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Why Does Nobody Use Lemmy?
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this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2026
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Where do all those meme posts about "Lemmy is bad name / bad branding" come from? I've seen it recurrently enough every time someone launches a FOSS thing that I would normally suspect it's part of a LLM farm or a scam attempt from some sort of naming / patents agency, but I've seen these reactions from long enough (2015-ish).
It's named after a famous musician that was active for like 30+ years. Half the results when you search "Lemmy" are him, not the platform. Oh, and he had an unfortunate collection of Nazi memorabilia - he claimed it wasn't because he liked the nazis just that he liked the look of their shit...
FOSS often ends up with bad names unfortunately. People never know what is going to become big when they start a project and they might get a giggle out of the name when it's a small project. By the time the project becomes big enough that the name might actually start being a problem, it is also known by that name and changing it could significantly impact how many people keep using it. Unfortunately, a name change is often a touchy subject for any project.
Coca-Cola the drink is named after the drug and no one complains. Plus, words can have and acquire more than one meaning during their lifetime (see eg.: "fine" which means all of bad, regular and good).
Coca-Cola literally contained drugs when it was invented... The name wasn't in conflict, it was extremely descriptive. I feel like that analogy only works if we find out that Lemmy was originally created for the sole purpose of discussing Motorhead.
Like, you asked where these posts complaining about names of Lemmy (and other FOSS projects) comes from and the above is the explanation. Just because you disagree doesn't mean all the people that do agree are a psyop or bots, lol.