It's been his handle on GitHub, Twitter, Hacker News, YouTube, Reddit, etc., and it makes me uncomfortable to see a startup try to turn his name into a corporate brand.
[0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20091113043728/http://substack.n...
Did they use the "substack" name because JH made it famous? I've heard of the word "substack" before but I've never heard of James Halliday.
"substack" was in use for several decades before 2006:
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=substack&year_...
https://github.com/substack?tab=repositories
I doubt it was an intentional move by the company, since these kinds of name clashes are inevitable in the global scope..
1. The founders of the corporation were not aware of the established personal brand James Halliday had built under the handle, or didn't preform a google search to find out.
2. The founders were aware and just didn't care or lacked the creativity to construct a unique brand.
Both make me disinterested in whatever they're shilling.