back to article This Thanksgiving, top your turkey with Cranberry sOSS to fund open source

The Open Source Pledge organization is working to combat the problems of FOSS maintainers not getting paid, and the closely related issue of developer burnout, with a Thanksgiving-themed campaign. The Cranberry sOSS campaign is a slightly confusing fundraising effort that probably works best if you are both American and …

  1. Bebu sa Ware Silver badge

    When is Thanksgiving anyway?

    It's the first Monday following the Black Friday sales, surely ? /c

    The tartness of cranberry sOSS could be quite refreshing with sausages (the making of which incurs a certain lack of curiosity which is shared with closed source software.)

  2. DarkwavePunk Silver badge

    sOSS

    Wow. Thanks for the explanation. I would never have read that as "sauce". Interesting.

    1. Liam Proven (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

      Re: sOSS

      > Thanks for the explanation. I would never have read that as "sauce".

      Yes, me neither. The PR people who wrote to me apologised about the pun, and I had to ask -- what pun?

      I think the US writers/audience just sort of assume that everyone has the same traditions and the same accent...

      The company that makes TV cards -- Hauppauge. They eventually realised that they needed to explain how to say it. Then they didn't know that their explanation -- "hop hog" -- doesn't work in 90% of the English speaking countries in the world. It's not hop-hog. It's something more like horporg. ("Whore PORG." Lovely!)

      1. DarkwavePunk Silver badge

        Re: sOSS

        I honestly read it as a "pun" on SOS. Like it was "Cranberry Help". Maybe it's cleverer than I thought - or I'm just overthinking things in a pub after five pints.

        1. Liam Proven (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

          Re: sOSS

          > a "pun" on SOS.

          And >ding< a tiny lightbulb appears. I hadn't spotted that.

      2. Dave559

        Re: sOSS

        Hauppauge isn't actually an English word, of course. When I first heard read of the company, I had assumed that they were German and that the name would be pronounced as such - it looks rather like a German name, after all!

        But it's actually the name of the town (on Long Island, New York, USA) where the company is based, and the name of the town derives from the local Native American name for the area.

        (And to further show the perils of pronunciation spelling, your version with the "r"s only really works for non-rhotic speakers (where r tends to get glossed over (eg, car => "cah")), the rest of us would verbalise the r as an actual r, which is much more intrusive than was intended!)

        1. Liam Proven (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

          Re: sOSS

          > your version with the "r"s only really works for non-rhotic speakers

          Despite being able to make at least an effort at 7 different languages, including several with phonemes that do not occur in any forms of English, I've never been able to hear or imitate this rhotic/nonrhotic distinction. An Irish friend insists that I pronounce "car" with a terminal /r/ sound that I am not consciously putting there and can't hear.

          Cf. Shaun the Sheep -- a great little show and a to-me obvious pun: Sean/Shaun/shorn. Apparently this is news to many Americans and when they hear how most English people say "shorn" they claim there's an /r/ sound in it.

          *shrug*

          In the meantime I continue practising saying "řeřicha" in case I want watercress on my sandwich.

          https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%C5%99e%C5%99icha

          That repeated /r̝/ sound is a swine.

  3. Pete 2 Silver badge

    Bite your tongue

    > cash for the people keeping critical code alive

    I once experiened an example of highly critical code. It complained about everyone who tried to run it.

  4. Blackjack Silver badge

    Several Apps should be "Pay for comercial use" cause coders need to eat.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    > possibly in a small plastic bag along with its gizzard and liver

    Ahhh, memories of the time in college I cooked a turkey WITHOUT removing (or actually even knowing about) that small plastic bag...

    Fun times.

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