Rebrand client to 'Bitcoin Core'

laanwj commented at 12:54 pm on November 5, 2013: member

To remove the confusion between the Bitcoin network and the reference client implementation that we maintain in this repository, both confusingly named ‘bitcoin’, we’d like to rebrand the client.

This has been discussed a lot before, but the following is the proposal by @gavinandresen and I agree:

0Bitcoin-Qt -->  btcore (full name 'Bitcoin Core')
1bitcoind --> btcored (full name 'Bitcoin Core Daemon')
2bitcoin-cli --> btcore-cli (full name 'Bitcoin Core CLI Client')

Renaming the executables is going to break some scripts, so we’d likely want to combine it with the bitcoind CLI deprecation to make sure the migration pain is short and swift instead of drawn out.

luke-jr commented at 3:54 pm on November 5, 2013: member

Bitcoin-the-system has always been abbreviated as ‘bc’, not ‘bt’ - wouldn’t ‘bccore’* make more sense here?

I think it would be better to keep Bitcoin-Qt and bitcoind more distinct. After all, someone may develop another GUI client sharing the same codebase someday as well.

laanwj commented at 4:11 pm on November 5, 2013: member

Well I found the fun thing about btcore that the first three letters are BTC. Apart from that, I don’t really mind, bc, bt, even xbcore has been proposed.

IMO if someone else wants to develop another GUI client sharing the same codebase let him/her think of their own name. This is our project. (…and if it’s a GUI for a specific platform, for example if we ever decide to make a native GUI for Mac or Windows or Android etc, it can simply be called Bitcoin Core on that platform. Hence I really like getting “Qt” out of the name)

luke-jr commented at 4:20 pm on November 5, 2013: member

Due to the nature of the codebase right now, any other GUI would obviously need to share the same repository as B-Qt and bitcoind have been. I’m certainly a fan of Qt and B-Qt, but I don’t think another GUI that could pop up should be treated as some kind of “second-class” client.

On the other hand, “let them think of their own name” seems fine. I just think B-Qt and bitcoind should also have their own names ;)

gavinandresen commented at 7:16 am on November 6, 2013: contributor

Perfect is the enemy of better, @luke-jr

Someday maybe we’ll have a libbtcore.a and separate projects for the GUI btcore and btcored/btcore-cli (and maybe there will be a gazillion other wallets that use libbtcore.a).

Now is a good time to change names, lets do it.

gmaxwell commented at 8:51 am on November 6, 2013: contributor

@AllThingsBitcoin We do not generally use the “assignment” feature in Github. The number of active participants here is small enough that software coordination of who is working on what isn’t terribly helpful.

Diapolo commented at 7:43 am on November 8, 2013: none

Bitcoin-Qt --> btcore (full name 'Bitcoin Core')

I’m not sure if I like that new name, even Bitcoin-Qt --> btcore-gui (full name 'Bitcoin Core GUI') doesn’t yet make it feel more acceptable ^^.

laanwj commented at 7:50 am on November 8, 2013: member

@diapolo we’re open to suggestions, but mind that there have been many discussions about a new name and the time to shedpaint about is limited - at a certain point we should simply make a decision

Edit: and I don’t want to add -gui, at least not to the full name, a lot of users have no clue what “GUI” means and simply expect an “application” these days.

Diapolo commented at 8:05 am on November 8, 2013: none

btcore neither feels like something cool to use nor tells me what it is. Only lowercase is also weird for a (GUI) application, at least on Windows. I have no fucking good idea either currently, sorry ^^.

laanwj commented at 8:08 am on November 8, 2013: member

That’s only the executable name. Capitalization doesn’t matter. Let’s not discuss that but the user visible name in menus and dialogs.

“Bitcoin Core” is cooler than “Bitcoin Reference Client” right?

super3 commented at 11:19 pm on November 8, 2013: contributor

I agree on the rebranding. +1 what @laanwj said about doing this in one swift move instead of drawn out. I think the name is subjective. Perhaps we should go to the community about this to come up with a name everyone likes.

sipa commented at 5:23 pm on November 9, 2013: member

To add my own shed paint:

btccore: “Bitcoin Core client”
btccored: “Bitcoin Core daemon”
btccore-cli: “Bitcoin Core remote client”

(btcore sounds to me like it’s a BitTorrent client)

gmaxwell commented at 6:42 pm on November 9, 2013: contributor

No strong opinions from me. This is okay and I don’t think I’ve ever heard an alternative I would consider really fantastic.

mikehearn commented at 11:32 am on November 13, 2013: contributor

We’re not in any danger of running out of letters, I’d prefer something explicit like the binary names being “bitcoin-core” or “bitcoin-core-daemon” because then it’s immediately apparent what something is if you do a process listing on an unfamiliar box.

However this is practically a Gaudi-inspired bike shed, so who cares :)

laanwj commented at 11:54 am on November 13, 2013: member

I tend to agree with @mikehearn here.

super3 commented at 3:28 pm on November 13, 2013: contributor

@mikehearn Disagree. I’ve had to type in bitcoind many many times. I think brevity is key.

sipa commented at 5:14 pm on November 16, 2013: member

Building on Mike’s idea:

bitcoin-core-daemon
bitcoin-core-cli
bitcoin-core-gui (or even bitcoin-core-qt).

(similar to transmission-cli and transmission-gtk)

super3 commented at 5:30 pm on November 16, 2013: contributor

@sipa bitcoin-core-qt would probably be better in that case

jgarzik commented at 5:32 pm on November 16, 2013: contributor

I officially have no opinion on this issue ;p

super3 commented at 5:49 pm on November 16, 2013: contributor

I say let the community decide. I put together a little Google Form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1i5mwZOQUo3uIrdVusedg-JUf0-b_pBzK8cvtGgM6MYc/viewform

Thoughts?

luke-jr commented at 9:25 pm on November 16, 2013: member

I think the idea of letting the community have input on shedpainting like this is fine. But your form kinda sucks, since it doesn’t provide any real options.

B-Qt name: Bitcoin-Qt (no change), Bitcoin Core, Bitcoin Core GUI, Mercury, BitcoinPeer, CuteCoin, Hikaru, Bitcoin Basic, etc bitcoind name: bitcoind (no change), Bitcoin Core Daemon, etc (?)

From those, it’s pretty trivial to infer binary and bitcoin-cli names.

super3 commented at 0:12 am on November 17, 2013: contributor

Alright. I can agree. Give me some more guidance on how it should look then I’ll put it out.

I think the idea of letting the community have input on shedpainting like this is fine. But your form kinda sucks, since it doesn’t provide any real options.

B-Qt name: Bitcoin-Qt (no change), Bitcoin Core, Bitcoin Core GUI, Mercury, BitcoinPeer, CuteCoin, Hikaru, Bitcoin Basic, etc bitcoind name: bitcoind (no change), Bitcoin Core Daemon, etc (?)

From those, it’s pretty trivial to infer binary and bitcoin-cli names.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/3203#issuecomment-28636222 .

gavinandresen commented at 1:00 am on December 12, 2013: contributor

I’m tired of painting sheds. This is how it is gonna be:

Branded name : executable name Bitcoin Core Daemon : bitcoin-core-daemon Bitcoin Core GUI : bitcoin-core-gui : bitcoin-core-cli

Who wants to do it?

qubez commented at 4:01 am on December 13, 2013: none

I always find these “a day ago” too late…

Filename “bitcoin-core-gui” - really? Can we just have “bitcoin” (or “bitcoin.exe”) again? See Bittorrent as an example of a protocol plus a reference client with the same name, and nobody seems overly confused

Fictional but painfully real anecdote: Try giving tech support over the phone “you need to rename bitcoin dash core dash goo eee, spelled gee-you-eye”, “Now I will have you type t-a-r space x-z-v-f space bitcoin dash core dash goo eee dot tar dot gz” … “okay, ‘can’t open’ likely means you typed it wrong”…

laanwj closed this on May 2, 2014

Bushstar referenced this in commit 5f98ed7a5a on Apr 8, 2020

DrahtBot locked this on Sep 8, 2021

Rebrand client to ‘Bitcoin Core’ #3203