Should we rename 'Chapel' in the near-term/foreseeable future? (a time-focused question)

[bradcray]

This issue asks whether we should rename the 'Chapel' project in the near-term / foreseeable future or consider that a topic to be put off until some time further in the future. That is, please consider it to be a question about timing rather than about the merits/demerits of renaming itself (that question is issue #10). For the sake of this issue, consider "near-term / foreseeable future" to be "the coming months to year."

My immediate motivation for opening this topic is to get a handle on the TSC's opinions on questions like:

• whether we should rename before publicizing Chapel's move to HPSF?
• how the likelihood or unlikelihood of a near-term renaming might affect our logo design process (which we may want to create before announcing the move to HPSF)

(I'm happy to receive votes and opinions from non-TSC members here as well)

Brief background:

• Chapel was coined from "Cascade High Productivity Language" where "Cascade" was the name of Cray's HPCS project
• It's a name that was generally considered regrettable from the start by most, but which stuck before we came up with something better
  • the cause of the regret being the religious connotations of the term
• In spite of the near-universality of that regret, opinions vary about whether or not renaming now is worthwhile
  • In brief, opinions vary about the benefit::cost ratio of renaming
• An effort was made to rename 'Chapel' to 'Cascade' in the 2024-25 timeframe at HPE, but it was unsuccessful (in the time available)

Please give this issue as many of the following reactions as describe your opinion (but preferably not contradictory ones :D ):
👍 If you think we should rename Chapel in the coming months-to-year
🚀 If you think we should rename Chapel before publicizing the HPSF transition
👀 If you think we should rename Chapel before designing either a new logo or mascot
👎 If you think we should not consider renaming Chapel in the coming months-to-year, where this could mean either (a) you don't think we should rename at all or (b) you think we should rename, but not in this timeframe.
😕 I've read this issue, but don't have a strong opinion on this

Please consider this to be a straw poll to understand what future discussions/votes to queue up rather than a formal/binding official vote of the TSC.

Also, feel free to comment on this issue with details about why you think we should or should not consider renaming in these timeframes. But please avoid more general debate on why we should or should not rename—I've opened issue #10 as a place for that conversation.

[jabraham17]

I feel strongly that if we rename the language, it needs to happen sooner rather than later. Renaming a project with a 20 year history is a challenge enough, the longer we wait and the larger our community grows it will just get harder.

However, I do not want that to hold up other community growth/publicity activities like an HPSF transition. I originally felt we should come up with a new name and then a new logo, but I think I was mostly convinced by Engin, Brad, and others that this isn't really necessary and may be a step backwards (i.e. publicizing the language with the name Chapel but no logo while we wait for a new name is a bad look).

I strongly feel we should rename the language (and I'll comment on #10 about that shortly), but at a certain point we need to stop fretting about it and deal with it. I don't really have a strong time frame in mind, but arbitrarily if we are still discussing "should we rename the language" a year from now, we will have spent far too long on this topic and need to just live with the name "Chapel"

[agirish]

I agree we shouldn’t hold up the HPSF transition over a new name.

I also agree that having the new name sooner would be nice (and preferable). Yesterday, I didn’t feel as strongly about the timing since we’d always have the option to rename later. But after reading @jabraham17’s comment, I’m convinced otherwise.

Since we’re already looking to get a new logo and mascot, we might as well invest in finding the project a new name at the same time:
a) there’s no real reason to keep putting it off, and
b) we should avoid confusing the community with repeated branding changes

[agirish]

I want to clarify my 👀 reaction above → I do think it could be beneficial to rename Chapel before designing a new logo or mascot. But I don't feel strongly about it.

As I mentioned on the logo issue, the alternative I suggested to avoid blocking the HPSF move was to consider using a temporary logo (maybe just “chapel-lang” in bold font?) in the interim.

[e-kayrakli]

I don't think we should rename within the next year.

While Jade and I disagree on that, their

I don't really have a strong time frame in mind, but arbitrarily if we are still discussing "should we rename the language" a year from now, we will have spent far too long on this topic and need to just live with the name "Chapel"

comment characterizes my thinking exactly. We started having serious conversations about name change roughly around Feb-Mar 2024 (based on some email records, feel free to correct). We have taken steps to make that change, and it didn't pan out. So, I feel like we have already passed that "a year from now" mark as Jade mentioned.

I don't think this is a decision we have to live with forever. Chapel doesn't have as big a community as some other open source languages enjoy, but we have some momentum in that direction. Maybe at some point, this is a discussion to be held within a bigger community.

[jabraham17]

We started having serious conversations about name change roughly around Feb-Mar 2024 (based on some email records, feel free to correct). We have taken steps to make that change, and it didn't pan out. So, I feel like we have already passed that "a year from now" mark as Jade mentioned.

This is a good point and it makes me want to move up that timeline. We have to balance discussing the name change with doing technical work. I feel even more strongly that we either need to make a decision and make the change soon, or table the name change for the foreseeable future.

[bradcray]

A big part of my rationale for voting 👎 is similar to Engin's: That I feel like we've tried, and generally failed, to do a name change over the past 18 months, so it feels like more time spent wrestling with a difficult topic that I'm tired of and not that invested in. Part of it is that I don't know who would be interested in funding the work that would be required to do a name change in the coming year versus other things we could be spending our time on—and I consider that amount of work to be non-trivial (see #2).

It wouldn't necessarily bother me to have further discussion on considering a name change during the coming year, but at this point, I don't really want it to hold up the HPSF/LF transition, which for me means not having it hold up the logo design, and therefore not fretting about it for the time being. Also, when that discussion occurs, I'm likely to take the stance of "Yes the name is regrettable, but by changing it, we lose more than we gain" (yet that starts to get more into issue #10).