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Microsoft Sticks With Controversial 'GVFS' Name Despite Backlash (medium.com)
New submitter DuroSoft writes: It has been over a year since Microsoft unveiled its open source GVFS (Git Virtual File System) project, designed to make terabyte-scale repositories, like it's own 270GB Windows source code, manageable using Git. The problem is that the GNOME project already has a virtual file system by the name of GVfs that has been in use for years, with hundreds of threads on Stack Overflow, etc. Yet Microsoft's GVFS has already surpassed GVfs in Google and is causing confusion. To make matters worse, Microsoft has officially refused to change the name, despite a large public backlash on GitHub and social media, and despite pull requests providing scripts that can change the name to anything Microsoft wants. Is this mere arrogance on Microsoft's part, laziness to do a quick Google search before using a name, or is it something more sinister?
We don't care. We don't have to. We are Microsoft.
"Not malicious", uh huh sure sure. Like Office Open XML when their direct competitor had Open Office XML.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
You trivialize name disputes. If the significance of a name conflict were as shoulder-shrug as you aim to convey there would be absolutely no existential reason for or value in trademarks.
The reality however is a little more complicated and requires us to admit that names are significant and we should not just shrug them off.
``OK, so ten out of ten for style, but minus several million for good thinking, yeah?''
No, change it to Not Their File System.
#DeleteChrome
They instead trademarked Windows and started threatening to sue anyone else who used the term.
Well of course. This is nothing unique or specific to acronyms. The same applies to any kind of situation where you would choose to name a certain thing. Names are overloaded all the time. That is obvious and expected.
The topic here is not, "oh, how odd, two separate objects were referred to by the same token, I never saw that happen before, it is therefore newsworthy!". The topic here is that the fact that two objects are being referred to by the same name in a shared space (the tech world) where one has a strong and settled history and another is a disruptive newcomer is creating a situation whereby honest people are getting confused and mislead, and whereby information is getting lost and distorted.
The topic here is that names have value in the fact that they aid people in communicating and collaborating on something, and when people intentionally or otherwise disrupt the value of one name by overloading it with their own, showing an utter disregard of the lives and frustrations of the people whom they are fucking with, this is something that we should raise awareness on and discourage as much as possible in the interest of common good.
This is the legal framework and justification for trademarks. Obviously not every open-source initiative has taken out trademarks on their every collaborative project and every term used within those projects, but just because a legal trademark was not purchased does not mean that the moral reasons for which those trademarks exist are somehow irrelevant for this project.
Please be a little more mindful before you speak. Your utter disregard for morality by turning a blind eye on people and their lives by simply pretending that the obvious technicalities that we are all fully aware of are the only thing that exists in the world.
``OK, so ten out of ten for style, but minus several million for good thinking, yeah?''
Hard to see that doing a damned thing unless somehow GNOME's "NTFS" became immensely popular for some reason. The problem here is a dominant organization destroying support for a smaller organization's product by giving it the same name.
Now, if Google (1) created "NTFS" for Android/ChromeOS, and (2) deliberately modified their search engine (which may or may not have legal issues associated with it) to favor search results referring to the Android/ChromeOS version, then that might work. But GNOME? GNOME doesn't have the market power. That's the problem. GNOME calling something a name already in use by Microsoft would punish GNOME users, not Microsoft.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.