by mbeex on 5/9/21, 12:17 PM
Reading the comments, I get the impression that many people are somewhat lacking perspective.
I've been writing software professionally for more than 25 years, > 30 years in total. gnuplot has been around all that time. Developed in an academic environment, people probably (certainly) had other things to do than argue about name comparisons to other projects. And nobody cared.
There are things that are not an invariant of time. And frankly - open source along with the ideological battle over it is certainly one of those things. There were times with a much healthier way of dealing with zealots (Oh, this will cost me karma, but fortunately I don't care :-)
by hikarudo on 5/9/21, 11:44 AM
Embarrassing story time.
I once introduced Richard Stallman to a fellow grad student in Japan like this (in Japanese): "He is the creator of GNU. You know, as in gnuplot."
Stallman understood what I said and immediately corrected me: "gnuplot is not a part of GNU".
by kstenerud on 5/9/21, 10:11 AM
If you have to keep correcting people about your product's name, you made a poor name choice. Names, like everything else, have a U/X aspect to them.
by johnminter on 5/9/21, 12:37 PM
I am a thankful user of Gnuplot. As some before me mentioned, the naming history was complex. What is more important is that the developers provided - and still support - an excellent program that we may freely use under a very reasonable license.
by hyperpallium2 on 5/9/21, 10:24 AM
Why not just change the name to GNG (Gnuplot's Not Gnu)?
by savant2 on 5/9/21, 9:37 AM
Funnily they refer to some people wrongly using "Gnuplot" instead of "gnuplot" yet they use "Gnuplot" 23 times in this FAQ.
by helsinkiandrew on 5/9/21, 10:46 AM
This blew my mind - for 30ish years I've taken it for granted gnuplot was part of the GNU project.
by gumby on 5/9/21, 6:03 PM
Sort of like gnutar (gnu tar) which actually now is a gnu project but had that name before the gnu project because gnu is John Gilmore’s uname.
by dw-im-here on 5/9/21, 9:40 AM
Why are we so bad at naming things
by jonnrb on 5/9/21, 3:10 PM
If GNU’s not Unix and Gnuplot is not GNU, is Gnuplot Unix?
by gnfargbl on 5/9/21, 9:56 AM
by rurban on 5/9/21, 11:15 AM
, plotutils is GNU.
Plotutils comes with vector and rasterizer support, as well as a library.
by Sporktacular on 5/9/21, 10:14 PM
This is why I hate these stupid OSS naming schemes. Screwing with capitalisation serves no function other than as a shibboleth - signalling that the devs belong to the free software tribe.
I avoid software with dumb-ass case-sensitive names precisely for this reason. Look at the confusion, the time wasted on this topic. Why should it matter if it's octave vs. Octave? Normal users aren't case-sensitive, they just want to get on with their task. It just points to devs with the wrong priorities.
by fnord77 on 5/9/21, 11:14 AM
llamaplot would have been a great name
by technion on 5/9/21, 11:49 AM
It's incredible to open a source tree and see commits talking about OpenStep. Really shows you how long this has been around and taking BC seriously.
by einpoklum on 5/9/21, 10:23 AM
The FAQ says gnuplot used to be distributed by the FSF. So, perhaps it used to be GPL-licensed? I wonder what changed... is there really that much money to be had from forcing derivative source code to only be distributed as patches over the original? I don't get it.
by guenthert on 5/9/21, 5:35 PM
Uh, while that was informative, more important is IMHO that gnuplot is a great tool and I like to take the opportunity to express my gratitude to all who contributed.
by utopcell on 5/9/21, 7:22 PM
gnuplot is not gnu, gnu is not unix, unix is not multics. I wonder what multics was not like.
by unixhero on 5/9/21, 6:14 PM
Pretty idiotic name, I realize this now.
Great software package tho.
by sys_64738 on 5/9/21, 1:06 PM
gnuplot is not GNU
by dschuetz on 5/9/21, 12:25 PM
The plot thickens.
by jokoon on 5/9/21, 10:47 AM
I have to admit that it's pretty easy to build your own plotting software. As long as you have the ability to draw lines and pixels, it's easily done.