[ckan-discuss] Renaming ckan.net to thedatahub.org

Tue Jun 21 22:47:49 BST 2011

Hi All,

I'd like to suggest renaming ckan.net to thedatahub.org. Reasons:

1. Reduce confusion between software and the site/community. People
frequently tell me they get confused on this and at the moment one has
to constantly qualify to say something like "CKAN Software" or the
"CKAN site". This is made worse by having software at ckan.org and
primary community site at ckan.net.

2. CKAN is completely opaque as a name to most people. Talking with
people, especially people not that familiar with CKAN and associated
ideas, it's clear that CKAN is a poor name (people explicitly say
this): a) it's not clear how to spell it b) it's not clear what kind
of site it is.

NB: this second issue could also be true of the software (which we
don't plan to rename). However, having 'odd' names for software isn't
such a problem as opaque names for software are common and the target
community is much more specialized and comprehending of the background
(CPAN, CRAN etc). But it is a problem for the site where we hope
general users (or at least data wranglers) will come.

Please let me know your +1 / -1 / +0 / -0 ...

Regards,

Rufus