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by lukan 846 days ago
Codemonkey became codemirror. And it is now quite well established (in chrome dev tools for example).

But usually FOSS projects don't get renamed at all, or if they do the renaming causes so much drama that kills the project. So nothing changes, also not obscure design choices - and they remain niche.
1 comments
rglullis 846 days ago
Was the name change motivated by general public rejection or branding issues?

Was it holding back mindshare growth?

Why greasemonkey" and "tampermonkey" didn't change their names?

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lukan 846 days ago
You should probably ask the maintainer those questions. All I know he did made that decision at some point(before it took off) and he likely had a reason. Probably to be taken seriously, as he wants to live off his work. (I think he can)

And greasemonkey and tampermonkey are not really mainstream, nor do they make money as far as I know.

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rglullis 846 days ago
I searched a bit to see if I could find myself the answer, and what I found instead is that there is another project called "code monkey", which seems to an educational tool to help people learn to code. That would explain the name change a lot better than "the author changed the name because he wanted to be taken seriously".

Besides, the original criticism of Scuttlebutt was "it will never catch on because it has a silly name", not "it will make money". By making it about "making money" you are moving the goalposts a bit, aren't you?

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lukan 846 days ago
"Besides, the original criticism of Scuttlebutt was "it will never catch on because it has a silly name", not "it will make money". By making it about "making money" you are moving the goalposts a bit, aren't you? "

Operating a social global network, even decentralized, is not possible without money, if you are aiming to get mainstream adoption(which was the main question/goal here). But you are very welcome, to proof me wrong.

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