back to article GNOMEs beat Microsoft: Git Virtual File System to get a new name

Microsoft is going to rename the Git Virtual File System to eliminate its clash with GNOMErs. The purpose of the Git Virtual File System was laudable: Redmond's developers were sick of taking the afternoon off after typing “git clone” (even “git checkout” could take hours), so they gave GitHub users a workaround. At the time …

  1. Eek

    I'll do it first VFSy mcVFSface?

    But to be honest I expect SAVFS or (Super Awesome Virtual File System) to win out.

    1. yoganmahew

      Along those lines...

      GittyMcGitFace Virtual File System...

      1. Stevie

        Re: Along those lines...

        If you would entertain a small change to Gitty McGitFace System it would initialize to GMGFS, which, in the time-honoured way, would eventually be misremembered as GMG File System and prompt furious corrections when mentioned both here and on Wikipedia.

      2. fidodogbreath

        Re: Along those lines...

        Now, that's proper Gnomenclature.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      All your VFS are belong to ms.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    GVFS

    Gay Video Filming System

    1. Fruit and Nutcase Silver badge

      NTFS

      New Torvalds File System

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    GFYS

    Go Fuck Your Self

  4. Unshakeable

    +1 for GFYS

    Having just wasted a few early morning hours with Microsoft at InfoSec Europe where it was the only presentation that didnt focus on the problem, but telling you that Microsoft Cloud was the solution.

    (they spent so long selling the product they ran out of time to even mention the problem or the topic of the presentation )

    How about leaving the conflict in acronyms in place and we'll chose as customers what we want to call it ?

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    MVFS

    Let's face it, they will eventually rebrand this under the Microsoft umbrella, so let's get ahead of the curve and use that as the name for its filesystem.

    1. Sandtitz Silver badge

      Re: MVFS

      Boring!

      MiLFS - Microsoft Licensed File System

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: MVFS

        That would go well with their Critical Update Notification Tool from Windows 98.

    2. bombastic bob Silver badge
      FAIL

      Re: MVFS

      does GVFS (or, ahem, MVFS) even WORK under non-Micro-shaft-OS's ???

      THIS thread suggests very little has been done:

      https://github.com/Microsoft/GVFS/issues/4

      maybe fusefs or similar might be a possible solution, but I'm not aware of anything significant being done here, and couldn't find easily with a quicky online search. (gvfs-fuse-daemon is apparently for gnome's VFS of the same name, not for the Github one).

      I fear that this will become like EXCHANGE with it's own "Microsoft windows API" for windows, and potentially broken things for IMAP and POP and basically "everyone else". I remember actually seeing something like this happen where many API-related things were just 'not available' if you used Linux or FreeBSD and had a regular IMAP e-mail client like Thunderbird - people would try to send me files, they'd show up as a link I couldn't access, things like that. "But if you use Outlook for your e-mail". No. Just no.

      Nice way to ALIENATE over half of the people on GitHub! We won't do our dev work on Win-10-nic no matter *HOW* or *HOW* *MUCH* you beg (read: coerce)!!!

      1. MatthewSt Silver badge

        Re: MVFS

        https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/devops/2018/03/15/gvfs-for-mac/

        In other news, it's open source so why don't you write it yourself? Isn't that what the anti "micro-shaft" pro OSS movement believe?

        If you're already on Git, then chances are you don't need this solution. It's designed to make working with humongous git repos bearable

  6. Waseem Alkurdi

    How about

    GitHub Virtual File System? The acronym becomes an unpleasant GHVFS.

    Seeing that GitHub is embraced successfully by M$.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: How about

      I was thinking along the same lines as you and thought GEEE.

      1. Waseem Alkurdi
        Pint

        Re: How about

        Geee, GEEE! Wow!

        A virtual (alcohol-free) pint to you sir!

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    FUER

    One letter back from the original acronym - forming a German word meang in favour of / instead of / in place of.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: FUER

      "[...] forming a German word meang in favour of / instead of / in place of."

      I misread the word owing to the context of M$. .....Godwin's Law.

    2. Waseem Alkurdi
      Joke

      Re: FUER

      And have the FUSE guys, er, complaining?

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Filesystem Under Development

    1. Waseem Alkurdi

      FUD!

      That's not Fear, Uncertanity, Doubt but Filesystem Under Development!

      1. anothercynic Silver badge

        @Waseem Alkurdi

        Wouldn't that be FSUD? ;-)

        Although I like this very much!

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Filesystem Under Development

      Filesystem Under Development

      OK, now that gets my vote, because I suspect they'd go for that simply because they think it would frustrate searches for what FUD presently stands for and its (long time) association with MS.

      So we'll make sure it remains visible..

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "there’s only 136,000 code points so some duplication is eventually inevitable"

    There, FTFY. Unicode! Unicode FTW!

    And let me suggest ☮️VFS.

    1. cream wobbly

      CNDVFS it is then!

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    WinFS

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    How about

    DDMSFS

    The Drop Dead MicroSoft File System

    I'm now gone from GitHub. They probably have all my code but for my peace of mind, I've voted with my feet. Several of my developer friends did this as soon as the rumours surfaced. We will not have anything to do with MS.

    One has even modded the copyright notice on his code to add 'Not to be used on any Operating System owned or controlled by Microsoft Corp or any of its subsidiaries'.

    I won't go that far but there is a real feeling of hurt that GitHub has betrayed FOSS people big time

    1. Waseem Alkurdi

      Re: How about

      One has even modded the copyright notice on his code to add 'Not to be used on any Operating System owned or controlled by Microsoft Corp or any of its subsidiaries'.

      I see that as a joke, but that's not really enforceable, because we and our GitHub code are property of M$ now!

      (No ... just kidding: If the code was under GPL, then there's a clause that prevents the author from controlling the manner in which the code is used)

      I won't go that far but there is a real feeling of hurt that GitHub has betrayed FOSS people big time

      $$$$ talks, abstract ideas and perfect notions walk.

      1. Waseem Alkurdi

        Re: How about

        Why the downvotes? I'm not against open source, in case it sounded like I am

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: How about

      One has even modded the copyright notice on his code to add 'Not to be used on any Operating System owned or controlled by Microsoft Corp or any of its subsidiaries'.

      What a sad and frankly pathetic individual he must be.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: How about

        One has even modded the copyright notice on his code to add 'Not to be used on any Operating System owned or controlled by Microsoft Corp or any of its subsidiaries'.

        What a sad and frankly pathetic individual he must be.

        Maybe, but he/she would not exactly be the first one either - I've seen this a couple of times over the years.

    3. oiseau
      Thumb Up

      Re: How about

      Hello:

      I'm now gone from GitHub. They probably have all my code but for my peace of mind, I've voted with my feet. Several of my developer friends did this as soon as the rumours surfaced. We will not have anything to do with MS.

      +1

      That's the way to do it.

      ... there is a real feeling of hurt that GitHub has betrayed FOSS people big time.

      Ahh ....

      The all embracing power of a few billions.

      Kudos to you and those who follow your example, sir. (and a round of beers ...)

      O.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: How about

      "One has even modded the copyright notice on his code to add 'Not to be used on any Operating System owned or controlled by Microsoft Corp or any of its subsidiaries'."

      What was the project? I have a sudden urge to run it on Windows, under Bash for Windows if I must.

      I suppose I've always assumed that if you post the source code, then any license is effectively meaningless.

      What are they going to do, set the lawyers on you? That's not exactly deterred piracy now has it?

    5. ckm5

      Re: How about

      Guess your friend is never going to use Linux? Or countless other pieces of OSS that MSFT has contributed to?

      It's all fine and good to fight the good fight, but not when the fight ended centuries ago.

      Let me give you a hint - Linux and OSS won.

      "If Microsoft ever does applications for Linux it means I've won." - Linus Torvalds, 1998 - http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9810/01/whylinux.idg/

      Not moving on is just childish.

    6. vistisen

      Re: How about

      'I won't go that far but there is a real feeling of hurt that GitHub has betrayed FOSS people big time'

      So if some megacorp came and offered you billions for some code you'd written, You would stick it to the man and...?

      No one has betrayed anyone, unless it stood in the terms and conditions, "we promise never to sell our hard work to Microsoft"

  12. John70

    Let's see, start off with GitVFS / GitFS and over time the community will shortened it to GVFS / GFS

  13. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    The really smart thing would be SCVFS: Source Control Virtual File System which would only define an interface. The interface would provide the semantics but the implementation could be Git or any other source control S/W.

    1. Waseem Alkurdi

      The SC part reminds me of this piece of crap: Visual SourceSafe.

      <silence></silence>

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        "The SC part reminds me of this piece of crap: Visual SourceSafe."

        You must be too young. SCCS. Where do you thing MS got the idea from?

        1. anothercynic Silver badge

          SCCS

          *spasm* *twitch* *twitch* *gag*

          You know this means I have to go back to therapy, right? (oh dear God, why! why!)

          1. FIA Silver badge

            Re: SCCS

            You know this means I have to go back to therapy, right? (oh dear God, why! why!)

            Just came here to post pretty much that.

            Some things aren't worth joking about... or reminding people of.....

            I actually worked with SCCS where someone had edited the .rcs file (was it??) so we actually had different record of history that didn't match reality.....

            Now WHO'S LOCKED THE FILE???

            <goes for a lie down>

  14. Dan 55 Silver badge
    Facepalm

    $BIGCORPs, eh?

    I wonder how many man (& woman) hours of meetings they needed before they realised they couldn't think of a name and decided to throw it open to everybody.

    1. Waseem Alkurdi
      Joke

      Re: $BIGCORPs, eh?

      NO! M$ is clearly in the spirit of the Communist-Juche Idea (er, FOSS, whatever!) and decided to give it to the people to vote!

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: $BIGCORPs, eh?

        "NO! M$ is clearly in the spirit of the Communist-Juche Idea (er, FOSS, whatever!) and decided to give it to the people to vote!"

        Past experience of any type of vote in this context is the final name (or short list) has already been decided and then they'll go with their choice and "well, the people chose the name" even if it didn't win a popular vote.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    CVFS - Clippy Virtual File System, everyone loves clippy.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "Judge us by our actions"

    "Shit, I guess that means we now need to stop acting like an entitled bully, and acknowledge the existence of other peoples' projects."

  17. T. F. M. Reader

    EEEVFS

    Embrace, Extend...

    1. picturethis

      Re: EEEVFS

      Damn,,, you beat me to it. Have an upvote.

  18. Lord Buddha

    FATGIT

    Seems obvious when purposed for very fat git repositories.

    1. phuzz Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Re: FATGIT

      And leaves room for FAT32GIT for larger projects, and exFATGIT for when you've done some optimisation.

      1. Lord Buddha

        Re: FATGIT

        Well, actually VFATGIT

    2. Zakhar

      or FAGIT

      Do you need the first "T"?

  19. fluffybunnyuk

    Slurp VFS so everyone knows what it will do.

  20. Anonymous South African Coward Silver badge

    ATFS

    African Time File System

    because it gets delivered... whenever!

  21. lafnlab
    Pint

    VFSme - millennial edition - to show they can pander to yutes as well as Apple

  22. Sheepykins

    How about the FMVFS

    The F*** you Microsoft virtual file sytem?

  23. richardcox13
    Coat

    VSTS

    Virtual and Sparse Tree Store

    (I'll get my coat.)

  24. Inspector71

    ZFS, ok maybe not, then how about ZFGFS Zero F***s Given File System?

  25. Colin McKinnon
    Happy

    LGFS

    Deferred loading = lazy loading,

    ergo Lazy Git File System?

  26. karlkarl Silver badge

    How about keep the name but don't release the software externally from Microsoft? Then it won't conflict.

    The whole idea is stupid and completely backtracks on the whole Git workflow. Typical Microsoft junk for fools and aplologists.

    Or... since it will be dead in a few years (like GitHub hopefully), call it whatever the fsck(8) you want.

  27. katrinab Silver badge

    GFS

    For Git File System. Or maybe call it GitFS?

    There is a Google File System, does anyone use it?

    There is also GlusterFS, does anyone call that GFS?

  28. Simon Hickling

    DDDVFS

    Developers, Developers, Developers Virtual File System

  29. bob42

    GodFS

    Git on demand FS

  30. Zippy's Sausage Factory
    Meh

    Whatever wins, I'm guessing it will be called "Microsoft x".

    So probably "Microsoft Virtual File System for Git".

    Naturally, it'll only work on Windows 10 Enterprise...

    Cynical, moi? I'm glad you noticed...

    1. katrinab Silver badge

      How about Microsoft OneDrive for Developers?

    2. Waseem Alkurdi

      Ahem, that's supposed to read Windows 10 Enterprise LTSB.

      There you go!

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Yes, but what version of Windows 10 enterprise?

  31. mevets

    Translucent File System

    Wasn't this the cats ass in 1986?

  32. russsh

    It takes a generation to forget...

    ClearCase did this two decades ago. And no, it wasn’t free, but your precious code also wasn’t being fed into the big data meat grinder.

  33. FIA Silver badge

    I wonder

    Are all the people leaving github going to stop using git too?

    As the work on this filesystem came about because of the major speed improvements made by MS when they adopted git as their system of choice for the windows codebase and the issues they encountered. (They're probably quite unique with their codebase size and history length).

    As someone who remembers when MS were basically unable to use anything not developed in house (and the evilness that went with it) I find the new more modern MS much more refreshing, you wouldn't get things like this or the Linux subsystem under Balmer or Gates.

    They're still a large software company, and they're still money driven but they really don't seem to be the MS of old. (Which in some ways is really weird, they still have the desktop monopoly they've always had, but people don't care any more; still makes them pots of cash though, PCs in companies aren't going away any time soon).

    It's okay though, the anger and hatred transfers nicely to Oracle these days. ;)

    This blog is worth a read.

    1. karlkarl Silver badge

      Re: I wonder

      If Git had been developed by GitHub and not Linux Torvalds then yes probably.

      Sane people would never tie business critical software down to Microsoft. This isn't the 90's any more ;)

      But since Microsoft has zero control over Git, it stands a good chance of working for the user rather than against them unlike other unethical software.

      Oh god, I used the word unethical... I hope I am not becoming too much like Stallman... Damn, perhaps he was on to something...

      1. Waseem Alkurdi

        Re: I wonder

        Just like it had no control over Netscape when they trashed it.

        An part of EEE is the second E: Extend.

        They don't have control over what they extend, they just extend it before trashing it (extinguishing it).

    2. JohnFen

      Re: I wonder

      "Are all the people leaving github going to stop using git too?"

      Very unlikely. Why would they? That Microsoft made improvements to it doesn't poison it or force you to do any business with a Microsoft company.

      "they really don't seem to be the MS of old"

      Honestly, I wish I could see that. To my eyes, they don't seem any different, except that they talk more nicely now.

      "This blog is worth a read."

      I read it. What was worthwhile about it? I'm not being snarky, I'm genuinely interested in the answer.

  34. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    YFAT

    YFAT - You're files are trashed

  35. John H Woods

    Why V?

    It's not really virtual at all, is it? It's a sort of lazy initialization / deferred loading / caching system. Let's call it ... Block Storage On Demand.

  36. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge
    Trollface

    "H" is the next letter in the alphabet after G. So, to avoid confusion, I propose we call it `HGVFS`.

    See icon ------------------>

  37. Claverhouse

    Spending more than enough time keeping the Gnome gvfs off my KDE systems ( same with Baloo, Strigi and all the other resource consumers that hold you tight and never let you go ) I shall be pleased at less potential confusion.

    Installing the fugly modernist Brave browser even pulls in gvfs for no obvious reason...

  38. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    BobFS?

    ClippyFS?

  39. d3rrial

    JVFS

    First of all, fuck Microsoft. Second, JIT Virtual File System

    (JIT as in Just In Time)

  40. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The File System Formerly Known As GVFS or TFSFKAGVFS?

    After evil M$FT has monetised it, look out for TFSFKAGVFS Community Edition with Bing(tm) and TFSFKAGVFS Enterprise E5 Edition etc. etc.

  41. chuckufarley Silver badge
    Go

    I nominate...

    ...[Shed]FS

    Because...sheds...and brackets.

  42. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    BRRVFS, or Big Remote Repository Virtual Filesystem

    serve cold.

  43. Borg.King

    PVFS

    Plagiarized Virtual File System

  44. jingjo

    Imagine, micro$oft not having their own original names ? Like lifting my "Conversational AI" moniker a couple of weeks ago.

    www.ai-kiu.com

  45. JohnFen

    Help Microsoft?

    Never.

  46. RichardB

    GILFS - Git Incremental Lookup File System

  47. razorfishsl

    RBFS

    "Robber barrons fie system", should fit right it.

  48. Baudwalk

    IntelliFile

    System

  49. Fred 4
    Coat

    Topic on Git closed but...

    I think "Gitty McGit Virtual File System" (GMVFS, or GMGVFS) might work...

    Mines the one with the autonomous submersible in its packet

  50. PNGuinn
    Mushroom

    Off topic (slightly), but

    Wouldn't it be lovely if Slurp were to embrace systemd, extend it and then ....

    Ooh, look a m$ cloud with a silver lining.

    One can dream. Some things just deserve to be together. Like turds and puke. And guess who's got plenty of experience with the polishing duster.

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