Of course anything good may eventually rise to success on its merits, but in case I'm not the only one with a subconscious aversion maybe the info below will help put some people one less click away. How about SurvivalDB? :)
CDB is a distributed SQL database built on a transactional and strongly-consistent key-value store. Scales horizontally; survives disk, machine, rack, and datacenter failures with low latency disruption and no intervention; strongly-consistent ACID transactions; SQL API for querying data. Inspired by Google’s Spanner and F1. Completely open source.
Absolutely the name is holding them back. In my case it prevents me from championing the product within my company. Going to the executives and saying "we're going to put our most precious data into Cockroach" simply won't fly. Any discussion of features will be for naught; I know the CEO will make a "no" decision as soon as he hears the name.
To any Cockroach Labs folks who might read this: please give me (and all of us) a name that I can evangelize without my audience cringing.
Everybody makes decisions using both emotion and reason. This is why successful products speak to both the heart and the mind of the customer. Said another way, this is why the marketing department is just as essential to a company's success as the engineering department.
I've worked with my company's executive team for quite a while, and they're not obtuse. They are human, however. When I go to them and suggest we trust our data to a new, up-and-coming database, I'm asking quite a lot. The cost of failure is extremely high, so I need to convince them at both an emotional and rational level that the risk is worth it. But when the conversation starts, "let me tell you about Cockroach..." I'm already starting from behind.
The reason so many people are fussing about CockroachDB's name is because there's such a huge dissonance between a product that looks fantastic on its technical merits but has a name that triggers terrible images. Have you ever lived in a house with roaches? That's the kind of thing that wedges in your mind in the "never again" category.
That people are both emotional and logical is a non sequitur. The responsibility of picking a database includes trying explicitly to discount how ones feels about petty things like the name and rush to the technical discussion. That's part of what it means to do a good job picking a database.
All the best technical people I know would feel a visceral disgust at the thought of a product being discarded due to its name. Someone who was truly suited to attacking the problem of database selection would proactively make sure he wasn't letting nontechnical features into the discussion.
Whoever creates the successor to Linux should name it Holocaust OS or something just to mess with people, and laugh at those who due to its name thereby do their computing on an inferior system.
"But when the conversation starts, "let me tell you about Cockroach..." I'm already starting from behind."
Attempting to explain how brand recognition works: people browse the web, they see and hear things, they remember unusual things, things they see often, things they notice better because of how they shown in all the noise, etc. After awhile when presented with the choice where they need to make a judgement either under pressure, in a hurry or simply because they don't have enough information, they favor a familiar thing, thing they can recall, rather than the thing they can hardly recall or not at all, no matter how neutral the name is. This is called a familiarity bias and is also the reason behind the phrase "no such thing as bad publicity". So, you are definitely not starting from behind.
Except this is going to be the common response of management at basically any large, or older company. Not everyone here works at startups, and this isn't something that's easy to just immediately change.
This is an issue with a lot of weird or jokey project names, honestly.
"It must be a product from just another startup" is a very valid reason. At the end of the day, we only talk about mssql, mysql, postgres when it comes to rdbms.
Right, the implication being that nothing especially impressive about CockroachDB stands out, and so we're going to stick with proven options. That's a technical discussion!
Why are the people in charge of deciding what database to use the sort of people who would allow their disgust toward an animal whose name is shared by a database to block discussion of its technical features?
I agree completely. I love reading about databases, but apparently have been skipping reading about CockroachDB for that same reason subconsciously. I took a deep dive the other day and was amazed that I've seen the name dozens of times and have never bothered to ask what was special about it. It really is a fascinating database.
No, you have not been skipping it subconsciously or seeing it more often, than others, you just feel like you did. People actually have an availability bias [1] that clouds their judgement about unusual things.
It's a terrible name, it also has the property that stupidly configured web filters could filter it due to string matching the first part of the word.
It also makes your employees look stupid when they tell their landlords, bank accounts, dates that they work at Cockroach Labs. Good luck explaining that you aren't an exterminator.
There's nothing wrong at all with being an exterminator – but in general you probably don't want people to assume you're something you're not. The name doesn't help with that.
I submit "Bunker" as a more approachable name. Not only does it have the connotation of "survives nuclear bombardment", but also suggests "keep your stuff safe here" and "something you could entrust with your life".
Agree 100%, ditto for suggested alternate name. I'd been doing the same for Rust. It's not a rational reason, sure, but I have to sell adoption to a broader userbase that cares about more that the technical merits.
I don't want to have to make the case for why someone's system needs rust and cockroaches.
I have to say, I think that if you have a problem with "Rust" then you lose credibility in your criticism of "Cockroach".
Contrary to most above, I think "Cockroach" is great. It's suitable. Any suit who has a problem with it should get back on their side of the office, and stop sticking their nose in things they know nothing about, especially when so evidently closed minded. There are too many people in that meeting. Hell, even "Google" is a crap name, sounding like a baby word, and "Mongo" can be outright offensive. I expect anyone who has an issue with the name "Cockroach" is probably not going to be too open to the cutting edge anyway, so wasted concern.
I'm wondering if all the people who can't get over the name CockroachDB are also people who insist that professionals should dress the part. Can't take someone seriously if they don't have their shirt tucked in?
I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in having a bias against the name "CockroachDB" and being okay with people who don't have their shirt tucked in. I get the comparison you're making, but "untucked shirt" connotes "casual" to me. Roaches connote "health hazard." I'm okay with eating at casual restaurants, but not casual restaurants with roaches.
If you have to explain "we want you to think about survivability, not health violations," then maybe the problem isn't your untucked shirt--it's the big grease stain covering its front. You can insist that's just part of your style all you want, but it's going to be a hard sell.
Yeah, I've definitely heard people tell me "It seems cool, but not cool enough for me to get over the subconscious revulsion to the name" when asking about CDB.
I appreciate the name, but I think I'd have an easier time convincing people to use a product of a different name....
It might be intentional as reverse psychology. They don't want employees or users who wouldn't use a project because it's named after an unpopular insect. Those users/employees could be fickle, unreasonable and low quality at other aspects of business/development and be a net loss for the company/project in the long term.
Completely agree. I specialize in distributed databases and I have zero interest in even learning about CockroachDB. Could be the greatest technology ever and I will never know. Is that irrational? Sure. But I'm a busy man with plenty of tech to learn about and limited time. I detest roaches and do not want to think about them at all when I am working. Might as well have named it with an ethnic slur.
I can only go off what you wrote, stating you are deliberately ignorant. I was just reiterating what you proudly said.
Do you really think saying you are a specialist, yet won't read about the topic you specialize in because you are scared of a benign name is reasonable?
I forgot to mention the ridiculous hyperbole comparing 'cockroach' to racial slurs.
My point is that the name isn't benign. And my post was deliberately somewhat hyperbolic. I actually have read a bit about Cockroach, and if I saw a growing ecosystem that seemed relevant to my work, I would pursue it more.
But as others have pointed out, the name creates unnecessary conflict and discomfort. In a world of perfectly rational humans, it wouldn't matter. In the real world, it makes it harder to get stakeholders on board. That's why I made the comparison to ethnic slurs. "F_U_DB" might be the greatest storage system imaginable. It doesn't change the fact that the name alone is going to create extra unpleasant work. (EDITED to fix an error)
"Somewhat hyperbolic" and "the complete opposite of truth" are not the same thing.
There are no such things as "perfectly rational humans" and if there were they would be rational and would not experience discomfort because of a name because that's irrational. A rational human would see the name as clefer if anything since cockroaches are quite enduring.
Perhaps to a large fraction of relevant stakeholders, the name is a signal of project immaturity and perhaps poor judgement.
Additionally, even if you aren't personally bothered it, most would be aware that others feel this way, which certainly creates an uphill battle for the tool and diminishes the prospect of a vibrant ecosystem building up around it.
This is a red flag for anyone who might be considering including CockroachDB as an important part of their stack on any long-running project
It was not an ad hominem attack. He criticized you willfully not learning about the area you say you specialize in. It is completely valid criticism as your reasons for doing it are ridiculous and what you said looks very unprofessional.
to me it's not a deeply-seeded reason, it's just when I hear cutesy-sounding names I just don't take them seriously. They sound like the latest, hipster thing that's going to be in-bloom for a (figurative) week or two until the next cutesy thing steals everyone's attention. Even the language Pony has a mildly off-putting name (to me) despite hearing people rave about it. Couch DB ? What the hell does that mean ?
I admit it's a bias of mine and I could be losing out on learning amazing tools. But even non-profit, standardized languages and tools still have a brand name and image.
I agree that it's more neutral, if not random-sounding without knowing it's an acronym. JBOD is another neutral acronym.
I'm not marketing guru, but maybe cockroach could have been more palatable by calling it "RCH, some call it roach, because it was named after its persistence" ?
their name is the stupidest startup blunder I've ever seen. Enterprise won't go near it, seriously. I cannot tell a client I'm using a "cockroach" database, no fucking way.
If we could go back and rename Windows Hitler would anyone be using it???
Cloning a reply I made earlier talking about that exact situation:
It's not my company or me, it's my clients. Here's a sort of long winded story explaining what I mean that the corporate world can't use anything with the name "cockroach". If you disagree after reading, I'm open for a friendly debate.
Average project, some 60 year old VP signing off on 100k of custom software with 8 pages of lawyer speak contracts is NOT going to allow "his" project to run off of "cockroach database". VP's/CEO's like to take personal ownership of projects they feel will go well, and ones done with us usually do. None of these people want ANY chance of their project getting criticized internally, so nobody will use CockroachDb. It's just not going to happen. Having successful projects is an easy way for these people to gather promotions and respect. Having any part of it do with "cockroach" could result in the whole project being an embarrassment.
Imagine the database goes down one day. One of their low level staff calls us(we have ongoing support contract). Problem gets rapidly escalated to development. One of our lead developers replies to the email thread, that by now has a third of the clients' company on it. "Yeah see the problem was the cockroach database that wasn't supposed to go down needed to be restarted" . Most of the staff think we're joking. Guarantee this becomes a big pun around their office, every time anything breaks in the app they say "maybe the cockroaches on the back end died again".
It's made worse by the fact that issues in software systems are commonly called "bugs". Well, our system doesn't have general bugs anymore, it has "cockroaches". Do you think this is an unlikely scenario? Because it's not. Besides the word "cockroach" this is exactly how urgent issues tend to be reported and fixed. Replace "cockroach" with "Microsoft" and I've probably violated my NDA. After that incident, whoever championed the project, probably our strongest ally in the company, resents us for making such a stupid mistake that resulted in his project becoming a joke. Maybe we aren't as great of a dev shop as he once thought? Maybe it's better to do open bidding next time so whoever wins he can't be blamed directly for what happens.
You could say their company culture sucks, maybe it does? But that doesn't change that I can't use it on any client projects because of the chance we'll lose hundreds of thousands over a stupid name.
There's plenty of other names that convey meaning but don't make lawyers nervous. Your attitude of "oh, well if you can't use it your company culture sucks" is EXACTLY why nobody will rename it and why corporate american won't touch it. Nobody cares about how cool it is to be edgy when millions of dollars are on the line.
If you plan on forcing clients to use it you might as well hold a going away party for any of your clients with more than 5M revenue.
>If we could go back and rename Windows Hitler would anyone be using it???
Intensely hyperbolic but... you're not wrong. "Cockroach" is an awful name for a database and I have a hard time envisioning "seen-it-all" enterprise IT managers taking it seriously.
I only recently read some cool things about CDB and wondered if I could have been subconsciously skipping articles about it for deep seeded reasons like http://bbc.com/future/story/20140918-the-reality-about-roach...
Of course anything good may eventually rise to success on its merits, but in case I'm not the only one with a subconscious aversion maybe the info below will help put some people one less click away. How about SurvivalDB? :)
CDB is a distributed SQL database built on a transactional and strongly-consistent key-value store. Scales horizontally; survives disk, machine, rack, and datacenter failures with low latency disruption and no intervention; strongly-consistent ACID transactions; SQL API for querying data. Inspired by Google’s Spanner and F1. Completely open source.
https://cockroachlabs.com/docs/frequently-asked-questions.ht...