GTA03 or 3d7k?

[Steve Mosher]

Ah good question. I'll explain below. One of the final twists
in the GTA03 history

Timo Juhani Lindfors wrote:
> Steve Mosher <steve at openmoko.com> writes:
>> Come on in the waters fine.
> 
> Can't resist to ask, what's the deal with the name? ;-)
> 
> In Mar 2 all references to "GTA03" were changed[1] to "3d7k" in the
> andy-tracking linux branch. Is it now called GTA03 again?

  One of the minor issues that Wolfgang and I had with the naming
  paradigm of of products was the use of what I call "secret decoder 
rings" GTA stood for: Gsm;Ti;Agps.  Ha, and everybody who reads
  wikipedia thinks it stood for Gnu Telephony Appliance. That's one
of the issues I have with secret decoder ring project names. The other 
problem is this: numbered sequences. 01,02,03,04. What does that imply?
for some it just implies "gets better" but it could also mean "the one
following" For example, we had a roadmap with a GTA05 on it, but the 
GTA05 was a very simple phone, 05 meant---comes after 04 on the 
schedule. You follow? Now GTA03 was redined in such a way that it
didnt have wifi and didnt have GPS, and it had a different GSM chip.
So, what do we call it: GS03? GS01? secret decoder rings always lead
to these kind of problems. So we took a decision to create the following
Naming structure:

1. Specific Hardware device: Non representational sequence of alpha
    numerics.
2. Project Name: Internal Code name, like "everest"
3. Marketing name.

So, Andy went out and picked out a licence plate 3d7k to stand for
the specific hardware design he was targeting. It's basically the
name you would see in drivers.

So one project, say "everest" could use 3d7k and add lets say
and image from SHR and that project would ship with a marketing
name of "FreeRunner SHR"  for example. And another project,
Lets say "diablo" could use 3d7k and add a android image, and
ship as the product "FreeRunner Android" I use these ONLY
as examples.. the basic point was you had a naming structure
that allowed multiple projects (HW+SW) to use the same hardware.
It was merely a housecleaning exercise that allowed Wolfgang
and I to decouple the hardware naming ( which the drivers needed)
from the project naming ( which engineering and marketing needed)
and allowed me to do product naming ( FreeRunner) without forcing
a rewrite of drivers at the last minute. clear as mud I suppose.

> 
> 
> 
> [1] the commit message:
> 
> commit 81da012eb0fff1bc5f129202d0c12b1d63a7761a
> Author: Andy Green <andy at openmoko.com>
> Date:   Mon Mar 2 18:51:56 2009 +0000
> 
>     rename-gta03-dropped-3d7k-new-moniker.patch
> 
>     GTA03 project is dropped, long live Openmoko 3d7k project.
> 
>     This name was literally generated by picking the first character
>     of the next four car license plates to pass by I am told.
> 
>     The should catch all GTA03 instances except the machine name.
> 
>     I registered a new machine name since the 3d7k is different
>     from original GTA03, the machine number is 2120.
> 
>     Signed-off-by: Andy Green <andy at openmoko.com>
>