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Comment by pdenya | Hacker News Reader

This is a devops tool named Terraform, nothing to do with terraforming.

What? Facebook is not an actual book?

You have no clue how shocked I was to find that Paul Graham's YCombinator wasn't a math formula.

I funded the Reading Rainbow Kickstarter. I was shocked and dismayed to learn that no portion of the funding would be used to teach rainbows how to read.

It's the new thing. Pick a noun or verb that's only marginally-related (or sometimes not even remotely related) to your product and take ownership of it.

Like Aerospike, or Uber.

To be fair, Uber was originally UberCab, but dropped "Cab" from the name after the MTA in San Francisco charged Uber with running an unlicensed taxi service.

At least Uber connotes that it's better than the competition. I was shocked to find out the other day about a CSS framework called Inuit. The mascot is a little inuit guy in a parka. Terraform seems much better in comparison.

You were shocked, shocked that someone would want to add a little bit of whimsy to an otherwise mundane thing as a CSS framework?

No, I was shocked they would appropriate a minority culture's name and caricature for their unrelated tech thingy.

Is it any worse than taking control of a surname? Every MacDonald is now indelibly linked to awful burgers. At least rocket engines don't feel shame.

Yes, actually.

McDonald's was at least started by two guys with the surname McDonald. It is/was their company so they named it after themselves. That's no different than "Frank's Burger Stand", which is again completely different than writing a clone of GCC in javascript and then calling it Patriot or something.

Then take the noun and use it on its own as a headline so HN readers don't know what your product is until they follow the link.

For a lot of us (but obviously not everyone), the "(hashicorp.com)" was enough to understand what it was / who would care or not.

(this isn't to say it shouldn't have had a better title - but just to explain why a lot of people weren't bothered by it)

Whatever happened to suitably named companies like Apple or Commodore that clearly described what they were selling?

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