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by mysterypie 3639 days ago
An "edgy" name can get you in real trouble. The brilliant programmer Dan Farmer [1] who developed the security tool that he named SATAN [2] was fired from his job when he published his program. If you haven't heard of SATAN, it was the most important network security analysis tool in the late 1990s.

I feel certain that the name was the critical factor that made his company so nervous. For a while he had two different names for the program, SATAN and SANTA, to try and reduce the stigma, but it didn't work.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Farmer

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_Administrator_Tool_fo...

2 comments

Artists and musicians can get away with invoking (haha) such names for effect. But tech despite its abandonment of the suit is still pretty straight laced and Ivy League at heart and interfaces with a high corporate and financial world that is even more so.

It's okay if your audience is strictly other tech people, but this is built for general use.

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2013/09/michael-lewis-goldman...

> The Web site Serge had used (which has the word “subversion” in its name) as well as the location of its server (Germany) McSwain clearly found highly suspicious.