Sage is grown up; needs a last name

[William Stein]

Hi Sage Developers,

Several people and events have suggested to me that the official name
of "Sage" should be filled out to be "SageMath", like the website url
(which is sagemath.org and has been since I bought it in 2006). One
motivation is that a trademark search [1] for Sage shows over 1100
results, whereas a search for "SageMath" gives 0 results. Another
motivation is that many other software products are called Sage, which
causes confusion.

This change could be pretty **minimal**, at least initially. The
actual command name and "sage:" prompt wouldn't change, and we would
still call it "sage" in discussions, emails, etc. It's just that the
full name of the software is "SageMath", so Math is sort of a
disambiguating last name. However, the website would change from
beginning with "Sage is a free open-source mathematics software system
licensed ..." to "SageMath is a free open-source mathematics software
system licensed ...", and we would encourage using the tag "sagemath"
in places like stackoverflow. And there would be a FAQ entry.

Personally, in the very long run I think this is the right thing to do
to help our users avoid confusion and to be respectful to the many
other projects called just "Sage". I don't want this to turn into a
bikeshedding discussion, with a million suggestions for names. I also
don't think any other name change would make sense or be as seamless
except maybe "SageMaths" (I'm curious if SageMath sounds really bad to
non-Americans?)

[1] http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=searchss&state=4807:xnwk8p.1.1

--
William (http://wstein.org)

[David Joyner]

On Wed, Feb 18, 2015 at 7:13 AM, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Sage Developers,
>
> Several people and events have suggested to me that the official name
> of "Sage" should be filled out to be "SageMath", like the website url
> (which is sagemath.org and has been since I bought it in 2006). One
> motivation is that a trademark search [1] for Sage shows over 1100
> results, whereas a search for "SageMath" gives 0 results. Another
> motivation is that many other software products are called Sage, which
> causes confusion.
>
> This change could be pretty **minimal**, at least initially. The
> actual command name and "sage:" prompt wouldn't change, and we would
> still call it "sage" in discussions, emails, etc. It's just that the
> full name of the software is "SageMath", so Math is sort of a
> disambiguating last name. However, the website would change from
> beginning with "Sage is a free open-source mathematics software system
> licensed ..." to "SageMath is a free open-source mathematics software
> system licensed ...", and we would encourage using the tag "sagemath"
> in places like stackoverflow. And there would be a FAQ entry.
>
> Personally, in the very long run I think this is the right thing to do
> to help our users avoid confusion and to be respectful to the many
> other projects called just "Sage". I don't want this to turn into a
> bikeshedding discussion, with a million suggestions for names. I also

+1
All the above sounds reasonable to me.

> don't think any other name change would make sense or be as seamless
> except maybe "SageMaths" (I'm curious if SageMath sounds really bad to
> non-Americans?)
>
> [1] http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=searchss&state=4807:xnwk8p.1.1
>
> --
> William (http://wstein.org)
>

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[Julien Puydt]

Hi,

"sagemath" is a nice name, already used by the other distributions which
try to package sage-the-software.

Snark on #sagemath (<- eh!)

[John Cremona]

Allow me to say that SageMath is fine to at least this Brit, and
preferable to SageMaths!

John

>
> [1] http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=searchss&state=4807:xnwk8p.1.1
>
> --
> William (http://wstein.org)
>

[Vincent Delecroix]

Hi,

Good idea. The current situation is confusing. What is the motivation
for the Caml case instead of "sagemath" or "Sagemath"?

In the same time we could update the awful mission statement to
something more positive like: "Open source mathematics". The are a lot
of bullshit in the Ma's and I do not see the point to mention that our
objective is only to do the same. We want to do better and it is an
evidence that we look at other softwares for inspiration.

Vincent

[Bill Hart]

I've been out of Australia now for a decade or so, but I'm not North American and SageMath sounds fine to me.

Actually, when I saw the name SageMaths I thought, "why on earth would anyone call something SageMaths", and then I realised the Maths was a non-American abbreviation for Mathematics that I was once used to. Then it just looked mildly odd.

Bill.

[William Stein]

On Wed, Feb 18, 2015 at 7:54 AM, Vincent Delecroix

We are discussing the name change. Raise the mission statement, if
you want, as a separate motion, in a completely separate thread.
Please, nothing more about the mission statement in this thread.

William

>
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--
William (http://wstein.org)

[Jan Groenewald]

Hi

0 jan@muizenberg:~$dpkg -S /usr/bin/sagemath
sagemath-upstream-binary: /usr/bin/sagemath

I've already added that in the PPA due to the same reasons ;)

And it lives in /usr/lib/sagemath.
I'd advocate even chaging the command line on the long run (support both for a few years).

Most important -- searching for help on google might take you to the wrong place.

Almost as bad as LaTeX.

Regards,
Jan

--
William (http://wstein.org)

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[Jeroen Demeyer]

On 2015-02-18 13:13, William Stein wrote:
> The
> actual command name and "sage:" prompt wouldn't change

Good. I would find it annoying if any of these changed.

I agree with everything you said and I prefer "SageMath" to "SageMaths".
In fact "SageMath" is already used in some places precisely because
"Sage" is too confusing.

[Martin Albrecht]

+1 from me.

[mmarco]

+1 to the change.

Sagemath sounds more natural than Sagemaths to me.

Should we update the way to cite it accordingly?

[Thierry Dumont]

As a French guy, I would remark that our Holy Nicolas Bourbaki would
certainly appreciate "Sagemath" or "SageMath" but not "Sagemaths": for
people of my generation, it is quite forbidden to say "mathématiques"
(plural)!

(Ok, it seems that some new generation want to kill Nicolas B.: just
have a look at one of the logos of the French Inria (the 2nd one)
http://www.inria.fr/institut/inria-en-bref/charte-logo/charte-logo-inria/charte
)

Please make the change, the frequent confusion with this:
http://www.sage.fr/
is very, very painful :-)

+1!

[Harald Schilly]

On Wednesday, February 18, 2015 at 1:13:46 PM UTC+1, William wrote:

 "SageMath", like the website url ...

+1 from me.

Hence this is #30 here: https://github.com/sagemath/website/issues/30

-- Harald

 

[Stefan]

+1 to SageMath.

[Thierry]

Hi,

i already use "a.k.a. sagemath" on my presentations, and explain that
"sagemath" leads to better results in web searches.

I really much prefer Sagemath or sagemath than the CamelCase SageMath or
plural SageMaths, the only place i see CamelCase used in France are old
wikis. So,

+1 for Sagemath
+1 for sagemath
-1 for SageMath
-1 for [Ss]age[Mm]aths (plural)

Ciao,
Thierry

[Harald Schilly]

On Wed, Feb 18, 2015 at 6:17 PM, Thierry
<sage-goo...@lma.metelu.net> wrote:
> and explain that
> "sagemath" leads to better results in web searches.

btw, you get the by far best search result for "math software" (in
google and startpage, not bing/yahoo)

:-)

-- harald

[Nils Bruin]

On Wednesday, February 18, 2015 at 4:13:46 AM UTC-8, William wrote:

Hi Sage Developers,

Several people and events have suggested to me that the official name
of "Sage" should be filled out to be "SageMath", like the website url
(which is sagemath.org and has been since I bought it in 2006). 

+1

I think capitalization is a language-specific ingredient that is not intrinsically part of the latin script, so I think it's reasonable to *not* prescribe a particular capitalization pattern with the name.

In style guides it's of course quite appropriate to prescribe preferred capitalization and perhaps even font and color. You might even include recommended transliterations in other scripts ...

[kcrisman]

I think capitalization is a language-specific ingredient that is not intrinsically part of the latin script, so I think it's reasonable to *not* prescribe a particular capitalization pattern with the name.

In style guides it's of course quite appropriate to prescribe preferred capitalization and perhaps even font and color. You might even include recommended transliterations in other scripts ...

Or translations?  Since "sage" and "math" are both *things* in many (most?) languages... or is literal translation not useful with Sage, since the erstwhile acronym wouldn't work? 

[Jeroen Demeyer]

On 2015-02-18 18:54, kcrisman wrote:
> Or translations?
Normally, you don't translate software names. "Windows" doesn't become
"Fenêtres" in French for example...

[Nils Bruin]

On Wednesday, February 18, 2015 at 9:54:22 AM UTC-8, kcrisman wrote:

Or translations?  Since "sage" and "math" are both *things* in many (most?) languages... or is literal translation not useful with Sage, since the erstwhile acronym wouldn't work? 

And end up with something like "saliewisk" or "wijswis" in dutch? I think we want to stick with considering it a proper name.

[François Bissey]

Really? I thought I was doing sage-on-gentoo not sagemath-on-gentoo.
Anyway I am OK with sagemath.

Francois

[Dominique Laurain]

+1 for SageMath

from an old generation frenchie who prefers "les maths" (plural)
but agree for Math addendum which is very good improvement when you are searching Internet about Sage

"SageMath" not sounding bad at all..

[Jan Groenewald]

Please definitely not CamelCase.

It would be an over-indulgence to go python style sage_math.

But [Ss]agemath is surely best.

Regards,
Jan

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[Julien Puydt]

Ah, sorry : fedora and debian call it sagemath, and I thought gentoo was
using that name too, but indeed that was wrong.

Snark on #sagemath

[Jonathan]

+1 for sagemath or SageMath.  It would definitely be better than continuing to call it Sage.
Jonathan

[Simon King]

Hi!

On 2015-02-18, John Cremona <john.c...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 18 February 2015 at 12:13, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Personally, in the very long run I think this is the right thing to do
>> to help our users avoid confusion and to be respectful to the many
>> other projects called just "Sage". I don't want this to turn into a
>> bikeshedding discussion, with a million suggestions for names. I also
>> don't think any other name change would make sense or be as seamless
>> except maybe "SageMaths" (I'm curious if SageMath sounds really bad to
>> non-Americans?)
>
> Allow me to say that SageMath is fine to at least this Brit, and
> preferable to SageMaths!

I am neither American nor British. Even though I generally try to write
British English, I prefer SageMath over SageMaths.

Cheers,
Simon

[Simon King]

Hi!

I recall that I had a talk with French graduate students about music, and
they did not recognise the name "Ludwig van Beethoven", but they immediately
understood when I called him something like "Louis de Bét'ofen". So, be
warned: It seems that some people want to translate even proper names.

That said, I think names should perhaps be transliterated or
transcribed, but never translated. And yes, we Germans use the word
"Fenster" for something on your computer, but this is not the "Windows"
operating system...

Best regards,
Simon

[Andrew]

I think SageMath is a good idea and there are far too many projects called SAGE.

To me SageMath sounds much better than SageMaths, which I find curious as in Australian English "Math" sounds awkward/wrong.

Andrew

On Wednesday, 18 February 2015 23:13:46 UTC+11, William wrote:

Hi Sage Developers,

Several people and events have suggested to me that the official name
of "Sage" should be filled out to be "SageMath", like the website url
(which is sagemath.org and has been since I bought it in 2006).    One
motivation is that a trademark search [1] for Sage shows over 1100
results, whereas a search for "SageMath" gives 0 results.  Another
motivation is that many other software products are called Sage, which
causes confusion.

This change could be pretty **minimal**, at least initially.  The
actual command name and "sage:" prompt wouldn't change, and we would
still call it "sage" in discussions, emails, etc.  It's just that the
full name of the software is "SageMath", so Math is sort of a
disambiguating last name. However, the website would change from
beginning with "Sage is a free open-source mathematics software system
licensed ..." to "SageMath is a free open-source mathematics software
system licensed ...", and we would encourage using the tag "sagemath"
in places like stackoverflow.  And there would be a FAQ entry.

Personally, in the very long run I think this is the right thing to do
to help our users avoid confusion and to be respectful to the many
other projects called just "Sage".   I don't want this to turn into a
bikeshedding discussion, with a million suggestions for names.  I also
don't think any other name change would make sense or be as seamless
except maybe "SageMaths" (I'm curious if SageMath sounds really bad to
non-Americans?)

[Volker Braun]

+1 for SageMath

Also, +1 to CamelCase. We do have class! ;-)

[kcrisman]

Also, +1 to CamelCase. We do have class! ;-)

What about

sageMath

sage_Math

Sage_math

Or to really find empty trademark space:

Math Ages

Seat Ham G

Tag As Meh

Team Gash

Shag Meat

Has Mega T

Ah, Tags Me

[Anne Schilling]

On Wednesday, February 18, 2015 at 4:34:38 PM UTC-8, Volker Braun wrote:

+1 for SageMath

Also, +1 to CamelCase. We do have class! ;-)

+1

Anne

[Martin R]

 +1 to sagemath or SageMath.  I'd prefer a short prompt (like sage:)

Martin

[Fredrik Johansson]

On Wednesday, February 18, 2015 at 1:13:46 PM UTC+1, William wrote:

 
Definitely SageMath, not SageMaths. When someone creates an MS-DOS port, it will be SAGEMATH.EXE and not SAGEMA~1.EXE.

Fredrik

[Jason Grout]

+1 to SageMath

Jason

[Justin C. Walker]

On Feb 18, 2015, at 04:13 , William Stein wrote:

> Hi Sage Developers,
>
> Several people and events have suggested to me that the official name
> of "Sage" should be filled out to be "SageMath", like the website url
> (which is sagemath.org and has been since I bought it in 2006). One
> motivation is that a trademark search [1] for Sage shows over 1100
> results, whereas a search for "SageMath" gives 0 results. Another
> motivation is that many other software products are called Sage, which
> causes confusion.

+1 for SageMath.

--
Justin C. Walker, Curmudgeon at Large
Institute for the Absorption of Federal Funds
-----------
While creating wives, God promised men
that good and obedient wives would be
found in all corners of the world.
Then He made the earth round.
--

[kcrisman]

Seen on social media:

 

Just got the surname "Math", to disambiguate with other Sages out there. Friends still call me "Sage", though

[Adarsh Saraf]

+1 from my side.

I have often had to type sagemath anyways to google for sage.

[mmarco]

Should we change the way to cite it? (i.e. this page in the wiki: http://wiki.sagemath.org/Publications_using_SAGE)

[Harald Schilly]

On Fri, Feb 20, 2015 at 10:08 AM, mmarco <mma...@unizar.es> wrote:
> Should we change the way to cite it? (i.e. this page in the wiki:
> http://wiki.sagemath.org/Publications_using_SAGE)

Maybe, when I changed all the strings on the website (hopefully
nothing is seriously broken) ... it's not a trivial replacement ... I
came across the "long form" of the name. I think, "SageMath
Mathematical Software System" sounds odd, and the current "Sage
Mathematical Software System" should stay. Hence, some of the citation
information should change, not everything.

-- Harald