[tzakrajs]

What it could achieve is a clone that simply replaces the names and requires very little maintenance. If the community agrees and adopts, then politeness be damned.

Edit: To put the converse: If it's a shitty idea, then no one will use it and it didn't matter that you were polite anyways.

[cyphar]

To be fair, this did happen with GCC. But everyone hated everyone else for years as a result. Forking fractures a community -- for something as trivial as this it isn't worth it. But it is worth DoSing the maintainer until they realise that making an encryption program called "Felony" is a brain-dead idea.

[Teever]

I don't think you get the point.

It may be a braindead idea but it's their idea. If you don't like it, fork it.

If you don't like it, write your own.

But don't complain because someone wrote some software and kindly published it for all to use for free.

[cyphar]

> It may be a braindead idea but it's their idea. If you don't like it, fork it.

Because that's how PR works. The problem is that it's a publicity problem, not a technical problem. Technical problems are solved by forks, but publicity problems have to be solved by the community.

> But don't complain because someone wrote some software and kindly published it for all to use for free.

And then decided to give it a name that actively bombards the crypto community's efforts to bring encryption to the masses. Sure, it's free software and that's fine. But it's free software that will cause a PR nightmare for no good reason. "Hackers and terrorists are using a new app called 'Felony' to steal your money and freedom." -- That's the headline here.