
Name Change
In September 2003, Microsoft approached Julian Smart to open discussions
about the wxWindows name, in relation to the 'Windows' UK trademark owned by
Microsoft. The result of these discussions can be summarised as follows.
After a polite request from Microsoft, and a lot of thought on
our part, we have decided to change the project's name to wxWidgets. Apologies
to all wxWindows users, and developers of wxWindows-related projects, for the
short-term discomfort caused by the name change.
These are the main points of the agreement:
- Julian Smart and Robin Dunn will cease using the name wxWindows by
August 2004.
- Microsoft will redirect to our new domain wxwidgets.org for at least a
year after that.
- There will be modest financial compensation, of which the residue (after
fees) will be used to fund library development and tools. Contributors
can submit claims to Julian Smart to compensate for time lost because of
the name change.
Users and developers other than Julian Smart and Robin Dunn are not legally
affected by this agreement. However, the sensible thing is for us to all use
the same name for the library. Users of wxWidgets who are currently referring
to the old name in their products or on their web sites do not need to be
worried, but it's a good idea to change to the new name as soon as is
convenient so that product releases from August use the new name.
There has been much debate about whether this agreement was necessary. You
can browse the wx-dev archives for the arguments for and against. Obviously a
name change is not something that Robin and Julian would undertake take
frivolously or for financial gain. Please confine further discussions about
the name change to the new wx-discuss mailing list.
As for the choice of name, this also has been debated at length. There were
many suggestions and a shortlist was drawn up. wxWidgets has been
chosen because:
- It is very similar to the old name and therefore should be easy to
associate with the project.
- It seems less of a target for trademark disputes than many
alternatives.
- It has a slightly quirky feel to it.
- Although the library has much non-GUI functionality, 'widget' can be
interpreted to mean more than just a UI control, and anyway, GUI
functionality is a good starting point when trying to understand what
the library does.
If we can be certain about anything, it's that not everyone will like the
new name. We're sorry we can't please everyone, but we have spent many, many
hours thinking about the issue, and we would now like to get back to improving
the library.
Thank you for your patience while we change to our new name over the coming
weeks. We will keep everyone informed about changes in our services, such as
web site and CVS server addresses.