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I suppose tarsnap is named like 'portsnap', which you also wrote, but what is the thought process behind calling that 'portsnap'? That might help stimulate some ideas and suggestions.

I am assuming it's not a piece of tar snapped in half. Although sometimes, having the FreeBSD ports system compile perl and python from scratch when I am trying to install emacs does make me want to snap it in half (yes, yes, I know I am not the model FreeBSD user, et cetera :))

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portsnap = SNAPshots of the FreeBSD PORTs tree

tarsnap = TAR backups, in a SNAPshotted model (vs. incremental backups). I also liked the fact that it reminded FreeBSD users of portsnap, which is a very popular tool.

I understood the name immediately, but always considered it an awful name for most "normal" users. But, maybe UNIX culture will win in the end and "tar" will become a word everyone knows.

For what it's worth, I do know what 'tar' means -- I mostly use Linux (GNU/Linux if you're being pedantic), so the snap part was what I was asking about.

Tarsnap users almost always already know what tar is. The fact that tarsnap has a tar command line -- i.e., one they already know -- is a big deal for a lot of tarsnap users.

Short for "snapshot", I think?

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