Go: "I have already used the name for *MY* programming language" (2009)

[adriancooney]

https://code.google.com/p/go/issues/detail?id=9

[asperous]

I laughed at this:

    Status: 	Unfortunate
    Closed: 	 Oct 2010

[monsterix → asperous]

I feel sorry for the hacker who spent 10 years building his own 'Go' language, writing a book about it only to lose it all to some giant company which did not care enough to research before naming their own project. Is there no way to protect the ownership of original project and change that "unfortunate" status to some fortune?

[dragonwriter → monsterix]

The ownership of the original project is unaffected. Names, OTOH, aren't owned unless they are in certain special protected classes -- e.g., trademarks. And its hardly the only case of duplication in programming language names. (IIRC, there are at least two specific languages as well as a class of languages all called "D".)

[saalweachter]

That's the problem with global variables. Eventually all the short names for taken, and you start stomping all over things you didn't even know existed.

[jamhan]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go!_%28programming_language%29

[tzs]

To be fair, the first user of the name was a bit obscure. Surely you don't expect Google to do some kind of search before using the name?

[kenrick]

lol for the first response...."Gone"... made my day.