Talk:Nomenclature

1 semantics of the word "former"

what is the intention of the word "former" used in the sections: "Parabola GNU/Linux-libre" and "Arch Linux"?

it seems like the word "formal" is what was intended instead - "former" would imply that "Parabola GNU/Linux-libre" was once the OS name but it now has another name - but i dont think that is the case noting that "Parabola GNU/Linux-libre" appears prominently on every page of this website - formal would mean that "Parabola GNU/Linux-libre" is the official long name and Parabola is a friendly short name

sounds about right. if you follow the article's history you can find the word "former" being formerly used in the right meaning, but at some point it got carried around out of context. --Isacdaavid (talk) 18:45, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

2 the name "ArchLinux"

i would like to point out the common misconception about the name ArchLinux - people often ask "why not just call it 'Arch GnuLinux' regardless of the misnomer as the upstream calls it?" - the problem with that is that this name is not descriptive nor it is arbitrary - "ArchLinux" and "Arch Linux" are registered trademarks of a particular product that is that OS - to call it anything else is no more correct than calling a VolksWagon a "vee-wee"

so where this article reads: "... we will use Arch (the GNU/Linux distribution)" should properly read: "ArchLinux (the GNU/Linux distribution)" - perhaps it would look odd that way but this is the unfortunate consequence of the trademark names that they registered - even the statement "... name given by the Arch project ..." is incorrect - there is no "Arch" project - there is only the "ArchLinux" project

I'm not convinced this is how trademark law works. we are free to name things at discretion as long as the names aren't registered, lest confusion is poured into the market or something. to be more precise, we can call someone else's trademarked product whatever we like. what we ought not to do is take someone else's trademark and apply it to our own similar product (the restriction is usually limited to previously-defined product categories, and to the countries where the trademark was granted). besides, there's an argument for avoiding the original name on a purely semantic basis--Isacdaavid (talk) 18:45, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

to be clear - this is not to make issue with the trademark itself - the predicament is entirely the same regardless of the trademark status - i discussed this a bit more with the hyperbola peeps and decided to to make a separate article devoted to this misnomer The ArchLinux Misnomer - i agree the name archlinux is best avoided but to only add that arch is incorrect nomenclature (a nick-name) and so optimally they should both be avoided whenever possible - there is minimal utility to parabola in claiming arch-heritage - the target audience of this distro are experienced people who do not require marketing to be reached but know what they are looking for and can appreciate the system for what is it and would probably discover it's breed on their own even if it were not advertised --bill-auger (talk) 02:22, 4 June 2017 (UTC)