[erlang-questions] Time for OTP to be Renamed?

[Fred Hebert]

I have a hard time seeing how the next steps go.

0. Convince Ericsson
1. Rewrite libraries like OTP_Mibs to no longer bear the acronym OTP,
   and do so in a backwards compatible manner over 2 releases
2. Rewrite language docs to omit mentioning OTP, use a replacement term
3. Rewrite language tutorials online to omit mentioning OTP similarly
4. Make sure new books, tutorials, blog posts, etc. do not refer to OTP
5. Add in pointers somewhere easy to find that explain why stuff was OTP
   before and even had entire sections of books devoted to it but now we
   no longer mention the name
6. Live with the legacy of roughly 15 years of open source 'OTP' and
   'Erlang/OTP' mentions and how it doesn't make sense anymore even
   though nothing changed in practice.
7. Ask manning to re-print Erlang and OTP in action as 'Erlang and its
   SDK go for a Picnic'
8. Have people ask why it's compared to a SDK when there's a lot fewer
   features than traditional SDKs, and point them to this thread.
9. Discuss renaming the Erlang SDK to something else for better
   marketing purposes since the adoption of Erlang didn't change and was
   possibly hurt during the confusion.

I don't know. Sometimes you gotta live with your legacy.

Regards,
Fred.

On 02/13, Garrett Smith wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 8:59 AM, Vlad Dumitrescu <vladdu55@REDACTED> wrote:
> > On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 3:46 PM, Anthony Ramine <n.oxyde@REDACTED> wrote:
> >> Java without OOP is a different language.
> >> Erlang without OTP is still Erlang.
> >
> > IMHO the only difference is that OTP is implemented as a library and
> > doesn't have dedicated language syntax. I make difference between OTP
> > as design/system building guidelines and its implementation. The
> > former is more like OOP for Java. The latter is more like the JDK.
> 
> This Java/JDK distinction is exactly right. This is how I view the
> relationship between Erlang and OTP.
> 
> And this is why I think we ought to stop using "OTP" altogether. When
> people talk about Java, they use "Java" even though it includes a
> monstrous amount of core code that can technically be separated. It's
> just "Java".
> 
> Now, I'm on record using Java as a model of simplicity vis-a-vis
> Erlang. Great. I didn't see that one coming :/
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