Acronym wanted!
Yesterday I had an interesting conversation about the meaning(lessness) of several software project names, such as the well-known PHP, Wine and others, but also smaller projects like OSUOSL’s RAIV.
As it turns out, every fancy project name is also an acronym. That’s something that got really popular among Open Source projects, and even though some people argue it is kind of lame, it is nice to see how many more or less meaningful project names and acronyms have come up over time.
A very nice one I learned about yesterday is: The TWAIN Scanner API, heavily used on Mac and Windows systems to connect image scanning devices to the operating system, is, when unraveled, simply:
Technology without an interesting name
But there are also projects that are missing a “useful” solution for their “acronymic” name: I recently learned about the project called Oink. Oink is a collection of C++ static analysis tools and comes with a pretty awesome, still not-yet-”acronymed” name.
Anyone want to give it a shot?
December 14th, 2006 at 8:23 am
OINK Is Not Klocwork! (Klocwork is another static analysis system)
November 27th, 2006 at 8:01 pm
Oink…
“Only I No Kode”
..or in my case…
“HgaK”
haven’t got a clue…
November 19th, 2006 at 7:00 pm
i always understood ‘LOTUS’ was
‘Lots Of Trouble Usually Serious’
November 18th, 2006 at 3:51 pm
Oink is Irrelevant, No Kindding!
November 18th, 2006 at 3:45 pm
Knio Niether Is Oink.
November 18th, 2006 at 2:14 pm
dvd always was meant to be “digital versatile disc”. was explained that way since the first drafts of the specifications. “digital video disc” is wrong.
the twain story seems to be untrue, too:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWAIN#Some_background_on_the_name
but as always: when an urban myth is widespread enough, it will become common knowledge.
November 17th, 2006 at 3:50 pm
At work we are part of a ‘fast action response team’ so we created the motto ‘we always follow through’.
Not exactly technology related but anyone who has ever owned a lotus car can relate to ‘lots of trouble and unscheduled servicing’, ok so there’s an extra ‘a’ in there….
November 17th, 2006 at 9:49 am
I heard that DVD didn’t really ever mean anything, but the world decided to later give it a backronym, since some people can’t live with just letters. Digital Versatile Disc and Digital Video Disc are the two that became most popular.