Hacker News Reader

Comment by jkot | Hacker News Reader

OpenOffice uses name 'office' for 30 years, 5 longer than MS does.

Wiki:

> OpenOffice.org originated as StarOffice, a proprietary office suite developed by German company StarDivision from 1985 on.

> MS office 1.0 released : November 19, 1990[1] Office 1.0

View on HN

Maybe that's the naming solution then.

StarOffice*

* The Open and Libre Office Suite

Everyone could write it as *Office to save typing. Then users would simply say the full name. "AsteriskOffice"

Nevermind....

And maybe rewrite it in C# and call it OctothorpOffice...

Coctothorp is how I pronounce C# :) That or C++++ because # looks like 4 overlapping +'s which I've always assumed is what they were hinting at.

If you pronounce it like that, what will the next version be? We don't have a nonathorp. I've always assumed the next version will be C𝄪 (for those of you who are non-musicians, that's a double sharp symbol).

Your description also helps for musicians whose font just doesn't display that symbol...

StarOffice has never been fully free, and it even clashes with other trademarks in Japan and other Asian countries. It also had an image problem even before it was open sourced, to the point where it was literally given away for free (at a time when MS Office, Lotus etc were printing money).

It's a dead brand.

Well then I was totally wrong in this case :) But there are still a lot of instances of software names like that. All things GNU being the worst example, an entire ecosystem tainted with the label "Not Unix".

That's not the public perception.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com