

Renaming the Company - Garbage
http://www.typesafe.com/blog/whats-in-a-name/

======
araes
I don't want to be negative, but this really feels like a dangerous strategy.
No, that's nice, this feels like a mistake and this person with a C-title is
leading them into a trap.

\- This company is semi-old (they've survived a generation)

\- They are heavily built on reference and recommendation

\- Their prior name has an above average reputation

\- Their name's source has a positive connotation with programmers,
developers, and most of the code world ("we might go a little slow, but we
catch small details. We have less bugs")

\- Change is bad

    
    
      - People hate change
    
      - People don't care about 'mission statements'
    
      - Is your product/service good?
    
      - Can I easily find/contact you to get it?
    

\- Change is confusing

    
    
        - Mental links
    
        - Physical links
    
        - Resource, supply, pointer, ect.. links
    
        - Makes you hard to find
    

\- Wishy washy 'let's hold hands' change is worse

    
    
       - As leader, I don't really know what I want
    

\- Getting ideas, brainstorming is great

\- Publically letting everyone know you have lost your way and are entering a
period of company uncertainty - Not

~~~
j_s
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borland#The_Inprise_years.2C_an...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borland#The_Inprise_years.2C_and_name_changes)

~~~
araes
Exactly. "When Borland changed their name, many thought they had gone out of
business."

------
Aqueous
I actually think "Typesafe" is an excellent name for a company - whether or
not it has grown to be more than just Scala. It says to me: If you build on
top of our software, you will be safe and protected due to our built-in
guarantees. That is a good foundational brand identity for any company. I
don't think you should change it.

~~~
efnx
I only skimmed the article but it seemed they were starting to deal more in
softwares that are not typesafe, therefore the name is misleading. It's a
great name for a Haskell shop!

~~~
eloisant
What they say is that a lot of their clients use Java (since most of the
products have a dual Java/Scala API) and Java is not the most typesafe
language there is.

Also Akka is not very typesafe, with the actors message being of the "Any"
type!

~~~
virtualwhys
Interesting, can you name a distributed system that preserves types across
machines?

Other than the experimental typed actors library that Akka is working on, and
Cloud Haskell, I'm not aware of any type preserving distributed system,
certainly nothing production ready/widely used.

So, the critique, "oh no, Any, how horrible!" seems absurd given the current
state-of-the-art ;-)

~~~
jameshart
The word 'Jini' is bubbling up from the depths of my memory... Java-based
distributed architecture which relied on the 'write once run anywhere' model
to distribute proxies for remote objects...

------
jkot
> _More and more we are seen as the Reactive Company and yet our name does not
> speak to this aspect of our mission._

There is company named after fruit which manufactures computers and phones.

~~~
jowiar
A brief history on the naming of the fruit company:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzzOwRx3D1E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzzOwRx3D1E)

------
allendoerfer
Seems like a huge waste of money and a source of confusion. I do not know,
whether you noticed, but there is only one .com for every name.

A name is just a name. Typesafe has "safe" in it, which always sounds good,
even if you do not know, what typesafety is. Automattic, Canonical and other
Open Source companies seem to do very well with a company name distinct from
the main product.

Also, I could not care less about your "movement" or "mission" I want to buy
quality products from a company that is associated with them.

Will you rename again, after the "Reactive movement" is superseded by the next
paradigm?

Stuff like this makes me fall back in an old pattern of valuing administration
and management very little and feeling superior to them. I want to overcome
it, because it makes you seem like a dick, but stuff like this makes it hard
for me.

------
pavlov
I'm not sure I understand what Typesafe does. They have a prominent link to a
white paper, but to read that, you have to register first.

"Register here to get your white paper" is kind of a litmus test of enterprise
products -- I guess I'm not part of the target audience.

~~~
morsch
They develop and provide commercial support for Akka, an actor-based
concurrency toolkit (think Erlang) for Java and Scala, and Play, a web
application framework for Java and Scala, among other projects. They're also
major contributors to Scala itself, which is a multi-paradigm (oo +
functional) programming language for the JVM. (I work with their software and
the company I work for is a paying customer.)

~~~
pavlov
Thanks for the clear explanation!

------
strictfp
How about Kneejerk? It sounds reactive enough %D. Jokes aside, I don't really
see why a name change would be warranted. The current name is not very
descriptive, granted, but does it need to be?

~~~
k__
He said it himself, he isn't an developer.

Probably the only idea he had ;)

------
babo
Seem like the pet peeve of a new CEO who doesn't understand the company but
the arguments are pretty weak. My advice, leave it as is and move on. Even
better, think about a new CEO.

------
mercurial
I suggest a pun on long compile times.

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chuwy
If I remember right, they redesigned Akka logo and website twice last year and
almost same for Play. It seems someone in (ex-)Typesafe is strongly encouraged
about rebrandings.

------
insulanian
Typesafe is a great name. Don't bring disturbance in.

~~~
insulanian
Also, remember Borland/Inprise/Borland debacle?

------
Grue3
If they're planning to discuss possible names in the open, I'm sure
domain/social media squatters will be right on this.

------
cpeterso
Like 10gen becoming Mongo and 37signals becoming Basecamp, it seems clear that
"Reactive" is the right choice. They are known as "the Reactive Company" and
they (presumably!) own trademarks related to the Reactive name.

~~~
jasondc
+1

Name the company after the core product.

------
usrusr
Renaming is a terrible idea for a company as involved with software frameworks
as Typesafe is: if they can't even keep a stable company name, how much will
you trust them to keep their APIs stable?

------
boothead
How about AnyUnit?

~~~
schleppy_oc
This is the exact name I was going to suggest. Kudos to you.

The Any -> Unit definitely defies the current name.

------
twblalock
Has anyone ever cared about a mission statement?

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natrius
Changing the name makes sense to me. Type safety isn't want people are looking
for at the moment. The trend they're most related to is reactive programming,
so they want a name that evokes that. It's a smart move.

When Automattic announced the WooCommerce acquisition the other day, I came
across a comparison grid of their competitors. It turns out that there are
popular e-commerce platforms that I'd heard mentioned before, but had no idea
what they actually did because their names had nothing to do with commerce.

Names matter.

------
_random_
Scala is definitely type-safe but Akka is not really reactive:

[http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/255047/why-
is...](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/255047/why-is-akka-
being-marketed-as-reactive-is-actor-model-reactive)

------
DanHulton
Well, if they don't want it, I'll take it. It's a great name.

------
djhworld
safetype

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bkurtz13
Scompany.

From "scalable company".

~~~
meragrin
Horrible. My first thought is it sounds like scumpany and is likely to be
associated for word play for "scum company".

------
olh
Rename it Datacode.

