Free software people I am begging you to stop naming your software

🦝 So you've made a great program that pisses all over the paid alternatives, great, now for the love of god please delegate the naming of that software to someone Normal so you don't end up calling it something like Kalculator

The biggest hurdle towards Jabber adoption is people calling it XMPP

Like, saying to your mate down the pub "Oh you should get on Jabber" versus "You should get on ecks em pee pee"

One of these words sounds like a thing for talking about whatever with your mates, the other sounds like a thing for bollocking around with config files so you can talk to other people who bollock around with config files about bollocking around with config files

Before you commit to a name for your free software you should at least once say it aloud in a public place

🐰 *fiddling with phone* ugh, what did he say it was called, exemplary pee? oh ffs now I gotta confirm my age again...

🐧 Finally, my new search software is finished
🐧 Twice as fast and user friendly as the corpo shit, but free and empowering and only contains useful information
🐧 This is going to change the world
🐧 I call it Andrew's New Userfriendly Search

🐰 I'm forking ANUS because of the godawful name
🐰 My new project is called Pete's (fork of) Andrew's Interesting New User (friendly) Search

🐹 Honestly I think the name should be neutral while representing the underlying technology, which is why my fork is called hhgxyxynszzyr

🐹 it stands for "hhgxyxynszzyr ain't painus"

🐹 It's a bit of a niche name I know but look at Facebook, they had a crap name and millions of marketing dollars and succeeded anyway and all I have to deal with is a crap name

🐹 hhgxyxynszzyr, trips right off the tongue

🐧 As we all know, early intervention is important. Schools are overwhelmingly teaching children to use proprietary software, which in addition to being against the spirit of liberation in computing, can be considered basically equivalent to a competition-stifling government handout to already-rich corporations, ensuring their customer base into the next generation.

🐧 Unfortunately I myself have been banned from the premises but if anybody else wants to bring up ANUS to their local school board at the next meeting,

This isn't as much of a problem with other endeavours as it is with computer endeavours

Like in the pub you might overhear

🐴 You thought of a better name for your handyman business yet
🦊 Well, you didn't like Mister Fingers so,
🐴 Aye I didn't
🦊 It suggested DEXTEROUS and NIMBLE
🐴 No it didn't
🦊 Alright so I had a think, thought "Age, continuity, experience, competence, reassurance,"
🐴 Good, so...
🦊 Daddy Fingers
🐴 No
🦊 ...BIG Daddy Fingers
🐴 No,
🦊 Fat Daddy Slickfingers

But with computers it's just you, alone and naked at 2am, just you and the rubber duck you're holding up like Hamlet with poor Yorick's skull and asking

🐺 Should I name my calculator app Fat Daddy Slickfingers
🦆 *no response*
🐺 ...do you have any *objection* to my naming this app Fat Daddy Slickfingers
🦆 ...
🐺 Then it's settled

There's nobody there to tell you no, just the rubber duck and he can't talk, only weep, weep for daddy fingers

Programmer Art: crude, crappy temporary graphics that you put in a game while you figure out if the mechanics are fun enough to bother finishing it and sorting out a proper artist before release

Programmer Naming: a crude, crappy temporary name that you keep forever and ever amen, twenty years later the top question on your FAQ page is NO, we will NOT change the name, in fact we consider that it is YOU SIR who art being CRINGE,

Now obviously if you write software that you want to change the world, if you want it to be liberating and transformative and affirming and empowering, then you want LOTS of people to be liberated and transformed and affirmed and empowered, so you should name your software something that's ideally inspiring but at the very least not horrifically off-putting

But if you want to make a calculator app called Fat Daddy Slickfingers for a laugh then absolutely go for it lol

Note, @buttplugio is obviously exempt from this whooooole critique

🐴
🦊
🐺
🦆
🐹
🐧
🐴...has he gone
🦊👀
🐹...
🐧...I think so?
🦆 People keep boosting the start of the thread though
🐺 Ugh, hmm, yeah, that's just gonna remind him of it
🐧 Look it's been over a month, I think it's safe to -
🦝 *kicking the door open* FUCKING KNOW WHAT ELSE, THE THING THAT KILLED RSS WAS IT BEING CALLED RSS
🐹 shit run
🦝 THE ONLY TIME NORMAL PEOPLE LIKED IT WAS WHEN IT WAS CALLED GOOGLE READER

Me: 🦝 ffs if you want to get anywhere at all you've got to listen to how people talk and accommodate them

Jabber:

🐧 guys, please, discord is just irc but it's two hundred megabytes and begs for money

🦝 AYE ARSEY, aye arsey you say, you reckon I'm gonna put an app on my computer called aye arsey and try and get all my friends to use it,