Go! -- the non-Google programming language by Keith Clark and Francis McCabe.
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
I'm not a big fan of Wikipedia's deletionists, but I hope they go after this page. Musing about something in a few research papers doesn't make it notable.
How is that for a contradiction... Google launched their 'Go' language today, and it definitely is great that someone took the trouble to put this stake in the ground. Whether it is notable or not is debatable, I think the simple fact that there is a namespace collision between two programming languages is reason enough to make it notable.
It is all over the web, thanks to the efforts of the author, if it wasn't 'notable' yesterday it certainly is now.
http://econsultancy.com/blog/4954-google-go-was-the-name-alr...
It is hard to believe, they didn't think by now someone else would have come up with that name for a language.
Or did assume they would just throw a bunch money and lawyers at whoever comes out claiming the name.
Something similar happened to http://www.wxwidgets.org (ex-wxWindows). Microsoft payed the author some money and he changed the name of the project. I don't think that would be such a bad outcome.
It appears that Google is not asserting trademark protection on the name, either, so there really doesn't seem to be any legal case at all - it looks like both parties can use it.
From uspto.gov:
A trademark includes any word, name, symbol, or device, or any combination, used, or intended to be used, in commerce to identify and distinguish the goods of one manufacturer or seller from goods manufactured or sold by others, and to indicate the source of the goods.
And that speaks volumes.
This type of stuff happens. As per a thread suggestion on the issue tracker, they've already registered Golang.org and its redirecting to their site. For all we know, they are reworking the graphical and text assets right now to make this a full switch.
So why again should Google make the name change?
If the 'Go!' creators had any hope for using that name on a series of offerings (tools, books, etc.), they have to object to Google's use, to retain the presumptive rights they'd established so far via use.
Notably, the word 'bang' does not appear in the book, "Let's Go!", so it is unlikely to be the author's preferred pronunciation:
Signed, an obscure language writer
This is the best thing that could have happened to popularize his research.
"I am very grateful for the support I have received on this thread. It seems to have hit a nerve.
I want to make one particular point, some people have suggested that "I should be grateful" for the extra advertising. My response to that is that I was not actively looking for this advertising. It was not me who picked a clashing name.
I fully understand that it is possible that insufficient search was done before hand. However, when I picked the name Go! I did try to find out if anyone else was using it. In fact, I was kind of surprised that no one was!; since it was clearly a great name.
For those interested, Go! is a bi-lingual pun. My previous work focused on a language called April. In Japanese, the literal back-translation of April is "4th Month". Go is Japanese for 5."
Which might entirely be true.
But that assertion would be strengthened by pointing to a link/post that was somewhat _older_.