git (Linus Torvalds)

Name

Linus Torvalds has quipped about the name “git”, which is British English slang for a stupid or unpleasant person: ^[7]

“

I'm an egotistical bastard, and I name all my projects after myself. First Linux, now git.

”

This self-deprecation is certainly tongue-in-cheek, insofar as Torvalds was actually pressured into naming Linux after himself (see History of Linux).

The official Git wiki also gives a number of alternative explanations for the name, including "Global Information Tracker".^[8]

Torvalds had several design criteria:

1. Take CVS as an example of what not to do; if in doubt, make the exact opposite decision. To quote Torvalds, speaking somewhat tongue-in-cheek:

   “For the first 10 years of kernel maintenance, we literally used tarballs and patches, which is a much superior source control management system than CVS is, but I did end up using CVS for 7 years at a commercial company [presumably Transmeta] and I hate it with a passion. When I say I hate CVS with a passion, I have to also say that if there are any SVN (Subversion) users in the audience, you might want to leave. Because my hatred of CVS has meant that I see Subversion as being the most pointless project ever started. The slogan of Subversion for a while was ‘CVS done right’, or something like that, and if you start with that kind of slogan, there's nowhere you can go. There is no way to do CVS right.”^[29]