this might be a stupid question, but: i generally just write “ES” when talking about Elasticsearch. is there an (official) abbreviation for OpenSearch? “OS” also already stands for the Operating System (hey, you can run OS on an OS 
) - can we still use it when talking about OpenSearch. is there another abbreviation? should we avoid using an abbreviation (which is what i’ve done so far - but it’s much more convenient to write a short abbreviation 
)
I think that the ES abbreviation is good for shortening the naming in the code base. Otherwise, when speaking, it would be better for now to use the full name (i.e. k8s is never said out loud “Kay eight Es”).
For the code- i agree this is one of the first things we asked ourselves. Since language tends to evolve this could stem from a use case where a suggested abbreviation is required.
I agree that ‘OS’ is not a great option at the moment
Not a commandment, but a request: please don’t abbreviate OpenSearch.
I know - “but-my-fingers-have-to-hit-8-more-keys” - however it’s actually kind of important for the success of our project. Let me elaborate:
OpenSearch is new and one of the biggest struggles of anything new making sure folks can find us on different platforms and raise awareness about the project. More awareness = more use = more contributors = better software (in theory ).
If everyone uses the same term, then we can all communicate effectively and find each other. Additionally, once the project gets wider adoption, this will help search engines and platforms like StackOverflow connect all the right information. So, for example, someone asking “How do I find data in logs” gets an answers like “I use OpenSearch” x100, instead of x50 for OS and x50 for o8h or whatever. Suddenly, OpenSearch is an important term.
Additionally, a newb may not know what these abbreviations mean. True story: several years ago I was so frustrated by seeing ‘k8s’ over and over. I actually knew vaguely what Kubernetes was but I just didn’t connect it with ‘k8s’. 
Finally, this is also echoed in the trademark policy. The trademark helps everyone using the project - if some shortening or abbreviation catches on that isn’t in the trademark, it’s possible that another organization could use this against our community and cause unneeded chaos.
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thanks for the clarification, this answers my question
i sort-of presumed that there was no abbreviation and none should be used, but wasn’t 100% sure - it wasn’t explicitly stated anywhere so far.
Reminds me of the Go/Golang debacle. People couldn’t just agree to call it “Go” and allow search engines to sort things out, intelligently floating programming language results to the top based on context. Now everyone blogging about Go feels the need to pad their metadata with a redundant alias that it seems will never go away. D:
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<aside>
You know, that’s a big pet peeve of mine. Ungoogle-able terms in tech are actually a form of gatekeeping.
I remember learning Rust a few years back and trying to pop a few error messages into google and realizing that a ton of the language is just dropped in search engine indexing. Hence terms ‘turbofish’ (::<type>) that people use to make them more google-able. But connecting those symbols to that term is someone has to be told somewhere.
So, terms we create to make things discoverable or google or whatever end up making them less discoverable, especially to folks not ‘in the know’.
</aside>
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