOME’s original
intention of creating a distributed object framework similar to
Microsoft’s OLE.[6] This no longer reflects the core vision of the GNOME
project, and the full expansion of the name is now considered obsolete.
As such, some members of the project advocate dropping the acronym and
re-naming “GNOME” to “Gnome”.[7] 
Holy wars aside, Gnome has more market share and mind share as "Linux"
than any other desktop environment or window manager. This is due
primarily to Red Hat's sponsorship (and Novel's default use of Gnome in
SuSE), but also due to the popularity of Ubuntu. Not to mention, most
major FOSS projects that have come into popularity use GTK to hang their
code on (Open Office, Firefox, and now Google Chrome, for example).
There's no arguing this on any level outside of zealotry or personal
preference.

The modern perception of "Linux" (GNU/Linux) from the most popular and
backed distributions and applications are deeply tied to Gnome (or to
GTK, depending on how you look at it). So in this era of the emerging
Linux desktop, shouldn't the project name get a makeover? I think it's
finally time.

I suggest that the Gnome project renames itself to "Genome" and replaces
the big foot with something like a double-helix. Both the name and the
image are strong in the modern scientific context, and borrowing again
from biology, more accurately reflects what the project has evolved
into. Let's do some quick word association:

- genome: biology, evolution; double-helix: biology, DNA = science
- gnome: fantasy, role-playing games; big foot: paranormal, mysticism,
urban legend= pseudoscience

Ubuntu could even benefit from this change. They could call their
default theme, "The Human Genome Project."

/discuss. I'd love to hear your thoughts, and possibly get this elevated
to the right forum or people.
__________________
Grand Master Turing once dreamed that he was a machine. When he awoke he
exclaimed:
        ``I don't know whether I am Turing dreaming that I am a machine,
        or a machine dreaming that I am Turing!'' -- The Tao of
        Programming
        
Thanks for any consideration of feedback.

-Rob