What’s in a name? (open-ils.org to evergreen-ils.org)


Rose, Artista, Johannesburg Botanical GardenThe Evergreen community has been discussing changing the domain for Evergreen’s project site from open-ils.org to evergreen-ils.org.

“Discussion” may be too strong a word… it’s more like consensus, at least from members of the Evergreen community who have been reading the list the last two weeks. The majority opinion seems to be that this has been a “round tuit” that just needing getting-around-to.

In case you’re wondering, evergreen-ils.org is in place and functioning right now… the name was reserved to prevent squatters, and it made sense to make it an alternate name no matter what.

open-ils will probably never disappear entirely. As the original name for the software that became Evergreen, open-ils is embedded in the code, used for the names of the Evergreen discussion lists, and also appears in the name of the Evergreen IRC channel.The blog and the documentation wiki convert to the new name rather nicely, but we’ll see open-ils in the wild for some time to come.

(And of course, open-ils.org will continue to respond to requests.)

Any last thoughts out there? A related question arose about creating a tagline for Evergreen, to retain the word “open” in its description — might be a nice touch, as well as a homage to the innovation and dedication that gave this project life and breath.

— Karen, Equinox Community Librarian