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Comment by jordanmoore_ | Hacker News Reader

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jordanmoore_

Gut reaction: Trojita isn't far off Trojan. I think people will have issues with that.

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I really hope people are not that close-minded, seriously...

By the way, from the wiki:

It's a cool name. What does it mean and how should I pronounce that word?

It's a Czech word which means "triple". The meaning is an inside joke related to a Czech pseudo-word, blésmrt. The whole story is inspired by Mutt's "all e-mail clients suck, this one just sucks less". The real pronounciation is rather hard for English speakers, so you can stick with a Spanish-like style.

Trojan also came to my mind at first thought because I have no other basis of the meaning of Trojita in English.

For me it's not about being close-minded, it's about the mind making quick decisions whether to engage or discard information.

Maybe it's because English is not my first language then. Still, you could have thought of IMAP-Powered condoms, that would have been funnier.

The 'Trojan' brand is primarily an American brand, so a lot of people aren't getting this.

When I saw the title, I thought it would be about a mail client that was somehow insidiously stealing your passwords.

Just another data point.

In Italian, "troia" means "whore", as well as the ancient city of Troy. Italian uses "ina" or "etta" as diminuitive suffixes, rather than the Spanish "ita", but still... I don't know that I'd want to be discussing it at work.

And we (italian) speak about the city of Troy without any shame because has a completely different meaning, so I don't see any problem in speaking about Trojita at work (which is also a nonexistent word in italian, opposite to the translation of Troy)

I live in Penistone. After a few giggles when I first moved there, you just stop noticing after a while.

I don't think it's about being close-minded, if you name a word suggestively close to something negative then you'll get negative associations with it. It's not rocket science.

Imagine a condom brand named "Leakys".

(Obligatory) Those who make a thing (not to mention give it away for free, in this case) can name it whatever they like. If there are people out there not using the GIMP because of its awesome name, well... That's their loss, but long live self-expression.

The idea isn't that people can't name things as they like. It's that they should consider the name if they want wide adoption (See RMS and $POSIXLY_CORRECT-vs-$POSIX_ME_HARDER).

Perhaps you might clarify your reference. Based on my understanding, RMS is describing the difficulty addressing machine-compatibility between different implementations of a supposedly-similar interface/protocol/specification. The name of a wholly new application doesn't have similar obligations. A person might think about the implications of the name socially, but is still ultimately free to ignore them. Even RMS notes "I would guess that very very few users set POSIXLY_CORRECT [vy8vWJlco: the more socially-congenial name]. If users don't like these decisions (or any others we make), they are free to change them." ( http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_int... ) It's open source, so someone could fork it with a new identity.

Maybe POSIXLY_CORRECT was probably a bad example as it's not necessarily a heavily used option. On the other hand, no one is crying 'censorship' (or stifling of artistic creativity) because RMS didn't name it POSIX_ME_HARDER.

  | It's open source, so someone could fork it
  | with a new identity.

We've seen this happen before (e.g. OpenOffice/LibreOffice, Jenkins/Hudson). Just because it's an option doesn't mean that people can't complain about the decisions that cause these splits.

And yet, noone's forked the GIMP just to change it's name. ("A rose by any other name would smell as sweet"...) Those other examples of forks you gave are also examples where a quorum of the major contributors chose a different path; whereas, in this case, the major contributors chose the name.

Saw it, only clicked to read article to see what new trojan I might have to be prepared for.

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