Re: Suggestion... renaming base, gui to Foundation and AppKit

[David Chisnall]

On 21 Sep 2010, at 10:03, Yavor Doganov wrote:

>> but other projects which have attempted to implement Cocoa have used
>> the names "Foundation" and "AppKit" without any problems.
> 
> That is not a reason to feel safe


Yes it is.  The Doctrine of Latches applies.  If these were trademarks, and 
they were used by another group to describe something in the same domain (and 
two implementations of the same API are definitely close enough for confusion), 
then they would no longer be trademarks precisely because they have not been 
enforced.

I would be a bit more doubtful if Gregory had suggested a name including Cocoa, 
because Apple does use Cocoa and Cocoa Touch as marketing terms, and so is 
probably a lot more likely to enforce a trademark there.  I would have thought 
Cocotron was a bit too close, but Apple seems okay with it.  

It's also worth noting that the fact that Apple has not taken action over 
Objective-J may mean that the Objective-C trademark is no longer valid, 
although the only way to test that would be persuading them to sue someone over 
calling something Objective-C.  

>> As it is with class names "NSObject" etc...
> 
> These are part of the API, so not a concern.

Both Foundation and Application Kit are in the OpenStep Specification, so they 
are as much a part of the API.

I think I'd like to see -base and -gui remain the names for the projects, but 
not for the frameworks.  -base should include Foundation and CoreFoundation, 
-gui should include AppKit and UIKit (and maybe CoreGraphics), and both should 
include Additions.

I wouldn't like to see -base renamed Foundation, because that implies that it 
just implements Foundation - I have a fair amount of code that depends on 
GNUstep stuff that won't work with another Foundation implementation, but will 
work with -base.

David

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