This gnu naming isn't much of an issue, because this is stuff only technical folks handle. But if we want end-users to embrace things, we need meaningful names - meaningful to them.

Whenever I tell my friends or family to install Jellyfin so they can access my media, the look on their face says it all.

MediaMonkey - alright, I get it (yea, not FOSS)

Plex? OK, if someone then says "think MultiPlex Theaters", you get it. (Also not FOSS)

Jellyfin? What is that? Jam on a sharkfin?

These work really well:

Resilio SYNC (Yeah, not FOSS, but the name makes sense)

SyncThing (FOSS)

FolderSync (not FOSS)

Notice a trend here?

I have a printed spreadsheet for all the software I use - if I haven't touched a service for a couple months, I'll forget the meaningless name.

[–] tyler@programming.dev 10 points 3 days ago (3 children)

I mean you kind of break your point with Plex. I have no clue what MultiPlex theaters are, but I do know what jellyfin is. Lots of names have no meaning behind them, even for very popular things.

[–] jaybone@lemmy.zip 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

If they had said cineplex would that have been more meaningful?

[–] tyler@programming.dev 2 points 3 days ago

Sure but only because I’m old enough to understand that. It still would have zero meaning for anyone under 25-30. Like someone else said, multiplex only makes sense if you’re over 40 (which I’m not). So literally in 10 years you can go through two different naming conventions and have literally the next generation not know what you are talking about

Only choosing meaningful names really doesn’t work anymore. Stuff moves too fast, language moves too fast, and things change constantly.

[–] squaresinger@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago (2 children)

At least over here, Cineplexx is a really big movie theatre corporation. That makes it easy to understand what Plex is about.

[–] Jesus_666@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

It's about PMMA sheeting (aka plexiglass), right?

[–] tyler@programming.dev 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Where is “over here”?

[–] Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I have no clue what MultiPlex theaters are

So back in the earlier days of cinema, you'd go to the Cineplex to see a movie. A Cineplex would only have a single screen for viewing movies while the multiplex would have multiple screens for seeing movies on. This started with the first duplex theatre in 1915 and later the first triplex in 1966, shortly followed by theatres with 6+ screens which is around when the term "multiplex" started being used. Basically for anyone born after the 80s (therefore anyone under the age of about 40) the term is largely obsolete since most theatres have at least 4 screens and qualify as multiplexes, plus the industry has seen so much consolidation that smaller independent theatres with 1-2 screens are pretty uncommon now

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