4 ms·

+1 This is a huge issue with open source software - everything seems to be named Libre- these days and I haven't found many Americans who can pronounce it...le

+1 This is a huge issue with open source software - everything seems to be named Libre- these days and I haven't found many Americans who can pronounce it...let alone people in China or India.

Tideflat 11y ago
There is a tendency to make names that are okay for print but hard to pronounce like X.org or XFCE.
- mjcohen 11y ago
  "ex dot org"; "ex ef see ee". At least by me.
  - hanniabu 11y ago
    I thought the first one was trying to be fancy and be pronounced 'zorg'
  - buster 11y ago
    "ex org" and "ex face" for me
- aptwebapps 11y ago
  IMO, NGINX has taken the blue ribbon from GNU for stupid free software name (I say this as someone who loves both). How many people here actually know that NGINX is supposed to be pronounced engine-X?
  - RobertKerans 11y ago
    I always just assumed it was like 'enjinks'; even the back end devs who deal with it.much more regularly than me call it that as well. The more you know. 'SQL' has that issue as well I suppose.
Doctor_Fegg 11y ago
More than that, Libre- is a very inward-facing name. It's not AwesomeOffice, FriendlyOffice or PowerfulOffice. It's "LibreOffice", something that simply doesn't make any sense to most English speakers. The implication is "we choose this as our adjective, because we care more about our ideology than the quality of your user experience". Ok, the ideology says that "because we build our software like this, you get a better user experience", and I have a lot of sympathy with that. But by the time you have to explain the name like this, you've lost the potential user's attention. (OTOH, I also suck at software naming so probably shouldn't preach.)
- hussong 11y ago
  Since it's not particularly awesome, friendly or powerful, it would be a bit of a stretch to name it in such a fashion IMHO. It is in fact free though, and I never wondered about the "libre" part, but then again, I'm from Europe...
- buovjaga 11y ago
  > The implication is "we choose this as our adjective, because we care more about our ideology than the quality of your user experience". So how does your implication theory explain the fact that TDF is currently hiring a UX mentor and having a tender to develop and incorporate usability metrics collection for LibreOffice? They didn't just rename the project for fun - Oracle held on to the OpenOffice trademark and the forkers had to think of something to replace it.

+1 This is a huge issue with open source software - everything seems to be named Libre- these days and I haven't found many Americans who can pronounce it...let alone people in China or India.

Tideflat 11y ago

There is a tendency to make names that are okay for print but hard to pronounce like X.org or XFCE.

mjcohen 11y ago
"ex dot org"; "ex ef see ee". At least by me.
- hanniabu 11y ago
  I thought the first one was trying to be fancy and be pronounced 'zorg'
- buster 11y ago
  "ex org" and "ex face" for me
aptwebapps 11y ago
IMO, NGINX has taken the blue ribbon from GNU for stupid free software name (I say this as someone who loves both). How many people here actually know that NGINX is supposed to be pronounced engine-X?
- RobertKerans 11y ago
  I always just assumed it was like 'enjinks'; even the back end devs who deal with it.much more regularly than me call it that as well. The more you know. 'SQL' has that issue as well I suppose.

Doctor_Fegg 11y ago

More than that, Libre- is a very inward-facing name. It's not AwesomeOffice, FriendlyOffice or PowerfulOffice. It's "LibreOffice", something that simply doesn't make any sense to most English speakers. The implication is "we choose this as our adjective, because we care more about our ideology than the quality of your user experience". Ok, the ideology says that "because we build our software like this, you get a better user experience", and I have a lot of sympathy with that. But by the time you have to explain the name like this, you've lost the potential user's attention. (OTOH, I also suck at software naming so probably shouldn't preach.)

hussong 11y ago
Since it's not particularly awesome, friendly or powerful, it would be a bit of a stretch to name it in such a fashion IMHO. It is in fact free though, and I never wondered about the "libre" part, but then again, I'm from Europe...
buovjaga 11y ago
> The implication is "we choose this as our adjective, because we care more about our ideology than the quality of your user experience". So how does your implication theory explain the fact that TDF is currently hiring a UX mentor and having a tender to develop and incorporate usability metrics collection for LibreOffice? They didn't just rename the project for fun - Oracle held on to the OpenOffice trademark and the forkers had to think of something to replace it.