9 ms·

Why are companies slapping "OS" in their product naming? it's stupid

1bpp 1mo ago
Because it sounds impressive to clueless people ($).
NetOpWibby 1mo ago
From the GitHub page: This is not a traditional computer operating system. We use the term "operating system" in two senses: - An operating system for the company to be productive with AI, in a way that is safe, so that the security team can sleep at night. - An operating system for AI workloads, analogous to the sense in which a traditional operating system manages compute workloads.
- alt227 1mo ago
  It looks to me like they just wanted to distinguish their product from other AI agents/sandboxes, so they called it an OS to make it sound bigger and better.
  - wuliwong 1mo ago
    Nah, it's just the current lingo in the AI world. Another one they will use is "brain." As far as I can tell "brain" and "OS" are interchangeable. :(
- orphea 1mo ago
  It's awful naming if they have to explain it.
- brazukadev 1mo ago
  the people criticizing the vibecoded name knows what they meant, it is just not correct. It is the same as vegan meat.
  - aziaziazi 1mo ago
    Excluding vegetables from what convey “meat” was also not correct around 1300-1500. Definitions changes with usage and only time will tell the future of vegan steaks, meats, milks, sauvages, butters and other parties. > food, nourishment, sustenance > Narrower sense of "flesh of warm-blooded animals killed and used as food" is attested from c. 1300 https://www.etymonline.com/word/meat https://www.etymonline.com/word/meat
- arandomhuman 1mo ago
  Wow this is really poor justification for its name, the folks at cloudflare really should not be overloading the term "Operating System" pointlessly like this.
  - MattyRad 1mo ago
    They even put it in quotes, because they know what they did. Maybe just take out the word "traditional" and be honest: "This is not an operating system. We're redefining the term because it is convenient for marketing."
    - lern_too_spel 1mo ago
      It is standard English writing style to quote words you are talking about.
Havoc 1mo ago
Cause they’re trying to build an ecosystem
radlad 1mo ago
I think because the idea of an "agent operating system" is starting to feel more and more inevitable. Since I can use AI to: - Pull information from external sources - Transform and/or augment that information - Publish information I almost do not need a traditional OS anymore. This obviously isn't entirely true: I still use it to interact directly with humans, and it's the way I access my LLM. For now.
- tkel 1mo ago
  Does your LLM have hardware drivers in it? this is silly.
  - alt227 1mo ago
    Agreed, its like OSes have become so invisible people have actually forgotten what they do.
  - jryle70 1mo ago
    But "virtual machine" is not? Maybe "Virtual OS" is more acceptable?
  - arandomhuman 1mo ago
    This is really approaching peak AI psychosis
  - radlad 1mo ago
    I'm obviously not saying that LLMs replace the glue between hardware and software. That would be absurd. An operating system is just the interface a user has to the programs they run on their computer. Surely you can imagine a world where you boot into a ChatGPT-like interface instead of the desktop OS you are familiar with? Different computing paradigms already exist: mobile OS sure, but also ChromeOS... heck, install Arch Linux and you're dropped into a shell by default - not a GUI. How is this so different? And it doesn't even have to replace your existing OS to be your operating system: If you purchase a cloud VM (say from AWS or DigitalOcean), you're likely running an operating system on top of another operating system already.
mrcwinn 1mo ago
[flagged]
- thomastjeffery 1mo ago
  I disagree. Harness is a pretty great word, and it doesn't already have another familiar meaning.
shostack 1mo ago
Because AI enables a new layer more akin to an actual OS. But also because I imagine they all want all the things running through them and an OS is the widest net they can cast in that direction.
orsorna 1mo ago
Same reason why grifters adopted web3 when Web 3.0 was already an established term.
ikania2026 1mo ago
i too clicked the link by this exactly 2 characters, "OS" should NOT be used in this way.
bearjaws 1mo ago
[flagged]
ignoramous 1mo ago
Andy Jassy et al didn't quite name it that, but AWS was being thought of internally as "Internet OS".
- lern_too_spel 1mo ago
  AWS as an OS also makes sense to me. An OS abstracts the underlying hardware, so the user doesn't have to worry about other users of that hardware if they don't want to and restrict interaction with other user programs in ways that protect those other programs. This is different from OS-less embedded programming, which does have device driver libraries but does not have an OS. People here seem to have a completely wrong idea of what an OS is and are really adamant about it.
dwroberts 1mo ago
I agree, it has now become a cliche buzzword that product managers slap on boring non-technical things to make them sound important. Isn’t there even a bug tracker that some company calls an ‘issue OS’ or something absurd?
kentonv 1mo ago
Mostly to get trolls to retweet and complain about it for free advertising. It's working. ;)
- ncr100 1mo ago
  Is this a public-relations policy at Cloudflare?
sixdimensional 1mo ago
You're missing the subtle marketecture trick here they are doing.. Non-technical people don't always think of an OS as the computer OS. To them, sometimes it means more like standard operating procedure or process - a standard way of doing things. Secondly, for tech products, calling yourself an OS, you are associating yourself with things like Windows, Mac or Linux. You are indirectly trying to grandstand and position yourself as meaningful enough to be an "OS" when clearly, that is far from what an app layer + AI/LLM on top of a real OS is. The biggest giveaway is this, and I'm exposing it right here -from a technical perspective, what operating system computer technology was built from scratch from first principles around AI/LLM? Someone wants to be the first company to get huge sums of money/funding to be that startup/project, so that is also a positioning tactic. The issue is of course, most people are standing on the shoulders of giants at this point... and OS has this conflicted meaning with nontechnical users also about work process vs the software that runs my computer.
- fl4regun 1mo ago
  >you are associating yourself with things like Windows, Mac or Linux But this is nothing like those things.
  - sixdimensional 1mo ago
    Yes - I agree - that is what I am trying to say in fact. But the association gets made because of the naming. The only dictionary definition of "operating system" I see is like the technical one on Wikipedia [1], which IS more like Windows, Mac or Linux.. not like an app or platform. From my concise Oxford English Dictionary, for example.. "operating system, n. the low-level software that supports a computer's basic functions". Like, would it be better if it was just called the "Cloudflare App"? Or the "Cloudflare App Platform"? or the "Cloudflare Platform App"? Those aren't clear winners either, they could easily be confused for product offerings or other things. They could name it, like, "Cloudflare Rocket" (random product name) or "Cloudflare Jane" (e.g. personality) and then say, "this is the desktop app for Cloudflare Jane, which is a platform where we put all these tools and capabilities that combine with agentic powers".. but then it wouldn't have the marketing flair either. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_system
pizzafeelsright 1mo ago
People do not use an 'OS' anymore. Anything internet is a hundred pieces of hardware over 1000 kilometers apart providing an interface to an application with a KVM (for now)
clhodapp 1mo ago
Marketing types have started subbing in "Operating System" for "Platform" lately. And, because it feels bold and fresh to them, they often name whole product an "OS" when they do this in order to make anyone who talks about the product re-sell the pitch for them.
neop1x 1mo ago
It's such a bad decision. It just creates more confusion.

1bpp 1mo ago

Because it sounds impressive to clueless people ($).

From the GitHub page: This is not a traditional computer operating system. We use the term "operating system" in two senses: - An operating system for the company to be productive with AI, in a way that is safe, so that the security team can sleep at night. - An operating system for AI workloads, analogous to the sense in which a traditional operating system manages compute workloads.

alt227 1mo ago
It looks to me like they just wanted to distinguish their product from other AI agents/sandboxes, so they called it an OS to make it sound bigger and better.
- wuliwong 1mo ago
  Nah, it's just the current lingo in the AI world. Another one they will use is "brain." As far as I can tell "brain" and "OS" are interchangeable. :(
orphea 1mo ago
It's awful naming if they have to explain it.
brazukadev 1mo ago
the people criticizing the vibecoded name knows what they meant, it is just not correct. It is the same as vegan meat.
- aziaziazi 1mo ago
  Excluding vegetables from what convey “meat” was also not correct around 1300-1500. Definitions changes with usage and only time will tell the future of vegan steaks, meats, milks, sauvages, butters and other parties. > food, nourishment, sustenance > Narrower sense of "flesh of warm-blooded animals killed and used as food" is attested from c. 1300 https://www.etymonline.com/word/meat https://www.etymonline.com/word/meat
arandomhuman 1mo ago
Wow this is really poor justification for its name, the folks at cloudflare really should not be overloading the term "Operating System" pointlessly like this.
- MattyRad 1mo ago
  They even put it in quotes, because they know what they did. Maybe just take out the word "traditional" and be honest: "This is not an operating system. We're redefining the term because it is convenient for marketing."
  - lern_too_spel 1mo ago
    It is standard English writing style to quote words you are talking about.

Havoc 1mo ago

Cause they’re trying to build an ecosystem

radlad 1mo ago

I think because the idea of an "agent operating system" is starting to feel more and more inevitable. Since I can use AI to: - Pull information from external sources - Transform and/or augment that information - Publish information I almost do not need a traditional OS anymore. This obviously isn't entirely true: I still use it to interact directly with humans, and it's the way I access my LLM. For now.

tkel 1mo ago
Does your LLM have hardware drivers in it? this is silly.
- alt227 1mo ago
  Agreed, its like OSes have become so invisible people have actually forgotten what they do.
- jryle70 1mo ago
  But "virtual machine" is not? Maybe "Virtual OS" is more acceptable?
- arandomhuman 1mo ago
  This is really approaching peak AI psychosis
- radlad 1mo ago
  I'm obviously not saying that LLMs replace the glue between hardware and software. That would be absurd. An operating system is just the interface a user has to the programs they run on their computer. Surely you can imagine a world where you boot into a ChatGPT-like interface instead of the desktop OS you are familiar with? Different computing paradigms already exist: mobile OS sure, but also ChromeOS... heck, install Arch Linux and you're dropped into a shell by default - not a GUI. How is this so different? And it doesn't even have to replace your existing OS to be your operating system: If you purchase a cloud VM (say from AWS or DigitalOcean), you're likely running an operating system on top of another operating system already.

mrcwinn 1mo ago

[flagged]

thomastjeffery 1mo ago
I disagree. Harness is a pretty great word, and it doesn't already have another familiar meaning.

shostack 1mo ago

Because AI enables a new layer more akin to an actual OS. But also because I imagine they all want all the things running through them and an OS is the widest net they can cast in that direction.

orsorna 1mo ago

Same reason why grifters adopted web3 when Web 3.0 was already an established term.

ikania2026 1mo ago

i too clicked the link by this exactly 2 characters, "OS" should NOT be used in this way.

bearjaws 1mo ago

[flagged]

ignoramous 1mo ago

Andy Jassy et al didn't quite name it that, but AWS was being thought of internally as "Internet OS".

lern_too_spel 1mo ago
AWS as an OS also makes sense to me. An OS abstracts the underlying hardware, so the user doesn't have to worry about other users of that hardware if they don't want to and restrict interaction with other user programs in ways that protect those other programs. This is different from OS-less embedded programming, which does have device driver libraries but does not have an OS. People here seem to have a completely wrong idea of what an OS is and are really adamant about it.

dwroberts 1mo ago

I agree, it has now become a cliche buzzword that product managers slap on boring non-technical things to make them sound important. Isn’t there even a bug tracker that some company calls an ‘issue OS’ or something absurd?

kentonv 1mo ago

Mostly to get trolls to retweet and complain about it for free advertising. It's working. ;)

ncr100 1mo ago
Is this a public-relations policy at Cloudflare?

sixdimensional 1mo ago

You're missing the subtle marketecture trick here they are doing.. Non-technical people don't always think of an OS as the computer OS. To them, sometimes it means more like standard operating procedure or process - a standard way of doing things. Secondly, for tech products, calling yourself an OS, you are associating yourself with things like Windows, Mac or Linux. You are indirectly trying to grandstand and position yourself as meaningful enough to be an "OS" when clearly, that is far from what an app layer + AI/LLM on top of a real OS is. The biggest giveaway is this, and I'm exposing it right here -from a technical perspective, what operating system computer technology was built from scratch from first principles around AI/LLM? Someone wants to be the first company to get huge sums of money/funding to be that startup/project, so that is also a positioning tactic. The issue is of course, most people are standing on the shoulders of giants at this point... and OS has this conflicted meaning with nontechnical users also about work process vs the software that runs my computer.

fl4regun 1mo ago
>you are associating yourself with things like Windows, Mac or Linux But this is nothing like those things.
- sixdimensional 1mo ago
  Yes - I agree - that is what I am trying to say in fact. But the association gets made because of the naming. The only dictionary definition of "operating system" I see is like the technical one on Wikipedia [1], which IS more like Windows, Mac or Linux.. not like an app or platform. From my concise Oxford English Dictionary, for example.. "operating system, n. the low-level software that supports a computer's basic functions". Like, would it be better if it was just called the "Cloudflare App"? Or the "Cloudflare App Platform"? or the "Cloudflare Platform App"? Those aren't clear winners either, they could easily be confused for product offerings or other things. They could name it, like, "Cloudflare Rocket" (random product name) or "Cloudflare Jane" (e.g. personality) and then say, "this is the desktop app for Cloudflare Jane, which is a platform where we put all these tools and capabilities that combine with agentic powers".. but then it wouldn't have the marketing flair either. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_system

pizzafeelsright 1mo ago

People do not use an 'OS' anymore. Anything internet is a hundred pieces of hardware over 1000 kilometers apart providing an interface to an application with a KVM (for now)

clhodapp 1mo ago

Marketing types have started subbing in "Operating System" for "Platform" lately. And, because it feels bold and fresh to them, they often name whole product an "OS" when they do this in order to make anyone who talks about the product re-sell the pitch for them.

neop1x 1mo ago

It's such a bad decision. It just creates more confusion.