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[Thorsten Altenkirch <Thorsten.Altenkirch AT nottingham.ac.uk>]

Actually this may work very well. If the controversy is picked up by the media this may be a good way to make people aware of the existence of tools like coq. Negative attention is better than none.

 

I am going to call the tool coq and not see-oh-quiche but everybody is welcome to experiment as they like.

 

Thorsten

 

 

From: <coq-club-request AT inria.fr> on behalf of Benjamin Pierce <bcpierce AT cis.upenn.edu>
Reply to: "coq-club AT inria.fr" <coq-club AT inria.fr>
Date: Tuesday, 6 April 2021 at 12:36
To: "coq-club AT inria.fr" <coq-club AT inria.fr>
Subject: Re: [Coq-Club] Why is the Coq logo made to look like a penis?

 

Clinging to a name that was intentionally chosen to give offense doesn't seem like a great idea for a group that is trying to promote good ideas in the larger community: Don't people already have enough reasons to ignore us?  :-)

 

Personally, I'm going to experiment with saying See-Oh-Queue and see how it wears; this seems like a low-cost change that could be implemented by some of the community without agreement from all.  But if people are up for discussing a whole new name, that's fine too.  I like several that have been proposed in this thread.

 

As for the logo, it seems no one much cares for the current one (me included).  

 

    - Benjamin

 

On Tue, Apr 6, 2021 at 6:57 AM Thorsten Altenkirch <Thorsten.Altenkirch AT nottingham.ac.uk> wrote:

I agree. Maybe I am getting old but I always enjoyed the cheek of choosing a name which may upset some people. I also enjoyed telling the story about Gerard Huet giving a talk about the zipper and its verification with coq. I do remember that Ursula Martin was rather upset. Certainly this was provocative. It seems nowadays everybody is offended by something. I guess this is the culture now. Not necessarily something I appreciate. I think coq is a brand name and it would be a bad idea to change it. Also it never occurred to me that the logo had anything to do with a penis. Isn’t this in the (dirty?) mind of the beholder?

Thorsten

On 06/04/2021, 10:51, "coq-club-request AT inria.fr on behalf of Guillaume Claret" <coq-club-request AT inria.fr on behalf of guillaume AT claret.me> wrote:

    I am strongly against changing the name.

    Le 06/04/2021 à 11:49, Paolo Torrini a écrit :
    > Since there's already an *important* distinction between language
    > (Galllina) and prover (Coq), wouldn't it actually make sense to
    > introduce a new name to designate the whole lot?
    >
    > Say, one could simply abbreviate Gallina-Coq to Galliq, or call it
    > Roost, or anything else appropriate. That would save from explicitly
    > changing name, while defusing the anglophone issue - and it might even
    > help to make things more precise.
    >
    > Best,
    >
    > PT
    >
    > On 06/04/2021 11:04, Derek Dreyer wrote:
    >> Personally, I would support changing the name *and* the logo.
    >>
    >> The root problem is the name -- I rather doubt the logo would be
    >> controversial if it were not for the name.  As is well known, the name
    >> was deliberately intended partly as a joke, to provoke people -- it
    >> has succeeded in that regard.  But mostly at this point it is just
    >> embarrassing to a lot of us, and probably exacerbates the gender
    >> disparity in Coq users.
    >>
    >> I have heard people say that it is hard to change the name.  I agree,
    >> it is hard, but that doesn't mean IMO that it's not worth exploring.
    >> I bet that many Coq users would be very open to a name change if a
    >> catchy new name were proposed by the Coq team.  I would, for one.
    >> (And I'm happy to help brainstorm about new names privately if anyone
    >> cares to have that discussion.)  Of course, perhaps I am wrong: it
    >> might be worth polling Coq users about whether they would like to see
    >> the name changed, if that has not been done already.
    >>
    >> That said, if there is not sufficient support for changing the name, I
    >> would at least support changing the logo to something that is less
    >> open to interpretation and more clearly resembles a normal rooster (or
    >> even Ilya's steampunk rooster).
    >>
    >> Best regards,
    >> Derek
    >>
    >>
    >> On Mon, Apr 5, 2021 at 6:49 PM James R Wilcox
    >> <jrw12 AT cs.washington.edu> wrote:
    >>> I had never noticed this before, despite apologizing for the name of
    >>> the proof assistant to my students for many years. This year, I had a
    >>> student point out to me the
    >>>
    >>>> flesh-colored logo with what looks like a mushroom top
    >>>
    >>> and now I can't unsee it.
    >>>
    >>> Isn't it time for a new logo?
    >>>
    >>> James R. Wilcox
    >>> University of Washington, Seattle




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