This word is doomed
By glazou on Friday 6 February 2004, 10:00 - Microsoftisms - Permalink
We already called "windows" the computer objects we call "windows" today long before the first appearance of the Windows trademark. And we still all say we have windows on our graphical screens, whatever is the operating system or the screen manager. It's a generic term, of world-wide common acceptance, right? Well. It's also a doomed word. Yet another project ponders dropping the word "windows" from its name. Shame, shame, shame.
Comments
Yes , I think word Windows is clearly Microsoft's most valuable intellectual property. We should immediately rename appliaction windows to something different -- I would choose something easy to remember and nice , like "application area of usually rectangular shape" or similar.
I'm quite sure next generation of Microsoft's almost-OS (TM) will be called Light, because light comes through windows. I propose great battle of lawyers with Sun Microsystem as light surely comes from Sun.
I'm not a lawyer, but I think this case is fundamentally different than the Lindows case. Lindows is a operating system similar to Windows, and sounds like Linux + Windows (as in MS Windows). Lindows also competes with Microsoft Windows. MxWindows, on the other hand, is just a project name, without competing or (potentially) taking advantage of the Windows trademark.
Of course, MX might be a reference to microsoft/*nix/Linux. I don't know the history of the project, so I won't make any slashes in the dark on that one.