A more suitable name

[mixinmax]

Some people have said they don't think naming the oath after Turing is representative enough. Does anyone have any other suggestions?

[jackmaney]

Some may find this a bit off putting, but how about the Stallman Oath?

[mixinmax]

I was thinking about Stallman too, but there's a lot of people who associate him with "radical" software freedom (he doesn't use anything that isn't open source -- even hardware).

Another name that came to mind was Phil Zimmermann

[deathwish]

My first thought was not of Turing himself, but rather of the UTM (Universal Turing Machine). In that context, it makes absolute sense, far more so in my opinion then naming it after an individual.

[gvx]

Maybe change it to "Hackers' Oath" or something similar? In the HN thread, scj raised their concern about naming the oath after someone who wasn't involved in its creation, and I agree.

[mixinmax]

@gvx Yeah he made a good point. The term "hacker" might carry some negative connotation with some people though. I like it though, has a nice ring to it too.

[gvx]

Alternatively, "Programmers' Oath" or "Software Engineers' Oath", but I prefer "Hackers' Oath" myself. I'd say that only people who wouldn't have to take the oath would have such negative connotations, because we all know things like Hacker News.

[bhaugen]

WTF is wrong with Turing?

[bhaugen]

And WTF is wrong with negative connotations? Who are you afraid of offending?

[TomFromThePool]

Hacker's Oath is better than the Turing Oath imo but for those of us who develop software as a career, I'll have a hard time explaining that name to people who associate anything with the word 'hacker' in it to criminals.

[mixinmax]

@TomFromThePool yeah that's basically how I feel about it. Although it could work.

[supersam654]

I would just like to put the Mackie Oath on the table. I know it is extremely self-serving for @maxmackie to do it himself, but all of these other oaths that people reference (Hypocratic, King so-and-so, etc) were named after the person who created it. Why should this one be named differently?

[mixinmax]

Haha, while I appreciate the suggestion @supersam654, I don't think I'd be comfortable putting my name on an oath like this. In fact, I think the fact that its an open-source oath (thus, bound to change over time), it would be unfair for me to "take credit" like that. Cheers though :)

[supersam654]

If the original creator's name is out of the question, then I would vote for something like Source Oath or Code Oath. While Hacker Oath really does sound better, most people think of hacker in a very derogatory way.

[Miguel-Alonso]

I don't know what's wrong with Turing's or Hacker's code, but how about Von Neumann?

[makomi]

While I also like "Hackers' Oath", I agree that it would make talking with the public about its actual purpose unnecessarily difficult.

I prefer "Programmers' Oath" over "Software Engineers' Oath":
a) It is shorter and therefore probably easier to remember.
b) It includes everybody that writes code, instead of (seemingly) focusing on professional software developers.

Did anybody of you talk to friends/ colleagues about this concept? How did they respond?

[supersam654]

It's been a while but I'm glad some people are still looking at this.

I'm not a huge fan of "Programmers' Oath" because I think "programmer" has a menial connotation to some people. How does "Software Developers' Oath" or just "Developers' Oath" sound?

[makomi]

"Software Developers' Oath" sounds good to me. Just "Developers' Oath" is nice and short, but might be too ambiguous outside of the information technology context. Incidentally there already is a Programmers' Oath focusing on software quality.