PhatNoise Music Manager

Why do prioprietary pieces of software often have names like the above? (Other examples: Macromedia Flash, Chipmunk Scripts Guestbook, Mojo Mail, PeopleSoft PeopleTools, Golden FTP Server Pro, Invision Power Board)

A walk though the CVE lists will turn up hundreds of hilarious examples of similar names. It's easy to guess whether a given security hole in that list affects Debian based just on the form of the software name even if one has never heard of the program before.

Even free software projects that seem to partake of a proprietary mindset show it in the names: Mozilla FireFox, OpenOffice, Mozilla Thunderbird. So different than w3m, vim, mutt. A whole pile of history, cultural, and, I imagine, linguistic difference.

Even if at first saddled with such a name, many free software projects seem to evolve in the other direction: Debian Installer -> d-i, X Window System -> xorg.

As someone who can't name software, I find this strangely fascinating.