Cheese Shop -> BSOL?

[Kay Schluehr]

Paul Boddie wrote:
> Tim Churches wrote:
> > Would it be possible to rename "Cheese Shop" as "Bright Side of Life"?
>
> Well, you could replay the conversation I gave as an example elsewhere
> to see if it sounds ridiculous or not, but what we've encountered here
> is the problem of whether something should be given a distinctive
> identity or a derivative identity. A long time ago, and possibly
> continuing to this day, people complained about how nearly every Python
> package, module or program had names starting or ending with "Py" -
> announcing a module in a Python newsgroup and giving it a name starting
> with "Py" seemed somewhat redundant, and there was always the issue of
> not being able to scan long lists of packages comfortably, just like
> with all the KDE application names that start with the letter K.
>
> But even without "the curse of Py", many people don't just choose
> arbitrary names for their packages: it often makes sense to include
> related technologies in the name (eg. XML, XSLT, ado, dav), or to use a
> descriptive component, possibly in shortened form (eg. auth, bayes,
> bio, Cal). Yes, a search will often bring forth the right resource
> regardless of what it's called, but many people underestimate their own
> searching skills and overestimate what other people can find via things
> like Google.
>
> Of course, programs may downplay Python as the implementation
> technology because the underlying technical details are mostly
> irrelevant to end-users (eg. BitTorrent, b3, Eric, Glarf), but if we
> look at distinctively named packages, we can see that they often
> attempt to define their own identity distinct from Python (eg.
> BeautifulSoup, Dabo, DejaVu, Django, Twisted, Zope), frequently because
> they seek to be the primary point of reference for developers -
> developing in Twisted or Zope is more specialised than just developing
> things in Python. Some of the distinctively named package names employ
> metaphors and/or cultural references that possibly make them more
> memorable, but they don't necessarily make the names easy to guess.
>
> So should a service for finding Python packages have a distinct
> identity? It is possible that a package index could be someone's
> principal view of the Python world ("I go to Camelot to get... what is
> it I get there?"), but the things that emerge from such a service
> aren't just downloads that have little in common with each other.
> Consequently, I don't think a descriptive name, derived from the name
> of the technology, is sensibly avoided in this case.
>
> Paul

The problem I have with the cheese-shop is less a naming but a
usability issue. In some commercial projects that involve Python I
already integrated SQLite as a local database for storing and
retrieving all kind of configuration data as well as session data,
failure statistics etc. I also extended a Python console in order to
send SQL commands directly using this syntax "$ select * from reports
where...". I should mention that this kind of integration was one of
the most acknowledged features by those who where Python sceptics. I
wonder if creating a database client, integreting it with a Python
console and shipping it with a Python setup would not leave behind all
other solutions in the field? BTW I'm not only intererested in the
functionality of a package but how well it performs how well it is
tested etc. The packages checked into the cheese-shop obtain already a
rough classification. If classification schemes become more usable it
is likely that they could be extended. 

Kay