The name game, no. 14.

We now have a wiki page open for suggestions for the Fedora 14 name.

Every release, we provide our community a chance to give name suggestions for the next one. Each consecutive name must be linked to the previous one, but that link must be different from the link that connected the previous releases. So for example, Fedora 12, Constantine, and Fedora 13, Goddard, are linked by being names of rocket scientists. Fedora 13 and Fedora 14 must share a different link.

You need to be able to truthfully complete the sentence, “Goddard is a ______, and so is <my suggestion>.”

There are links we don’t use because they’re too mundane or vague (like “is a place” or “is a word”), so those kinds of links will be discarded. Also, we simply can’t use names of companies or brand names for products, especially not if they’re related to IT, software, computers, or technology.

The wiki page has some helpful guidelines that will help your name suggestion pass muster. After the names are collected, the Board and Legal provide input for a short list, and that list comes before the community for a vote. We’ll announce the winning name around May 11, approximately a week before the release of Fedora 13.

We could use help in winnowing down that wiki list. If you’d like to help run some simple tests to ensure we have a clean ballot for our community, you can either respond on the advisory-board list, or let me know here or by email.