[lucb1e]

Was the name used with permission? Even if not trademarked (because open source freedom woohoo), it's a bit weird to release, say, Windows 12 without permission from the authors of Windows 11

I tried looking it up myself but it doesn't say in the readme or doc/ folder, there is no mention of any of the Bzip2 authors, and there is no website listed so I presume this Github page is canonical

[tosti]

Free software doesn't have a lot of trademarks, with the notable exception of Linux.

Also, the name is the algorithm. Bzip2 has versions and bzip3 is something else which has its own updated versions. Programs that implement a single algorithm often follow this pattern.

[lucb1e]

> Free software doesn't have a lot of trademarks

Hence my saying "not trademarked (because open source freedom woohoo)". I understand bzip3 is legal, but my question is whether it's a dick move

> the name is the algorithm. Bzip2 has versions and bzip3 is something else

I don't understand this. If bzip3 is "something else" compared to bzip2 then how can both be named after the algorithms they use? Nothing in bzip2's algorithm is related to the digit 2. If it used, say, powers of 2 centrally and bzip3 used pi for something, then the naming could make sense since it's indeed not a version number, but I don't remotely see this argument in these algorithms

Looking on Wikipedia and bzip2's website, there is no explanation of the name, and yesterday I read somewhere (either in the OP or in another comment) that it would stand for "better zip". It has nothing to do with PKZIP though. If they had both implemented pkzip's format, then a "spiritual successor" to bzip2 would be something like uzip, uzip2 (replacing "better" with "ultimate"), bbzip2, or any of a million other options, but that's not the pattern they chose to follow

How is this not just taking their established name for your own project with the version number +1?