[ogpx] Proposal: Change OGPX to...

[Joshua Bell <[e-mail]>]

Hey gang,

One of the charter issues we identified coming out of Stockholm was
the name (for both the group and protocol suite). Open Grid Protocol
(OGP)" is historical, used to describe interop trials from 2008, and
the name was carried forward to the BoF/mailing list (with an "X" for
good measure). Linden Lab employees, OpenSim developers and Second
Life residents frequently use the term "grid" to describe the
collection of systems responsible for providing virtual world
services, even if that set of systems would more accurately be
described by the terms "cluster" or "cloud" (or term-of-the-week...),
playing off the grid-like organization of regions on a map.

We received repeated feedback that "grid" was confusing, both on the
list and at Stockholm, in the broader context of the IETF. This was
underscored by at least one person who attended the OGPX BoF in
Stockholm saying they anticipated hearing a discussion about grid and
cloud computing services.

A few alternatives to OGP have been offered, such as "Region Access
Protocol (RAP)" and "Agent / Region Interaction Protocol (ARIP)". The
former discounts the importance of the agent oriented aspects of the
protocol, the latter discounts the "access" aspect of the protocol
which underscores the RESTful nature of the conceptual objects on
either end of a protocol transaction.

>From off-list discussions, here are some new suggestions:

* "Agent Based Open Virtual Environments (ABOVE)" - (as a group name?)
* "Open Virtual Entity and Region (OVER)" - (as a protocol name?)

These have the advantage of being concise, fairly accurate,
pronounceable, keeping "Virtual" in the name, slightly "cute" but not
overly so. They are not humorous or ironic and don't reference
pop-culture. They don't overload "IP" (yay) and avoid "P" in the name
(the dreaded "ATM machine" syndrome.)

Taking these as serious suggestions, could we get rough consensus on
either/both of these? Last call for objections/alternatives?

(To maintain continuity of discussion, we should keep the OGPX mailing
list and other trappings until an actual working group is chartered.)