Introducing Our New Name

[Minetest]

It's finally time. After years of deliberation, Minetest is finally ready to adopt a new identity and prove it has moved beyond its original purpose. We can finally move past the "mining" and the "testing" and focus on making this platform the best it can be.

https://blog.minetest.net/2024/10/13/In ... -New-Name/

[Zughy]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADSFFDSZAFSDASDFGAIBUHSDGFHIBJLSDGILFUH LGFIDSOJNB YES

YES

YES

[grorp]

Oh My God Oh My God Oh My God Oh My God

I'm glad the new name is no secret anymore.

[InvertedSquirrel]

So I guess Minetest is... Finnished?

[Wuzzy]

M******t is dead, long live Luanti!

[AlphaWolfBoy]

I CANT WAIT FOR IT

[revangeliance]

IMHO I don't like this new name. Doesn't seem memorable, or clear on how to pronounce it. Also, why decide to have "Lua" in the name when that isn't a particularly defining feature?

[randomizedkt47]

I think this is an excellent change overall, but, for us non-Finish speakers, I would like it if you included an explanation on your site of how to pronounce "Luanti."

[rstcxk]

Glad something like "librebloco" wasnt chosen, overall i like the new name

I think this is an excellent change overall, but, for us non-Finish speakers, I would like it if you included an explanation on your site of how to pronounce "Luanti."

IDK. for me the name rolls off the tongue: lua-anti.
Not sure if thats how its supposed to be said in finnish, but you're not
saying "pizza" with an italian accent either

[ROllerozxa]

I love the new name.

[vulonkaaz]

am I really the only one who is unhappy about a name change ?

something about renaming twelve years of my life just rubs me the wrong way

[repetitivestrain]

am I really the only one who is unhappy about a name change ?

something about renaming twelve years of my life just rubs me the wrong way

Likewise, although not nearly as many as twelve years. Anyway, my experience with free software projects is that the confusion and inconveniences incident to a rebrand far outweigh its perceived value. Minetest is a well-regarded and mature sample of free software, and does not need to prove its mettle by symbolic actions. Moreover, the new name is almost the poster child of design by committee.

[FreeLikeGNU]

Congratulations on deciding the new name! I think it's great that it is distinctive and alludes to the Lua language in a pleasant way! Long live Luanti!

[DragonWrangler1]

Well. Good luck with renaming. Hopefully the rename doesn't backfire.

this engine has built it's popularity and brand on the Minetest name. Let's hope the entirely different name affects everything in a positive way rather than a negative one.

[Nininik]

WHAT ABOUT #MINETEST ON YOUTUBE??? THE VIDEOS????

[rdococ]

how much would I have to pay to reverse this decision?

[fgaz]

“Luanti” is a wordplay on the Finnish word luonti (“creation”) and the programming language Minetest Luanti employs for games and mods, Lua.

A fitting name! Congratulations! 🎉

[Blockhead]

Aim high, dream big I say. "Minetest" doesn't exactly inspire confidence. Onwards with Luanti!

[v-rob]

Really excited about this new name! There was quite a bit of debate about a few candidates (and alas, my first pick didn't even make it to the final voting rounds), but in the end, I'm very happy with the name Luanti. The meaning feels very apt, and the name has a really good ring to it.

[InterPotato]

I like this name. Sounds good and doesn't sound like a MC ripoff anymore. It will take a while to get used to it tho...

When the game website and forums will be rebranded btw?

[cj_clippy]

I don't like it. I prefer something more like Luablock or Lunatuna or Luaworld or Luaterra or Luavoxel

But I guess it's better than Minetest.

Change is hard.

[Linuxdirk]

• When will this be "active"?
• When will this be reflected in code? (I understand using core instead of minetest, but will there be luanti, too?)
• When will this be reflected in branding (UI, logos, icons, packages, etc.)
• Did you reach out to the luanti.net owners for buying the domain?
• What is the suggested short name (Minetest -> MT, Luanti -> ??)

[TenPlus1]

Is it horrible to say that I liked the plain and simple name of Minetest ?

[hlqkj]

TL;DR:
- Was a name change needed? No.
- Is the new name anything more appealing than Minetest? No.

Spoiler

Vas a rebrand needed?

In my opinion, not at all.

It has never been a real issue that someone, especially those new to a piece of software, asks if it is a clone of something else, especially when you talk about stuff as famous as Minecraft, and given that Minetest just looked(looks?) like it - not only by its name.

Then I’ve heard supporters calling the “we need more players/no one finds out about Minetest because of its name” argument. I say this here again: given it's not paid software, nor it shows ads, or monetize otherwise, why do we actually *need* more?

People replying to that like “I developed a mod but almost no one is using it” or “No one would spend their time and efforts in developing something that doesn’t have users”. So, first of all, the whole community we are now is considered “doesn’t have users”? And further, does it all boil down to a lack of self-accomplishment of developers, then? If this stands, then the rebrand could be justified. It is in my opinion a nonargument though: Minetest has a fair user base among players, modders, coredevs and server owners to not be considered a dead, or even dying FOSS project.

In addition to that - but this is a personal opinion - as an (ex, sigh!) server co-owner and, later on, owner it was never a problem to me to pay real money - not to speak about the time, which isn't something valuable just for core/mod devs - I/we dedicated to our servers for small communities of good players and people, rather than having to deal with the hordes of trolls and alike that is typical of Minec***t and other games having the “larger user base” you’re advocating for. I am sure some other admins would argue the same.

Other issues that would matter more than a lavish rebrand

But granted that we needed more players, why a name change, anyway? To whiners complaining that users were not staying in Minetest due to its name: do you really think that an engine with the feature and performance limitations it had until just months ago played no role in not being able to attract users from other games that are actively maintained by big techs?

Like, refusing to leave the 16-bit era because "Minetest always wanted and still wants to maintain compatibility with low-end hardware" (just a reminiscence of when we talked about the content ID, to say one). Or not having a content DB for kids to do actual things rather than be forced to play MTG on their mobile devices, once they installed this thing called “Minetest”. Or having such poor quality mods, like a mapgen one I came across years ago that, once installed, would ruin a world by placing blocks that crash the server on load -- me and my co-owner spent hours dealing with such issues because such poor quality mods were advertised indiscriminately through the official channels, even before the content db was a thing. I honestly don't think an average player should be expected to deal, or even be able to, with what we had to, if we want them to like, stay, and popularize Minetest.

Or, I'll say it again and again, not having an official iOS client (Apple's market share is about 50% on tablets! https://gs.statcounter.com/vendor-marke ... /worldwide) also didn’t matter in having tons of players who, at best, ended up in the jaws of a well-known fork that (rightfully, after all) advertises its own servers/server list/client? To be honest, I’ve had to explain way more times to players I've met in servers, that they weren’t playing MultiC**ft but Minetest, than having to explain to them that Minetest isn't a clone of something else. The most popular answer was like: “There is no such Minetest thing in the app store - this is MultiC**ft and you’re wrong”.

All of the above are issues that have had way more impact on users' choices than the name itself, but were all downplayed when argued about.

Then, on the choice of the new name...

Really? A few observations, expressed ad absurdum, in the hope of getting to my point more directly.

• You claim that Minetest was targeting only dev/skilled users. Sure this is not true with a name that have its scripting language, Lua, in it.
• Luanti comes from Finnish luonti. Great, I like it! All Finnish people and we the community (but remember - we are targeting new users, those who didn't even consider Minetest enough to read its website, just because it was called Minetest) will get that it's a wordplay between "creation" and something else they may have never heard about - unless they are coders, but again we don't want to target coders, on the contrary!
• Instead, those who know Finnish and know what Lua is, will surely be given the immediate idea that they're looking at a Voxel game that employs Lua; in other words, the wordplay could and would never suggest a more superficial meaning, like this is "something to create in Lua" - wait what, this is a new Lua IDE?! In more other words, the new name didn't loose anything in terms of referencing what it actually is about.
• The new name also wants to make clear the game uses "Lua", but happens that to a few English readers, Luanti will sound like "Lua-anti". I'll let you figure out what this means. :-)

So, at best, and without intent to be disrespectful, your choice has been rushed and superficial at best. Luanti is meaningless, shallow, and just void. It could equally apply to Minetest, a ship tracker app, an enterprise software suite, a movie, ...

It carries nothing about what this software is all about, not (of course) the history behind it.

Final thoughts

«[...] free from the ghost of its past [...]». Ah, identity and historical memory... Such undervalued principles nowadays, uh!? I guess, the widespread lack of common sense would make it pointless to cite here what great thinkers said about where this lack of historical memory leads to. Sigh.

I've also been presented with the argument that games like R*blox have got their fame because they didn't have "test" in their names. True that. But it is also true, as someone else pointed out, that the cited case (valid as an example) also has "blox" in it, which does recall what the game is about. We had "Mine" to do that job, and the argument that "test" had a negative meaning in that it made Minetest perceived as a personal test project or a place to test our own mods is flawed and biased by those who actually used Minetest that way, for a still plausible perception by an average user could as well as be that it's a Voxel-like game (Mine) where one can be more creative (test) with their game mechanics.

In any case, even if it was called "MyPersonalMinec**ftCloneTestProject", this name had on its shoulders a decade of history, a well-formed and fair community and user base, and plenty of room for huge improvements without needing a rebrand, which could also be argued to be just smoke and mirrors enacted to avoid dealing with the real issues that affect Mintetest, and harness it against going anywhere quickly enough.

Those issues have been left there and made untouchable (until very recently, but only for some of them) by the same group of folks leading this community, which way too many times I saw being forced by them into wrong directions, either because of lack of a clear vision, or lack of a neutral standpoint, while seeing more and more people in dissent, often having a point, being mistreated, ignored or even silenced, to the point that so many great and relevant contributors silently quit Minetest. I think I've had enough of this.

The confusion and inconveniences incident to a rebrand far outweigh its perceived value. Minetest is a well-regarded and mature sample of free software, and does not need to prove its mettle by symbolic actions. Moreover, the new name is almost the poster child of design by committee.

To all of you who took their time to read until here, thank you kindly :-)

Edit, because I forgot to say this: there is nothing wrong with rebrands, but least they usually come with some turning point changes in the software that justify them.

Even when that happens, though, widely known/accepted products usually never completely drop their roots. See how many things like: "XYZ 2.0", "XYZ ][", et cetera happened in the past.

On the contrary, you even imposed this objectively massive revolution without of any meaningful update, and I didn't fully grasp from the blog post if this is promising something in the future (which may also never come) or if it is entirely referring to the past evolution. This action took place almost in concomitance with the release of 5.9.1 which, unless I'm mistaken, was all about bugfixes, reverts of broken new features introduced by 5.9.0, and minor improvements invisible to the average user.

This is just as ridiculous as it sounds, sorry.

[lag01]

Sad to hear that Minetest name is gone, it will always be nostalgic to me.
I hope our opensource project can recover and still bring joy to people after name change.