MQTT has a new name, should this group too?

[Joe Speed]

After 30 minutes of deliberation the OASIS MQTT TC voted a name for the new OASIS M2M communications protocol.  The official name is "MQTT" (instead of being spelled out).  

So my question is should we rename this google group to "MQTT" or "MQTT - something something"?  That'd make it easier for folks to find?

[Nicholas O'Leary]

Hi Joe,

I don't think we have a problem with the group's discoverability: the
group is well established in the community and is linked to directly
from MQTT.org and is the top (and only) result if you search for
'MQTT' within google groups.

It is important to keep this group distinct from the OASIS work - we
don't want to (and are not allowed to) misrepresent this group as
being part of the OASIS effort, even though many of the members here
are also involved there. So any change to the group name should not
mention OASIS.

Nick

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[Robin Cover]

> The official name is "MQTT"

[per testimony]

> After 30 minutes of deliberation the OASIS MQTT TC voted a name for the new
> OASIS M2M communications protocol.  The official name is "MQTT"
>(instead of being spelled out).  

Woohoo!... that's big.  A name change... really?

I have not seen the OASIS MQTT TC meeting minutes, but I take the above report
at face value.

The name competitors were, IIRC:

a) Message Queue Telemetry Transport
b) Message Queuing Telemetry Transport
c) MQTT (acronym expansions forbidden)
d) something else

Questions:

1) How successful will any attempt be to coerce people (us!)  and Google to say "MQTT" and not
one of the alternatives a-d above?  Difficult to turn a large ship....

a) I tried to encourage principals to have this naming issue addressed earlier, in comments
    to the OASIS TC proposers, but IIRC. apparently it was not addressed/discussed/resolved

b) The FAQ from Andy Piper said this: Message Queue Telemetry Transport, and that's the name
    documented in Wikipedia and several other prominent authorities, based upon IBM's MQ

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mqtt
    "Message Queue Telemetry Transport (MQTT) is an open message protocol for M2M communications..."
    [2013-05-16 7:06 EDT]

c)  See Andy Piper at: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#%21topic/mqtt/NyArPMLuxsc

"So the MQ in MQTT derives from MQSeries / WebSphere MQ (WebSphere Message Queue) therefore...
> What us the full name of MQTT: Message Queuing Telemetry Transport or Message Queue Telemetry Transport? I have seen both.
> Message Queue Telemetry Transport

2) Then later, also from Andy Piper:

http://blogs.vmware.com/vfabric/2013/02/choosing-your-messaging-protocol-amqp-mqtt-or-stomp.html

"The design principles and aims of MQTT are much more simple and focused than
those of AMQP — it provides publish-and-subscribe messaging
(no queues, in spite of the name) and was specifically designed..."

[?? does MQTT support queue management?  Or not?  - unsure  -- if no queue management,
then what's the historic origin of "Q" in [M]Q[TT] ?  Inquiring minds want to know...

(Sez) "The design principles and aims of MQTT are much more simple and focused
than those of AMQP -- it provides publish-and-subscribe messaging
(no queues, in spite of the name) and was specifically designed for..."

So, if (??) queue management is not part of the MQTT specification, maybe it's
an improvement to deprecateand anathematizew the competing Acronym expansions
and altgernately urge the adoption of MQTT

Hmmmm .... with "Q" unaddressed as of 2013-05-16 ?

But: I think I have seen proposals for adding facility to MQTT (v3.1 as published)
for several things, maybe including queue management... so? 

Cheers,

-rcc

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--
Robin Cover
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[Nicholas O'Leary]

Hi Robin,

>> 1) How successful will any attempt be to coerce people (us!)  and Google to say "MQTT" and not
one of the alternatives a-d above?  Difficult to turn a large ship....

"MQTT" as a name is already very well established - more so than any of the various expanded versions; this isn't trying to "turn a ship". Everyone has used MQTT as the colloquial name for 10+ years - even if the spec says "MQ Telemetry Transport".

Of course people have asked before what the letters stand for and you link to the various places the responses have been documented - mostly thanks to Andy P.

>> a) I tried to encourage principals to have this naming issue addressed earlier, in comments
    to the OASIS TC proposers, but IIRC. apparently it was not addressed/discussed/resolved

This was the first item discussed at the second meeting of the TC (the first meeting taken up by the formalities of the OASIS process). There wasn't an earlier time that it could be addressed by the TC.

>> [?? does MQTT support queue management?  Or not?  - unsure  -- if no queue management, then what's the historic origin of "Q" in [M]Q[TT] ?  Inquiring minds want to know...

There is no queuing in MQTT.

The 'MQ' part of the name is a historic artefact of the particular bit of IBM that produced the protocol in the first place - MQSeries, which later became WebSphere MQ  (http://www-03.ibm.com/software/products/us/en/wmq/)  That product does much more than just support the MQTT protocol, MQ was originally all about queues, so its name does make sense in that regard.

>>So, if (??) queue management is not part of the MQTT specification, maybe it's an improvement to deprecate and anathematize the competing Acronym expansions and altgernately urge the adoption of MQTT 

Indeed - the decision was made to not use any of the expanded versions - including the partially expanded MQ Telemetry Transport - as that would just cause confusion over what the protocol was about. The historic reason for the name is there for anyone to see if they are interested, but moving forward it is just MQTT - just as how SOAP dropped its full acronym in v1.2.

It was also an acknowledgement that there is a lot of capital built on the existing name of MQTT so it was important to retain that name rather than come up with something completely different.

As for the future of MQTT and whether it could add support for queues; of course it is possible, but equally we've survived 13 years without them.... Regardless, that sort of change is completely outside of scope for the OASIS TC charter - we're standardising what we know and love today.

Regards,

Nick

[Andy Piper]

Thanks for sharing this, I am not personally on the OASIS TC so had not heard this decision regarding the forthcoming standard.

As Nick says, where I have previously commented on the matter, or maintained the mqtt.org pages related to it, I was simply reflecting the historical heritage.

I don't think there's much of a need to change this group, but we could certainly work together on updating the Wikipedia page to reflect the point-in-time decision. I have been intending to move both the FAQ and Software pages of mqtt.org into the wiki for community maintenance for some time, and this may be a good time to do that.

Andy Piper | Farnborough, Hampshire (UK)
blog: http://andypiper.co.uk   |   skype: andypiperuk
twitter: @andypiper  |  images: http://www.flickr.com/photos/andypiper

[Paul Fremantle]

I would think the name of this group is one of the few things that doesn't need to change ;-)

Paul

Paul Fremantle
CTO and Co-Founder, WSO2
OASIS WS-RX TC Co-chair, VP, Apache Synapse

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[Robin Cover]

On Fri, May 17, 2013 at 5:14 AM, Andy Piper <andyp...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks for sharing this, I am not personally on the OASIS TC so had not heard this decision regarding the forthcoming standard.

As Nick says, where I have previously commented on the matter, or maintained the mqtt.org pages related to it, I was simply reflecting the historical heritage.

I don't think there's much of a need to change this group, but we could certainly work together on updating the Wikipedia page to reflect the point-in-time decision. I have been intending to move both the FAQ and Software pages of mqtt.org into the wiki for community maintenance for some time, and this may be a good time to do that.

Thanks to Nick, Andy, and others for clarifying the goals in adoption of
the identifier "MQTT".   I have no horse in any race, but note that it's
beneficial to use consistent abbreviation expansion as much as possible,
because variation confuses readers.  So I would agree with Andy about
"updating the Wikipedia page" as a reasonable goal.

At this moment we have prominent attestations of four variants** for the
expansion of MQTT -- of for what most readers will understand as
expansions, irrespective of what's being identified by "MQTT": name
of a protocol, name of a [Google]group, name of a technical
committee, etc.  Perhaps the updated MQTT FAQ document on the
Wiki can explain the variation, and best practice usage/orthography,
as determined by the community.

Cheers,

- Robin

** Common variants from various authorities:

Message Queue Telemetry Transport [1]
Message Queueing Telemetry Transport [2]
Message Queuing Telemetry Transport [3]
MQ Telemetry Transport [4]

[1] Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mqtt
"Message Queue Telemetry Transport (MQTT) is an open message protocol"

[2] Google Group: MQ Telemetry Transport
http://groups.google.com/group/mqtt
"MQTT stands for Message Queueing Telemetry Transport"

[3] OASIS Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) TC
https://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=mqtt#expository

[4] mqtt.org FAQ document
http://mqtt.org/faq
"MQTT stands for MQ Telemetry Transport"