[ofiwg] OFI WG - minor naming issue -- asking for comment

[Ryan, Jim]

Jason, thanks for the note and this is a critical point. You've set it up nicely. The point, I think, is that abbreviations are inherently "non-specific". If you Google "SFI" you'll get all kinds of things, including the Wikipedia definition of the "Sustainable Forest Initiative", a non-profit organization for quality standards for race cars and many others. That's why it's important the context is set by providing the full text "Scalable Fabric Interfaces".

At the same time, I wouldn't consider using the abbreviation "IBM" in this way. Some abbreviations should be viewed as simply taken.

Therefore I think the ultimate questions is whether any of the other uses of "SFI" rise to the level of making it essentially unavailable for our use

Thanks again for the point you made

Regards, Jim

-----Original Message-----
From: Jason Gunthorpe [mailto:jgunthorpe at obsidianresearch.com] 
Sent: Friday, November 7, 2014 9:45 AM
To: Hefty, Sean
Cc: Ryan, Jim; ofiwg at lists.openfabrics.org
Subject: Re: [ofiwg] OFI WG - minor naming issue -- asking for comment

On Fri, Nov 07, 2014 at 05:33:38PM +0000, Hefty, Sean wrote:
> > I???m sorry for this additional email to the reflector. Based on 
> > some of the responses I got, I need to explain how I intend to use 
> > the abbreviation ???SFI???. The abbreviation ???SFI??? would follow 
> > the use of the term ???Scalable Fabric Interface??? in a press 
> > release or whatever, so it???d be clear from that context.
> 
> Libfabric doesn't just jump off the marketing pages?  :)

SFI is also already used by a trade association for the electrical specificaiton for the physical interface between a chip and a
SFP+/QSFP+ module.

Jason