it's probably the least of their concerns, but i think a name / branding would be helpful.
any HN brand experts? maybe you could make a contribution (in the form of expertise/suggestions)
i think it could be better because
1. it's kind of long
2. it's sterile, devoid of emotion, and hard to link emotion to via marketing or branding
3. it's too technical - the common phone OS consumer doesn't know what postmarket means, and don't know what an OS is
4. it works against itself if it becomes wildly successful, and OEMs want to put it on the phone at the time of sale... at that point it's just "MarketOS"?
None of these are a huge deal, or detract from the overall value of the project (it's awesome!); but I can't see an argument for keeping it. what makes it perfect, in your eyes?
And i'm not a brand expert; i would love to see points by someone who knows a lot more about marketing and branding.
I agree that it's not that well-suited for outside of the geek community, but I doubt we're anywhere close to that. If it gets picked up by a manufacturer, they'll just as well market it to geeks. You're not getting around that, unless Android and iOS disappear from the face of the planet.
1. There's a shorthand "pmOS". "postmarketOS" is at least easy to Google (PMOS has too many meanings).
2. It's descriptive and tells me more about what it is than most names do. Maybe they could rebrand for wider appeal later.
3. The common phone consumer wouldn't pay more attention if it had a flashier name, either. They'll buy a phone based on rumor and what their friends have, and they certainly aren't going to look at replacing the OS with something new.
4. I imagine that the company might fork the repo and rename it whatever they want, in that case. "Mobilios\", then a tiny text at the bottom "powered by postmarketOS".
I'm not a branding expert either, but I know that it pisses me off when there are 3 layers of branding and marketing before I can get to what the product actually is*.
As someone who ran Maemo (and its successors in past) I am happy to see my old N900 would gain new life. However, running Linux terminal apps on a phone isn't very useful. They need to be ported to get gesture support etc as normal applications are made for hardware keyboard and hardware mouse as HIDs. Phones lack these (tho N900 does have a hardware keyboard, the other input device is resistive screen + stylus or finger).
Names should be descriptive.
Haskell is named after the mathematician Haskell Curry. The concept of "currying" functions is essential to the language, and is named for the same person.
The current logo certainly seems inspired by common recycling icons.
At the same time your first point seems to me to apply to the current name.
Sure, if you want to annoy potential female contributors for no good reason.