RFD #2 - Renaming DevPod

[skevetter]

Following up on RFD #1 - DevPod Branding and Roadmap, I want to share an update on where things are headed.

Background

When I started this fork, it was a personal project to keep devcontainer tooling alive after loft-sh shifted their focus to vcluster. Since then, this fork has grown into something I did not anticipate: an actively maintained product with real community engagement, merged contributions, and a direction of its own. The work that has gone into this fork is significant and has since added new features, bug fixes, dependency updates, CI improvements, representing a measurable divergence from the original DevPod.

Despite all of this, the "DevPod" name continues to point developers toward the upstream repository, which has seen no recent activity or public statements about its future. This creates confusion and limits the visibility of the work happening here.

What is Changing

I have decided that I will be rebranding this project under a different name to get better visibility on this fork. There are still some outstanding work that will happen prior to this shift, but I wanted to share that this change is coming. I fully expect there to be some transition pains during this shift: some links will break, etc.

If you have ideas for the new name, I am open to hear them.

I will share more details as the transition plan solidifies. Thank you to everyone who has contributed, filed issues, or simply used this tool. This project exists because of this community, and I want the next chapter to reflect that.

[nick-walt]

Devpod Community Edition (Devpod CE)?

Not a very original name and normally used to define a free version produced by the developers of a commercial product. But it may be a way to preserve the name which is excellent and already widely recognised.

If the company ever officially drops the product the CE could be dropped.

[HestHub]

Just adding my two cents:
Devpod is a good name, short, concise and descriptive. But I understand the need to re-brand. But how far from the original name should the project move?

Looking at two other forks with rebranding it could go the route of Redis to Valkey, completely different name with little to no relation to the original. Alternatively something like Terraform -> OpenTofu, which started as OpenTF, keeping a stronger connection to the OG project.

If it should keep some part of the original name, which is stronger: dev or pod?
Pod -> NeoPod, CodePod, NextPod, OpenPod...
Dev -> DevPort, DevForge, DevVessel, DevCapsule...
Or skimming through a thesaurus for other synonyms :)

A brand new name might be stronger in the long run, but can't think of any off the top of my head.
So no decisive answers from me, but might be good if we can decide which direction a rebrand should take before we begin to spitball some ideas :)

[skevetter]

Closing as the rebrand has been decided. More information to follow.