That's actually the dependency that provides the trademark checking ability of OP's tool. And its first commit was two days ago, so it was probably also a response to the NPM kik-storm.
I have an NPM package named "barrel"[0], which apparently is also a trademark for some kind of sunglasses company. I would expect there to be some kind of fair-use-like rule for common nouns that are used in different industries or domains?
It's more than fair use, trademarks are very narrowly interpreted, and in the case of domains (I'd expect package registries to be similar) the main criteria is wilful confusion (aka is the current domain owner trying to sow or encourage confusion with the mark).
At least in the US, the rule is essentially confusion: is a consumer likely to be confused? In both cases (yours and kik) the likelihood of real confusion is unlikely, although admittedly sunglasses are a couple steps more removed than a messaging app.
True, but the brouhaha over kik was over npm's module name dispute policy.
So, it seems like the operative questions are
1) How likely is X to create an npm package? and
2) If a node.js developer types `npm install X`, are they more likely to expect X's package, or my package?
For the parent commenter, 1 is a definite no, and 2 is kinda wishy-washy.
I don't think anyone on earth installs a package with npm without specifically knowing what they are installing. This is in contrast to users going to foo.com expecting to find foo corps website.
Going to foo.com is a very serviceable strategy for getting foo corps website and if it's not you have invested 2 seconds and risked nothing.
Contrast that with npm unless you specifically know the package by name getting foo corps software by npm install foo is a total crap shoot that is only somewhat likely to succeed will cost you as much as a minute or more of your time and is installing software considered by most technical people to be risky.
Nobody is likely to confuse foo package with foo Corp unless the description of the package is unclear thus name and description should be considered together to decide if confusion exists.
But when you saw the headlines, "Internet broken due to Kik package dispute" it is reasonable to expect confusion with the trademarked company and software.
Don't think this really solves the problem... I think the real issue here is security of what happens when a deep dependency in NPM's graph get's removed... Right now it is possible for anyone to republish said dependency with any (perhaps evil) package. What needs to happen is either unpublish needs to be disabled, or when you remove a dependency that is heavily depended on, an empty placeholder has to be automatically added by NPM so no one can hijack the package name. The question becomes what constitutes a heavily depended on package. (100 dependents? 1000?)
All: it took at most a single click to figure out that "canibekiked" included "kike" by obviously innocent accident. I understand the magic power of the bikeshed to hold internet forums in thrall, but holy magoly you guys outdo yourselves sometimes.
You all owe parro-it (<-- notice the country code in the name? big clue) an apology. How about setting this right with some substantive feedback about the project?
Edit: We'll mark this and the other "is that a racist slur on the bikeshed" subthreads off-topic, so your forthcoming substantive feedbacks should all rank higher in the thread.
You are reading correctly. The project name doesn't follow English inflection rules. Just as e.g. "tap" becomes "tapped", "kik" should become "kikked". "Kiked" is an inflection of "kike", just as "liked" is an inflection of "like" and "taped" is an inflection of "tape". This mistake is easy to make, since there aren't any English verbs spelled ending "ik"; words with this sound are instead spelled ending "ick".
The "Kiked" should probably be read as "Kik'ed" and in any regards, "Kikked" would be wrong. Kik is an entity and not a word in itself here. Try replacing it with "IBM'ed", "Microsoft'ed", "Facebook'ed" etc. The last one is the closest one, you wouldn't be saying "Facebookked".
As a side-note, I in no way think the author made any association with the word kike. Even though I know the word, I didn't jump to that conclusion at least, especially given the context.
The entity has nothing to do with it. Back when I worked for the comparison shopping NexTag, for example, people would certainly joke about being 'nextagged', not 'nextaged', which would've been read as something completely different.
None of IBM, Microsoft, or Facebook end in exactly one 'short' vowel plus one consonant, which is the rule, in English, that determines when the final consonant is doubled. That's why your examples don't work.
Other languages might have special rules regarding proper nouns and their use as verbs, but English doesn't. Basically, we follow the normal rules for words, except in cases where that would cause a problem. In this case, following the normal rules prevents a problem.
Incidentally, I would suggest "Microsoftened", since "soften" is already a verb that everyone is comfortable using. "Facebooked", of course, was a normal word in common use before anyone ever heard of Zuckerberg. Two vowels followed by a consonant is simply a different situation than one vowel followed by a consonant.
I'm not a native English speaker but to me, "kik'd" would feel more correct, maybe because it makes it clearer that kik is not a normal verb.
In any case, I think that it's fair to inform the author but feeling offended seems unnecessary. I had certainly never heard this word before and judging from the other threads here, neither had several native English speakers. To think that it was done on purpose seems really far fetched to me.
Perhaps my background makes me a little more attuned to this particular word, but 'kike' practically leapt off the page to me.
In English, words ending in a single short vowel followed by a single consonant double the consonant before adding '-ed' to form the past tense. That's the grammatical rule.
I still can't tell if this project is by someone with bad grammar or some 4chan-bred bigot trying to make a double entendre, but either way, it's fucking obnoxious to see it on the front page of Hacker News.
I'm a native English speaker, and probably would have made the same mistake. 'Kick' conjugates as 'kicked', so I would have conjugated 'Kik' as 'Kiked' and 'Kikked' just looks weird to me. Though I've heard the term 'kike' before, I certainly don't hear it enough (I'm in the UK FWIW) that I would have recognised it unless it was pointed out (and obviously at that point would adjust the name).
Your posts come across as ascribing malice to a fairly trivial (IMO) mistake. Politely pointing out that the name could be misinterpreted to be a derogatory term would have been a been course of action.
Seriously? I really don't think the author of this module sat down and thought, "hrm... how can I blatantly offend people" when they came up with the name.
Wouldn't you rather believe that this person didn't maliciously name this thing and get on with your day? Not everyone on earth is a horrible person.
That's why I prefaced my remark by asking if it was my mistake. I'm not familiar with the verb "kik", but I am aware of the slur. I'll happily believe that no offense was meant, but I don't think there's anything wrong with pointing out what I consider a pretty poor naming choice.
Yeah, I'm thinking you don't have to live with 4chan and Twitter tolerating and increasingly normalizing anonymous bigots calling your ethnic group, which has been the target of genocide before, the equivalent of a nigger.
Do you have any idea how telling me to 'smile a little' about this comes across?
It's an unfortunate naming choice, it's obvious the author didn't intend for it to happen given the context of the situation. Nobody is trying to use the ethnic slur against you in this situation, and you are, quite frankly, overreacting to the whole thing.
A lot of horrible things have happened to Jewish people in the past, yes, but that doesn't give you the right to leap down someone's throat for what looks to be a very honest mistake.
The author's intentions are not remotely obvious. It just as easily could be an anti-Semitic double entendre referring to both the kik situation and Jews, and I'm still not at all certain HN isn't being deliberately trolled with this submission.
Determining how I respond to ethnic slurs against me or my people really isn't up to you, either.
It may come as a surprise to you, but "ethnic slurs" is not in the curriculum for English, especially not overseas. This thread is the first time I have ever heard it, and I grew up in Canada with some of my best friends being Jewish. If I hadn't heard it till now, I can sure as hell tell you the author most likely hasn't as well.
And seriously, what do you honestly believe happened here? That an Italian, non-native English speaker incorrectly conjugated the non-verb "kik" into the best he could? Or that he knowingly and maliciously took a jab at all Jewish people for seemingly no reason whatsoever? If it's honestly the latter, then I feel sorry for you.
No, I can't tell you how to respond. But I can sure as hell tell you when you're coming off like an asshole by responding in the way you do.
> The word kike was born on Ellis Island when there were Jewish migrants who were also illiterate (or could not use Latin alphabet letters). When asked to sign the entry-forms with the customary "X," the Jewish immigrants would refuse, because they associated an X with the cross of Christianity. Instead, they drew a circle as the signature on the entry-forms. The Yiddish word for "circle" is kikel (pronounced ky-kul), and for "little circle," kikeleh (pronounced ky-kul-uh). Before long the immigration inspectors were calling anyone who signed with an "O" in place of an "X" a kikel or kikeleh or kikee or, finally and succinctly, kike.
It looks like the author is Italian, so I would hazard that they're not a native and that this is just an innocent mistake in transcribing what they think "kik'd" ought to sound like.
Without wishing to otherwise get involved at all, I'd like to say that as an Australian native english speaker, I have never heard of the word "kike" or that it is apparently a slur against jews. Why would anyone else in the world know that?
I have nothing against jews, but it pisses me off that some local slang is elevated into a global "character sequence you can't use", so long as that slang originates in NYC. Imagine if every other city had that privilege; we wouldn't be able to name anything.
I take it that the original project said "kiked"? As an American, I wouldn't blame the creator for that since they clearly didn't know about the usage, and I think it's uncouth to assume malevolence here. It's not reasonable to expect people to exhaustively check anything they publish for bad words in any language on Earth.
Still, if you're publishing for an international audience, it makes sense and is polite to make a change once you've been alerted. I think Parro-it handled this very well. (Especially since, as others have pointed out, the proper English conjugation of "kik" is "kikked".)
This sort of thing does go both ways, BTW. There have been several significant media flaps over the word "spaz," which just means "clumsy/hyper/awkward" in American English, but is a pretty serious ableist slur in British English.
That rule usually only applies if the word doesn't have other valid uses. For example, 'cracker' is a racial slur for white people, but it also means an edible snack, so it's in the clear. To my knowledge, the word 'kike' does not have a non-offensive meaning, at least in the english speaking world.
Again, only in the United States. The word "kikel" is the yiddish word for "circle", and illiterate Jewish immigrants coming to the US didn't want to write an X by their name because they inferred they were being asked to draw a cross.
Once this was figured out as the problem, Jewish immigrants were instructed (in yiddish) to write a circle instead, thus they were referred to as "kikes" by immigration officials.
Since the origin of the term is specifically american, why should the rest of the world have to deal with it? You're not really addressing the original concern. Your theory of offensiveness as being "words with only one possible meaning" is fallacious, since again, that meaning is derived from the very specific mores of only one society. Very disappointing to see this kind of thoughtless "america is the center of the universe" opinion in HN.
The rest of the world doesn't have to deal with it if they don't want to. This is easily solved by registering the trademark with someone other than the US, establishing the brand and trademark and then coming to the US.
But no-one said "kike". You guys regexed it out of a larger word, a totally reasonable word. My point is that no-one but you would even have that word in their regex, so it's wrong to get all upset about it.
It's funny, but this is, in a way, a parallel of what happened to the original "kik" project, in that there is a suggestion of name change because of the perception of some people.
I intended the word only in the sense "to suffer the same fate as the azer/kik project".
I renamed the project, my apologies to anyone who could have been offended by my mistake.