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Comment by ggm | Hacker News Reader

I am sure I am not alone in finding the lexical structure of the "windows subsystem for... " very unfortunate. Windows is the dom0 and the android or linux is the domU instance. Kinda.

It's windows hosted Android. or Android as a subsystem hosted on windows. Android running on Windows. But no, it has to be "for"

But I bet they workshopped it for hours in the marketing department and decided Windows had to come "first"

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The reason it's named that way is because of Google's trademark on Android. Per Rich Turner @ Microsoft:

"As I mentioned earlier in the thread, it's not about positioning of words, it's about the legalities of trademark usage; we cannot lead a product name with a term trademarked by someone else."

Source: https://twitter.com/richturn_ms/status/1245742145119510529

This keeps coming up and I keep saying that, if the issue is the leading term, they could've just called it the Windows Android Subsystem. (I suspect the real issue is that "for" makes it clearer this is a third-party thing, but nobody ever mentions that.)

I believe Android branding guidelines explicitly only allow the use of it by third parties in the form of "for Android".

Android branding guidelines are very unlikely to matter at this point, given that it's descriptive use (not forbidden by trademark law in the first place) anyways...

This is Microsoft using Google branding. That isn't a risk worth taking, even if more Android access benefits Google

I don't think that's what descriptive fair use means.

> Descriptive Fair Use: Found at 15 U.S.C. § 1115(b)(4), the descriptive fair use defense protects your ability to use ordinary words to describe your own goods or services, even if those words happen to be part of someone's trademark.

https://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/using-trademarks-others

Since the Windows Subsystem for Android actually runs Android, "Windows Subsystem for Android" is a product name and not just a description, and "Android" isn't a generic descriptive term in this context, it seems to me that Microsoft is using Google's Android trademark in a way that isn't protected as fair use.

Right, I should have said "nominative" rather than "descriptive", at least as far as US law is concerned. It's directly below "descriptive" in your link.

Really I wasn't trying to name the exact defence but gesture at the principal that trade marks prevent competitors from using names that might confuse customers, but they don't prevent competitors (or anyone else) from talking about the product. It was just a coincidence that I used a word that happened to also be the name of a specific kind of fair use.

Does Linux have the same branding guidelines? Because this started before Android.

That's actually sort of false! WSL was originally designed for Android, to enable Android apps on Windows Mobile phones. (I have a Lumia which has a test build of this from back in the day.)

I'm unsure when the branding decision was made, but the possibility of again involving Android support was probably considered.

Amazing! Thanks.

I am quite sure this has not much to do with Android, given that this, including the naming scheme, traces back to 1999 with "Windows Services for UNIX".

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Services_for_UNIX

Funnily enough it lacks "subsystem" but its ancestor was in 1993 "Microsoft POSIX subsystem".

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_POSIX_subsystem

Here is a cite confirming that statement[0]

[0] https://stuff.mit.edu/afs/sipb/project/android/docs/distribu...

They should say "for Android apps". Boom. Makes more sense. I'm sure there are other phrasing tweaks that would also work.

But it's just like Microsoft to blindly settle on a name that doesn't make sense, based on advice from legal, and not probe it a bit more, or play with it to make more sense while still fitting the guidelines of legal advice, and to cite the legal guidance as the reason it has to be mediocre and cannot change. (Source: I once worked for MS.)

Edit: to be clear, I'm also reacting to the "windows subsystem for Linux", which they used the same justification for.

Someone at Microsoft must have considered "Windows Can Now Run Android/Linux/Mac". Wonder why they didn't take that or another route.

Windows Can Run <> or WCRX would actually be a killer name.

Indeed.

That is very terse and puts "Windows Android" directly next to each other which isn't that clear and could be trademark infringement

it's a subsystem, of Windows, for Android.

Windows Subsystem for Android.

it's not hard.

No that’s a very dubious take.

It's a continuation of their Windows Services for Unix naming scheme.

This.

Until and through Windows 2000, Windows NT had subsystems for various platforms such as Windows Subsystem for POSIX and Windows Subsystem for OS/2. The Win32 environment is also a Windows Subsystem: Windows Subsystem for Win32.

Most if not all of the subsystems were removed from Windows XP onwards, except for Win32, due to obsolescence but the architecture and scheme came back in Windows 10 with Windows Subsystem for Linux and in Windows 11 with Windows Subsystem for Android.

As an aside, WinRT is a subset of Win32 and is not its own subsystem.

“Windows bridge to Android” would have been a better choice

Windows API used by Android/Linux works great.

Well, I was wrong as to why. You can't go past a source like that.

I still don't like it. But thats just down to me, and linguistic taste.

They sure could have picked an acronym that wasn't also the winsock function prefix, though.

Which is... exactly about the positioning of words, if you can or cannot lead with a certain word.

Nevertheless, you are always allowed to use a trademark in a factual sense, as in "Windows can now run Android apps on the Desktop" (modulo some TM or R sign, I guess). That they gave this feature a marketing name at all is a marketing decision - it doesn't have to have a noun. Or it could use a cryptic, non-trademarked internal name like WOW64 does. Or you could go for "'nix subsystem" or "penguin subsystem" or "APK subsystem".

This is why I am convinced even if there we no legal reasons, they would call it "Windows Subsystem for Linux / Android". I think they want to psychologically distance the product from the Windows NT idea that you can have multiple types of applications on equal footing, instead of just "Apps" (see how they are muddling the names of Modern/WinUI/UWP/App SDK/... Apps). But in the end, no one can know and it is just interesting kremlinology...

As another perspective, your comment is the first time I read the terms "dom0" and "domU instance", and "Windows subsystem" is the only phrase in my vocabulary that uses the word "subsystem".

With that perspective, "Windows Subsystem for X" makes total sense in my mind. To me it means that Windows (as an operating system) has one (or more) Subsystems, and those subsystems are created for specific use cases, for example we have a Windows Subsystem for Linux, and another Windows Subsystem for Android, and they'll probably create more Subsystems in the future.

I'm sure it sounds wrong for people with your level of education and background, but to people like me it's actually very descriptive and straight forward.

A totally valid perspective. I am probably coming at this with prior-art in mind and you're coming at it (presumed, and no insult intended) from inside the MS ecosystem which is after all the core market. If the term makes sense for windows users, windows administrators it did it's job.

It's worth noting that subsystems are an old Windows concept dating back to the original Windows NT in 1993. The win32 API itself is a subsystem of the underlying NT system. And the WoW64 subsystem allows 32-bit Windows apps to run on 64-bit Windows. There used to be POSIX and OS/2 subsystems, as well.

I believe the "Windows Subsystem for x" nomenclature is a departure from the way MS previously described subsystems. That doesn't mean it is wrong, though. Just a bit inconsistent.

Not especially new terminology though, they used that 'Windows S... for <x>' framing for the original unix subsystem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Services_for_UNIX

Subsystems are pretty old Windows tech and it's cool to finally see the Android one come back. AFAIK they started with an Android one before ditching it to pivot to WSL. I think there may have been an OS/2 subsystem for a bit at one point as well?

Project Astoria to allow Android apps to run on Windows Phone. Though WSL2 is not a classic NT kernel subsystem in the way WSL1 was.

Microsoft is baffling bad at naming things. I sometimes think that they’re playing a game to see just how badly they can name their products before they start to lose money.

You’ve got to be quite the gamer to understand the hierarchy of XBOX consoles.

There have been like 3 throughout history, right? We are to the Xbox 36One?

Base, 360, One, and Series One!

And Series X

And Xbox One S

And the Xbox Series S!

Huge if true

still waiting on the Xbox SX and then the enhanced Xbox SEX

Base, 360 (360 S, 360 E), One (One S, One X), Series (Series S and Series X)

Calling it the "S Series" or "X Series" would make sense, but "Series" as the base name of the product line is just...I mean, what were they thinking? It makes absolutely zero sense.

Meanwhile Sony's over here with PS1, PS2, PS3, PS4, PS5, and all the sub-versions make perfect sense (base, slim, pro, etc).

>You’ve got to be quite the gamer to understand the hierarchy of XBOX consoles.

I have the feeling Microsoft intentionally sought to create this confusion so they can move the old stock as well. Example: Young Billy wants an Xbox for Christmas so clueless parents/grandparents go to Walmart and purchase something made by Microsoft with Xbox written on the box, preferably on sale and at a cheaper price.

There is a reason why it is named what it is: The Windows Subsystem for Android now runs Android 13 in beta https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34060390

I think the problem is that the name could be interpreted as a subsystem that runs on Android to provide a Windows API or services.

I had that issue with WSL; it sounds like it could be the name of an official WINE-like product from Microsoft. “For” is often used to specify the target.

Edge is probably the one that annoyed me the most

> decided Windows had to come "first"

I heard someone say it here at HN that the reason it's worded this way is to avoid copyright infringement issues if they were to lead the name with someone else's trademark.

>As I mentioned earlier in the thread, it's not about positioning of words, it's about the legalities of trademark usage; we cannot lead a product name with a term trademarked by someone else

Source: https://twitter.com/richturn_ms/status/1245742145119510529

Exactly the point. Were I describing the concept, I'd say 'It is a Linux subsystem for Windows', if I said 'a Windows subsystem for Linux', you'd think I meant WINE.

I hate the loss of clarity in our speech and I wonder what the cumulative effect will be.

I had the same difficulty making sense of, and internalizing, the naming.

What finally stuck for me is not to parse it as "(Windows subsystem) for ..."

but rather as "Windows' (subsystem for ...)".

Related rant: I don't like the "reverse-proxy" naming--it's not self-explanatory. It's only historical that client proxies came first and thus server-proxies are 'reverse' (other end). The proxy is a stand-in for a client or for a server, so client proxy or server proxy (or proxy-client or proxy-server). I've come to accept the historically arbitrary naming.

I read it more like "the (Windows subsytem) for ...", but the outcome is the same. Our language system, however, has a strong penchant for what's known as right attachment: constituents such as the prepositional phrase (in this case "for ...") are preferably attached below the preceding constituent, and that preference already takes effect at the preposition, so the decision is made before knowing the complete sentence. Because the sentence is ambiguous, you get stuck on the wrong interpretation.

Curiously enough, I have the same feeling about reverse proxy. Neither proxy reverses anything functional. A reverse proxy would be something that lets you talk to the proxied entity directly, a tunnel perhaps.

Without knowing what it actually is, the name gives me the assumption that I can start an Android instance through PowerShell, and it can do things in a kinda, but not quite native way

While I know what it is, it reads the opposite way for me - like, it's some sort of Windows running on Android

The Windows Subsystem for X is the thing that allows X to run on top of Windows.

If there was going to be a “Windows Hosted X”, it would be the thing that runs on top, but they mostly just call that X.

Isn't the WSA a layer between Windows and Android to map Android calls to the corresponding Windows calls?

"Windows running Android"?

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