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by w1ntermute 4827 days ago
Clearly not that well-known, then. I've never heard of it either. The Fog Creek Kiln project doesn't have its own Wikipedia page (which I consider a rough threshold for notability).
3 comments

We've been on HN a half dozen times, been featured in some trade magazines, have been a gold Mercurial sponsor, and have built-in support in competitor's products (e.g. SourceTree). We're also the second link if you google for "Kiln". I think that qualifies as relatively notable.

We also have a trademark on the name Kiln in the context of developer tools.

Edit: That last line sounds like a threat, which it absolutely isn't. Just, due to how these things work, picking another name probably makes sense.

My first reaction when I saw this submission was "Holy shit, who leaked kiln?"
Mine was similar, if a little less cynical: "Holy shit, Fog Creek is open-sourcing Kiln? On April Fool's Day?"
Would they really host it on GitHub? :)
Ooh, good point. Though one issue I've noticed popping up of late is that people are starting to associate "open source" with "GitHub" instead of with checking whether the source is open or not. So who knows, maybe a GitHub mirror of their own Kiln-hosted source for April Fool's?
On April 1st, absolutely.
Yeah, that was my reaction as well. Kiln == Fog Creek's hg server in my head.
It is now a git and hg server all at the same time.
do you want me to change the name?

Edit: I'm brainstorming names on the rubymotion google group. F-ing naming, it's so annoying. I'll try and get it renamed soon.

Google and whois are the minimum threshold for picking names these days. If you intend to start a business, add a trademark search to that.

There's also no law against picking descriptive names.

Did you develop an egg smashing simulator? Where's the harm in calling it "Egg Smash Simulator Kit" instead of "Humpty" or some other confusing bloody puntastic name?

I think "Egg Smash Simulator Professional Deluxe 2013 Edition" has a better ring to it.
You may have a future at Capcom Marketing.
Random fact of the day: If you read "Capcom" in Russian it sounds like "Sarsom".
> do you want me to change the name?

You're joking, right? Yes. You need to pick a name for your product that doesn't clash with a well established product in the same field.

I only clicked this article because I thought Joel had gone open-source. I suspect most everyone reading this thread thought the same thing.

Developer tools for iOS, on iOS. You probably don't really care about the domain name, so there are a lot of possibilities.

Kiln is kind of a shitty name to begin with, so I'm sure you'll think of something better. I'd focus on how it's self-hosted, handheld, mobile, lightweight, and portable.

"Phone Self Exam" is one bad idea, with the obvious non-Ada Initiative approved branding concept...

If someone told me they had a registered trademark on the name I chose for my product, I'd be a fool not to change the name. That's a huge liability.
How about Layer, Ply, Stratum, Flag, Stage, Platter, Plate, Lamina, Pellicle, Film, Leaf, Slice, Shive, Rasher, Eschar, or Nest?
Try Anvil. Similar blacksmith-y name, nothing majorly confusing or conflicting on the first page of a google or ddg search.
You should change the name because "kiln" is an uncomfortable and awkward word to pronounce.
iOS Easy Bake(tm)
How about "kilt"
iKiln?
Oven? Smith?
iSpector, Forge, Layers
I suspect most software developers worth their salt have heard of Joel Spolsky, and by extension Fog Creek. Aside from them actually having their own pages on Wikipedia (which someone else has linked to), Kiln is a trademark of Fog Creek, so not an ideal choice of name for an OSS project.
> I suspect most software developers worth their salt have heard of Joel Spolsky, and by extension Fog Creek.

Having heard of Joel or Fog Creek is one thing. Having heard of their Kiln project is another.

I've heard of both Joel and Fog Creek, but not Kiln. So, yes.
Agreed, I haven't really paid attention to what he or Fog Creek has been doing since this site killed off the "Joel on Software" site.
I had honestly never heard of Joel until I did my research when applying at Stack Overflow. Didn't affect the outcome.
I was referring to the Kiln project by Fog Creek. Obviously, Fog Creek has its own Wiki page.
Your original post said "Fog Creek doesn't have it's own Wikipedia page". Then you edited it to say Kiln project after you saw these links. How about some integrity?
> Your original post said "Fog Creek doesn't have it's own Wikipedia page". Then you edited it to say Kiln project after you saw these links.

Wrong, my post originally said "The Fog Creek project" (as opposed to the OP's project). The only word I added was "Kiln", to make it clearer.

> How about some integrity?

How about stopping to think before making accusations about other people's integrity, rather than shooting from the hip? I see you're new to HN. Why don't you learn some etiquette by reading the HN guidelines, it'll help you to avoid the banhammer: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html