Project Renaming

History

The name pyrax was chosen more or less on a lark. I (EdLeafe) was tasked with creating a Python SDK to support the Rackspace Cloud, and came up with the name after looking at a Pyrex measuring cup - I thought it was a good mesh of the common 'py' prefix and 'Rackspace'. It was short and memorable. Thus, pyrax was born.

However, it has had some negative results. Because of the 'rax' portion, too many people have assumed that it only supports Rackspace's cloud. And while that was originally the situation, due to business pressure, it is now capable of supporting all OpenStack-based clouds. So I'd like to find a better name.

Similarly, as a result of a few internal discussions in the beginning, I named the various services following the branding used by Rackspace: pyrax.cloudservers, pyrax.cloudfiles, etc. In hindsight, choosing names without the Rackspace branding would have been much wiser; e.g., pyrax.compute, pyrax.object_storage.

Hurdles

• Renaming the modules is pretty much search-and-replace throughout all the code, code samples, and documentation.
• There is a disconnect where the SDK wraps a Rackspace-only module: do we use the Rackspace-branded name, or something generic in case OpenStack ever offers something similar?
• Support for the existing pyrax SDK has to be maintained for the foreseeable future, at least in bugfix-only mode.

Proposals

These are all brainstorming ideas; feel free to add your own, as well as add comments for each name.

python-openstack

Pros:

• clearly indicates that it is an OpenStack SDK
• follows the same naming convention as other OpenStack-compatible Python modules.

Cons:

• May raise trademark issues with the OpenStack Foundation
• Might be misleading: people might think that it is a core OpenStack project

python-opencloud

Pros:

• Avoids trademark issues with OpenStack.
• Stresses that it supports open providers and not closed systems.
• follows the same naming convention as other OpenStack-compatible Python modules.

Cons:

• Potential for continuing confusion as a Rackspace-specific library, since Rackspace brands itself "The Open Cloud Company".