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Comment by xerophyte12932 | Hacker News Reader

Am I the only one that read the title and thought this was Pacman the game? I am surprised they let you use the name for something else considering it's supposed to be highly copyright-protected.

Sidenote: I am having trouble finding the link to an explanation what this really is. any help?

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The game you're thinking of is 'Pac-Man' (hyphenated).

This is a package management tool for ArchLinux. Similar to 'yum' for RHEL. Or Debians 'apt-*', 'dpkg' tools.

It also work on Windows, it's what MSYS uses for package management, convenient to avoid having to install CYGIN or using virtualisation.

msys uses pacman? Is there another msys than the one at mingw.org[0] ? I believe you but I just can't find any reference to pacman there.

[0] http://www.mingw.org/wiki/msys

I googled 'msys pacman' and it seems that msys2 uses pacman: http://sourceforge.net/p/msys2/wiki/MSYS2%20installation/

He means MSYS2 https://msys2.github.io/

It's great, it has a wonderful collection of libs, sometimes it can feel a little bit too cutting edge, but after the stagnation of Mingw I'm not complaining about that.

It's open source software so it can (given enough time and motivation) be ported to whatever platform you wanted. Because of this I think there's a few other OSs / distro forks that also use pacman. But primarily, `pacman` is developed by ArchLinux maintainers for ArchLinux.

It is, for sure, a little bit confusing :) http://p.fu86.de/1454938855-32650.png

Not that confusing really - the two applications couldn't be more different in use.

"Pacman" is abbreviated from "package manager" while "Pac-Man" is derived from "Puck Man", named so because the yellow avatar looked like a hockey puck. (the reason for the name change is quite interesting too[1]).

While it's true that the ArchLinux devs do play on the name similarities (there's even an easter egg to turn the `pacman` progress bar into a little Pac-Man eating up ASCII pills[2]), I think most people who might confuse the two wouldn't be familiar with the package manager anyway. And those who are familiar with `pacman` are likely technical enough to tell the difference.

[1] Renamed because of worries that some US audiences might vandalise the Puck into Fuck.

[2] Put 'ILoveCandy' (without quotes) under the [options] in /etc/pacman.conf

Names aren't copyrighted, they're trademarked. And since:

a) Arch Linux isn't selling pacman. b) I don't believe Namco still own a registered trademark for Pacman. And they probably don't make enough money from it for them to win a lawsuit about it (trademarks require a reasonable commercial interest in order to be protected).

So there almost certainly isn't a legal issue. IANAL.

The trademark is also for 'Pac-Man' not 'pacman'.

That's why I can get away with selling my home-made "cocacola" without legal issues.

Bandai/Namco certainly do hold multiple registered trademarks on PAC-MAN, at least in Europe. They cover not just the video game side[1], but everything from kitchen appliances[2] to lotteries[3] and even beer[4].

[1] https://www.ipo.gov.uk/tmcase/Results/4/EU004977906

[2] https://www.ipo.gov.uk/tmcase/Results/4/EU000361600

[3] https://www.ipo.gov.uk/tmcase/Results/4/EU003574076

[4] https://www.ipo.gov.uk/tmcase/Results/4/EU008125031

Namco still own the trademark, they do ill-advised attempts to revive the franchise every few years. Arch Linux best defense here is that it's not in the same business, so there's no risk of confusion (trademarks aren't all-encompassing).

Namco is very involved with Pacman and still involved with arcade equipment based on it. Here's something my friends at Raw Thrills just introduced a little while ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koLvoCMHCrI

From what I've heard on the inside, Raw Thrills has been actively working on new Pacman games based on the original 1980 source code given to them by Namco.

TLDR: They definitely still own the trademark and they are still making money on it.

pacman is the package manager for archlinux: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/pacman

I thought the same. It didn't occur to me that this wasn't about the game..

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