On the other hand, Lightbend is so generic and bland, while TypeSafe, at least for those "in the know", has a nice technical ring to it.
I guess bland & non-threatening trumps meaningful in enterprisey software. Still, very disappointing, especially if it signals a lack of focus on Scala.
Meh, if you are into the academic PL community's fixation on "preventing bad", TypeSafe is a perfect name, but as soon as you step out of that bubble, it sounds just as bland and enterprisey as say...SalesForce or PeopleSoft.
Scala isn't just a safe language, heck, it is not even an especially type safe language. But Scala allows you to do more, not do the same things significantly type safer like say...Haskell, Rust, Ada, or Agda. The name "TypeSafe" sends confusing signals in that respect. Scala does increase expressiveness without sacrificing type safety, but doesn't really focusing on going beyond that. Correcting that misconception is reasonable, and Lightbend more aptly emphasizes this "do more good" aspect.
Lightbend is a generic name, but not particularly so. It doesn't have an enterprisey feeling to it, and even if it did, that wouldn't be a negative with its potential money-paying customers. As far as the "focus on Scala" go, I think Martin Odersky has already decided to focus on Scala while the company focuses on promoting the Scala ecosystem, which is also quite reasonable and should bear fruit.
I guess bland & non-threatening trumps meaningful in enterprisey software. Still, very disappointing, especially if it signals a lack of focus on Scala.