Comments on: The Developer Obsession With Code Names – 200+ Interesting Examples

By: John Reinert Nash

John Reinert Nash — Tue, 26 May 2020 21:35:59 +0000

In reply to rtmie. Indeed, the BHA project was a rename, after said author/presenter (RIP) didn't like the association with the companion product's code name, "Piltdown."

By: Daniel Howard

Daniel Howard — Fri, 28 May 2010 16:34:21 +0000

As a systems admin and as an end-user, I find that code names can be extremely irritating. I’m running Ubuntu 10.4, I don’t care if its called Woody Woodpecker or whatever: it’s the April, 2010 release, which is easy to remember because I have a relationship with April 2010, not some Barmy Badger.

Similarly, in my work environment, engineers tend to ask us to deploy code names we are unfamiliar with. What?! Code names are best kept to the engineers and developers, and let those not involved in the process deal with product name and version numbers. “Ah yes, 2.5 comes after 2.1. I can deal with that.”

That said, Google’s got the best code names.

By: rtmie

rtmie — Fri, 28 May 2010 10:53:45 +0000

There was a story , perhaps apocryphal, doing the rounds in the 90’s that a certain well known computer/personal electronics company had a project internally codenamed after the author/presenter of a TV documentary series about the galaxy. Somehow the author/presenter found out about it and threatened legal action so they renamed it to Project Butthead Astronomer.

By: Pingdom

Pingdom — Fri, 28 May 2010 08:27:12 +0000

@Jakub and @oliver: Thanks for pointing this out.

By: oliver

oliver — Fri, 28 May 2010 06:29:13 +0000

Please edit: There is more behind the naming scheme of Fedora: ‘Name n and n+1 must share an is-a (not a has-a) relationship, but n and n+2 must not share the same is-a relationship as n and n+1.’
from: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/Names

By: Jakub Narebski

Jakub Narebski — Fri, 28 May 2010 01:12:47 +0000

Actually, for Fedora Core releases code names it isn’t that “relationships between the code names get a lot less consistent” (at least for newer names), but that relationships between code names are pairwise, without general overall theme: each code name has some connection with previous name, and each code name has some other connection with next code name… but I agree that they are quite obscure.

Unfortunately I lost the link with competition for code name for new Fedora Core release, which contains requirement for the codename to be connected with other codenames, with examples…