ahmedelwerdany / foss-acronyms

List of abbreviations used within the FOSS community, and their definitions and usages.

FOSS Community Acronyms

List of abbreviations used within the FOSS community, and their definitions and usages. This list inludes more common english acronyms popular on internet.

Maintained by folks at D-EDGE.

Contributing

If you have a GitHub account, you can submit a pull request to any json in the data folder.

Tip

Write out the full name when you want to introduce a term (with the acronym in brackets). Use only the acronym after this. Example:

Companies don’t usually talk about FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). Instead, they use phrases such as “shiny object syndrome” and “market expectations.” Google is a great example of how FOMO can creep in.

FOMO Is Disastrous for Company Strategies by Ruben Ugarte

If you are only going to use the acronym once, maybe don't use it at all and rely on the whole expression instead.

Acronyms

Abbreviation	Definition	Usage	Example
ACK	ACKnowledgement	Agreed/accepted change. A loose ACK can be confusing. It's best to avoid them unless it's a documentation/comment only change in which case there is nothing to test/verify; therefore the tested/untested distinction is not there	Humanizer, Bitcoin
AFAICT	As Far As I Can Tell		aiohttp
AFAIK	As Far As I Know	AFAIK, he will be away for three months.	Diffract
AOA	Analysis of Alternatives		/r/programming
ASAP	As Soon As Possible	It is an informal way to say that who wrote it is busy at the moment and will reply as soon as he can.	Britannica
BBL	Brown Bag Lunch	It is an informal training meeting usually performed during lunch. It is a nice way to share knowledge, train on technical, business or any kind of skills. The speaker does not have to be an expert of the topic.	brownbaglunch on Github (French)
CCW	Comment and Criticism Welcome
CLA	Contributor License Agreement		Play Framework, Microsoft
CMV	Change My View
CoC	Code of Conduct
Concept ACK	Concept ACKnowledgement	Agree with the idea and overall direction, but haven't reviewed the code changes or tested them	Bitcoin
DevOps	Devlopment Operations
DRY	Don't Repeat Yourself	This is used in couple with modular programming, and emphasize on code reusability	Wikipedia
DTO	Data Transfer Object		DTO Wikipedia
DX	Developer Experience	Guidelines to make onboarding and development of a project easy to get into and maintain	Near (Github)
ETA	Estimated Time of Arrival	To ask when something will be ready	/r/fsharp
FOMO	Fear Of Missing Out	The feeling of apprehension that one is either not in the know or missing out on information, events, experiences, or life decisions that could make one's life better	Hacker News
FOSS/FLOSS	Free & Open Source Software	That is both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source code is openly shared so that people are encouraged to voluntarily improve the design of the software	FOSS/FLOSS
FOUC	Flash Of Unstyled Content	When a web page appears briefly with the browser's default styles prior to loading an external CSS stylesheet	md-block, Wikipedia
FP	Functional Programming
FYA	For Your Action	When you ask someone to do something usually on an email or correspondence
FYI	For Your Information		ArduPilot, F#'s slack
IANAL	I Am Not A Lawyer	Used often before talking about licensing issues	HackerNews, CUPS
ICYMI	In Case You Missed It
IIRC	If I Recall Correctly
IMO	In My Opinion
ITT	In This Thread
KISS	Keep It Simple, Stupid	KISS is a design principle stating that most systems work fine if it is built/kept simple than making the system complex.	Wikipedia
LGTM	Looks Good To Me	See ACK	Cardidy, Simple Icons, proposal-array-grouping
LOC/SLOC	(Source) Lines Of Code	Above each file on GitHub you can find something like `50 lines (43 sloc)`. The difference is the empty lines.	GitHub
MPA	Multi-Page Application		/r/web_design
MR	Merge Request	See PR
MVP	Minimum Viable Product	A prototype version of a product with the minimum required feature set	Wikipedia
NACK/NAK	Negative ACKnowledgement	Disagree with the code changes/concept. Should be accompanied by an explanation	Bitcoin
NIH	Not Invented Here	NIH Syndrome is a decision-making error where we tend to value our own ideas above those conceived by people outside of our group	learnosity
NP	No Problem	No stress, it is fine
OOP	Object Oriented Programming
OP	Original Post/Original Poster	Original Poster (who started a thread) or Original Post (the message that started it)	/r/ProgrammerHumor, StackExchange
PEBCAK	Problem Exists Between Keyboard and Chair	It is a user error, not a problem / bug in the program	Humanizer
PR	Pull Request	Tell others about changes you've pushed to a branch in a repository	/r/vuejs
RFC	Request For Comments
RTFM	Read The F*****g Manual	Originally a way for the _gurus_ to get rid of trivial questions from newbies, now a humble way to state that a mistake or a waste of time can be avoided by reading the freaking manual first (assuming it exists).	XKCD comic, Github commits
SCM	Source Code Management	See VCS
SOLID	Single responsibility, Open-closed, Liskov substitution, Interface segregation and Dependency inversion	5 (of many) software design principles, promoted by Robert "Uncle Bob" Martin	Wikipedia
SPA	Single-Page Application		/r/web_design
SRP	Single-Responsibility Principle	The single-responsibility principle is a computer-programming principle that states that every module, class or function in a computer program should have responsibility over a single part of that program's functionality, and it should encapsulate that part. wikipedia	/r/csharp/
SSOC	Social Summer of Code	Social foundation offers this two-month long summer program for students to learn about the open-source culture and get involved in the community. Participants contribute to real-life projects under the guidance of experienced mentors.	Social Summer of Code
TBD	To Be Defined/Done		Software Craft Website
tested ACK	Tested ACKnowledgment	Reviewed the code changes and have verified the functionality or bug fix	Bitcoin
TIL	Today I Learned	TIL that TIL is Today I Learned	/r/ProgrammerTIL/
TYSM	Thank You So Much		Cyber Definitions
utACK	UnTested ACKnowledgment	Reviewed and agree with the code changes but haven't actually tested them	Bitcoin
VCS	Version Control Software	A way to keep a track of the changes in the code so that if something goes wrong, we can make comparisons in different code versions and revert to any previous version that we want. Git, SVN or Mercurial are VCS	/r/ProgrammerHumor, softwaretestinghelp.com
WDYT	What Do You Think		Bitrise Workflow Editor
WIP	Work In Progress	Do not merge yet	GitLab's blog
WRT	With Respect to	In reference to a particular thing or situation	Tailwind Blog, Hacker News
WYSIWYG	What You See Is What You Get	It is a system in which editing software allows content to be edited in a form that resembles its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product. It is typically used an arbitrary markup language to define the codes/tags	WYSIWYG
XP	Extreme Programming		Wikipedia
YAGNI	You Ain't Gonna Need It
YMMV	Your Mileage May Vary

Common chat acronyms

Abbreviation	Definition
AFK	Away From Keyboard
BRB	Be Right Back
CMIIW	Correct me if i'm wrong
IKR	I know, right
ILY	I love you
IRL	In Real Life
IYKYK	If You Know You Know
LMFAO	Laughing my freaking *a* off
LMK	Let me know
NVM	Never mind
OFC	Of course
ROFL	Rolling on floor laughing
SMH	Shaking my head
STFU	Shut the *freak* up
YOLO	You only live once

Communities, Companies, Organizations

Abbreviation	Meaning	URL	What they do
FSF	Free Software Foundation	https://www.fsf.org	Oversee a number of open source organizations
GH	GitHub	https://github.com	Source code host, owned by Microsoft
GNU	Collection of free software, a license	https://gnu.org	program of FSF, develops many linux tools and a commonly used license
MS	Microsoft	https://microsoft.com	Makers of windows, azure, vscode, and other tools that might be relevent to developers
OSI	Open Source Initiative	https://opensource.org	Defining 'Open Source'
SO	StackOverflow	https://stackoverflow.com	Popular question and answer website

Stacks

Abbreviation	Definition	Example
EFK	Elasticsearch, Fluentd, and Kibana	How To Set Up an Elasticsearch, Fluentd and Kibana (EFK) Logging Stack on Kubernetes
ELK	Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana	What is the ELK Stack?
LAMP	Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP (Perl or Python)
LEMP	Linux, Nginx Server, MySQL, PHP (Perl or Python)
MEAN	MongoDB, Express.js, Angular.js, Node.js
MERN	MongoDB, Express.js, React.js, Node.js
SAFE	Suave (or Saturn), Azure, Fable, Elmish	/r/fsharp

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• The Jargon File
• Bitcoin's CONTRIBUTING.md
• Bitcoin hacker lingo (stolen from TCP)
• What do cryptic Github comments mean?