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?

Comments

We don't care

[rastos1]

We don't care. We don't have to. We are Microsoft.

Given this is Microsoft...

[ChodaBoyUSA]

My money is on this being something sinister. Microsoft has a long history of this.

Re:Given this is Microsoft...

[SuricouRaven]

Personally I think Micosoft hit 'peak evil' in the 2000s. The company at that point was aggressive in fighting against not just specific open source software, but the movement as a whole. This is the era when Ballmer described open source software as 'cancer.'

One of the more aggressive things I saw from them back then was the "identified software" clause in the license for supporting Windows media technologies. It specified that any software developed under that license may not be published in source code form, as you might imagine, but it went a lot further than that - it forbade the developer from using any software with source code openly available during the development process of their software, or using libraries with published source. It even forbade them from allowing their software to be distributed on the same physical media - if you made your software open source, you couldn't even allow it to be shared on a PC magazine cover disc in case there was something open source on there. It also stated that, if your software supports windows media, it may save *only* in Windows media: Once a movie goes into WMV format, there was supposed to be no way out of it.

One notable piece of software ignored the license conditions by reverse-engineering the container format, thus never needing to look at the specification which was only available by agreeing to this super-restrictive licence. Virtualdub. In response threatened legal action, which is why versions after 1.3C dropped support for opening ASF files and instead display a message explaining why.

They haven't done anything quite so blatantly aggressive in more recent years, but there are more subtle actions they still take. They lag behind in support for open standards - they were the last major browser developer to support transparent PNG, and still do not support APNG, and were the last browser developer to support VP8, Vorbis or Opus codecs - doubtless because these are direct competitors to Microsoft's favoured h264 and AAC codecs, both of which feature Microsoft in the patent pool.

Windows likewise is very restrictive in filesystem support - when it became apparent that the FAT32 format was ageing, Microsoft invented their own replacement, ExFAT, rather than support any of the several viable open-standard options. A filesystem upon which Microsoft holds patents, and the licence for which specifically forbids the publishing of source code. As a result of this, most Linux distributions are unable to read ExFAT formatted media - which means many USB sticks and SD cards - out of the box, and require the installation of dubiously-legal FUSE modules developed by people in countries where software patents are not recognised.

So while microsoft may not be as aggressive as they once were, I think it's safe to say that there are still many at the company who regard open source software as a threat that must be suppressed.

Re:Just acronym collision

[KiloByte]

"Not malicious", uh huh sure sure. Like Office Open XML when their direct competitor had Open Office XML.

Really really easy solution

[goombah99]

Change the name of Git's GVFS to Microsoft Virtual File System. See how long it takes for microsoft to change their tune. Then after they sue change the name to MSVFS. Where MS stands for Mother Suckers. Let the lawyers make the argument that Mother Suckers could be confused with MicroSoft.

Re:Really really easy solution

[93 Escort Wagon]

No, change it to Not Their File System.

Turnabout is fair play

[Anonymous Coward]

Announcing the GNOME NTfs filesystem: a high performance filesystem tailored for our new HYPer-V virtual container system, part of the new GNOME EX-change server platform.

MS sucks at naming things

[TekBoy]

Microsoft sucks at naming things. That's nothing new. These are the people that named their Java like framework ".Net" and named their sql server "Sql Server" making both a pain in the rear to do Internet searches on due to overly generic naming. We're just lucky they didn't name it GIFS.

Re:MS sucks at naming things

[Chris Mattern]

My favorite is still the infamous "Critical Update Notification Tool". Yes, they really released that.

Re:Just acronym collision

[lhunath]

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.