I'm sure I wasn't the only one surprised to wake up to what apparently appeared to be an April Fools joke on the VW-DEV mailing list this morning. The only problem was that it wasn't april and it wasn't a joke!

First, we are no longer using Pollock as the namespace. The new namespace is Panda. Why Panda? Pollock is only one project in a larger plan, and this winter, we named that the "Panda Plan." The Panda Plan covers all the new GUI projects: Pollock, Chagall, Corona, Peaches and Cheyenne. All of these will be developed in the Panda namespace. So, it simply stopped making sense to have a Pollock namespace when we start working on Chagall, etc. They all needed a common namespace, and Panda fits. - Sames

Instead of talking about Pollock, from now on we'll be talking about Panda. So why did they choose this name? God knows.. even the email in VW-DEV doesn't have a good explanation.. so I've been hunting the web for some reasons why it might be called Panda instead of something sensible like 'UI Framework'.

It's entirely possible that Sam has become a satan worshipper and is in to heavy metal.

It could just be an excuse for Vassili to turn up at Smalltalk Solutions in his new plush panda outfit.

Or perhaps the Pollock team was getting clucky.

Of course we don't even know if it's a red panda or a regular panda.

May be they assumed that because Panda's are from China, the new framework will therefore have great chi and kung fu skills.

Or perhaps they were more after the Panda's mythical magical skills

But one thing is for sure,.. having to move things from the Pollock namespace to the Panda namespace and load in to a fresh clean image is a pain in the butt!