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rename.html
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rename.html
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<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en-us">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
<title>Mylar to Mylyn Project Rename FA</title>
</head>
<body>
<h2 align="center">Mylar to Mylyn Project Rename FAQ</h2>
<p>About the name: the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myelin">myelin</a>
substance accelerates our thoughts by making neurons much more efficient at
conducting electricity. The <a href="http://eclipse.org/mylyn">Mylyn</a>
name is a tribute to this substance, as many users claim that our tools increase
efficiency to the point where we can code at the speed of thought. The preferred
pronunciation is <tt>'mIl&n</tt>, like saying "my" and "lynn" quickly.</p>
<h3>Why is the Eclipse Mylar project changing its name to Mylyn?</h3>
<p>The Eclipse Foundation takes a lot of pride from the efforts it puts into
shipping clean intellectual property. We want our ecosystem to be able to adopt
technology from our projects without fear of encumbrances. Trademarks are
intellectual property, so we must ensure that we have clear provenance of
Eclipse trademarks as well. </p>
<p>The Eclipse Foundation is currently going through the process of re-writing
its trademark guidelines to include Eclipse project names as trademarks of the
Eclipse Foundation. As part of that process, we have learned that there are
complexities regarding the assertion of clear ownership of the Mylar name. After
much research and discussion --- including discussion by the IP Advisory
Committee of the Board of Directors --- we decided that the best way forward was
to change the name of the project.</p>
<p>We understand the marketing and technical issues to the Mylar project,
community and adopters related to this name change. We have not taken this
decision lightly, and we all wish that this change did not have to happen or
that we had discovered the issues earlier. The popularity of the Mylar project
has been growing very rapidly, and this is the best decision for the project, as
well as the overall Eclipse community and ecosystem.</p>
<h3>Why would Eclipse not use the name Mylar if the product is not in the
software domain?</h3>
<p>In most cases, trademarks are restricted to a particular field of use and
related areas. However, Mylar was invented and registered as a mark in the
1950’s and has been a well-protected mark. Mylar is a mark coined by its owner
--- as opposed to an English language word that was adopted as a trademark.
Therefore, its owner may have a very strong claim against anyone who uses Mylar
in any sense, including software.</p>
<h3>How can its owner have invented the word if it has been a surname since the
1600s? </h3>
<p>A company can assert trademark rights in a mark which happens to be someone's
surname. The strength of the mark is a function of whether that surname is a
real word, and whether that surname is already being used as a trademark, by the
surname holder or someone else. In this case, there is no evidence that Mylar
was used as a trademark by more than one company. Thus, there is a good argument
to the strength of that mark.</p>
<h3>Why did you not choose a less disruptive name like Milar or Myl-r?</h3>
<p>We considered a large number of possible options. But since we are going
through the process of changing the name it made the most sense to change it to
a name which has no obvious encumbrances. Under trademark law, there are
possible complications with those names based on the possibility that they may
be perceived as “confusingly similar” to Mylar. We like the Mylyn name, its
connotations, and the fact that it was created by the project’s committers. </p>
<h3>Was it possible to keep the package or plug-in IDs as “org.eclipse.mylar” to
minimize disruption?</h3>
<p>No, Eclipse’s projects must align their names with the name spaces they use.
The right time to do this for the Mylar project was just prior to the Europa
release when adopters had to port from the Mylar 1.0 to the Mylyn 2.0 APIs. We
do appreciate that there is a significant possibility that this change will be
disruptive to users and adopters. We are making sure that this change is well
publicized to the community and are taking technical steps to make the switch as
painless as possible. </p>
<h3>I redistribute/repackage/reuse Mylar. How does this affect existing
products/services/tools that include the word Mylar?</h3>
<p>As you migrate to the new version of Mylyn shipping with the Eclipse Europa
release in June 2007, you should ensure that you update your product
documentation to reflect the new name.</p>
<p> </p>
</body>
</html>