Example 1. Article writer

Someone describes anu.

Anu's a lot of advantages Anu's advantages

Intended meaning: anu has, advantages of anu. Potentially this article could be marked as 'mature' by publishing platform premoderation (or hidden until human's approval) bot and search engines. I's not our fault, we need to spread the word about such brilliant software but there is no convenient way. Sure you can use "anu has" and other workarounds but this restrictions could be eliminated right now.

Example 2. Students

GIMP has problems with it's branding (see "GLIMPSE: What is wrong with the "GIMP" name?") but anu's problems are much worse. It makes teacher's work harder just because of naming.

Naming is important

We need to promote anu. For anu there is neither "killer app" like Linux kernel for git nor a big backer. The market is dominated by git. There are myriads of well-established git based solutions (hooks, toolsets, plugins, interfaces etc.). Fighting for a piece of well-established market is a hard work and naming is making it only harder. Please consider other options. Right now the cargo package is 1.0.0-alpha so there is some time before the 1.0.0 release. Anu make people check every occurrence because of association with anus.

Alternatives

1. Use pijul but change name of executable

Pijul is a good googlable name but it's hard to type it. Name of the executable can be changed to pjl or pij etc. so it will be easier to type.

Advantages

• easy branding
• easy typing

Disadvantages

• need to edit source code and replace all anu occurrences (website, documentation, domain)
• might confuse users of old-pijul

2. Modify anu

Adding another letter is one of the easiest way to break association with anus but some another naming might have some problems (e.g. anuu, anul, anub (a noob) etc.) The executable name may stay anu

Advantages

• easier branding

Disadvantages

• need to edit source code and replace all anu occurrences (website, documentation, domain)

3. Use another name

In twitter @Gastlag mentioned ani as an alternative and provided good points:

Git domain name is git-scm. #Ani domain name could be ani-dvcs. And less people would be like Face vomiting when using it or speaking about it. And in Debian there is no other #Ani https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=ani&searchon=names&suite=all§ion=all On Github neither : https://github.com/search?q=ani

Advantages

• easy branding
• easy typing

Disadvantages

• conflicts with Asian News International (copyright issues etc…),
• need to edit source code and replace all anu occurrences (website, documentation, domain)

4. Do nothing

Advantages

• no effort

Disadvantages

• hard to promote
• conflicts with Australia's National University

Don’t get me wrong: anu is great, you’ve done tremendous work but this little thing is really harmful for the project

THANKS A LOT FOR THESE COMMENTS! I’ve run a twitter poll to help me decide, and since the support for changing, while a majority, is not overwhelming, I think sticking with our previous googlable name is the reasonable choice.

I would also advocate to keep using pijul, for what it’s worth.