It's meant to be open for many intepretations: - Open Source because, well, we are open source (github.com/democracyos/app) - Operating System because, well, we aim to build a layer on top of the current political system. - Open Society becasue, well, we aim for societies to become more participatory and democratic.

Pick your favorite flavor.. the goal is to nail how democracy should work in the 21st century.

Just had this epiphany: DemocracyOS's name is intrinsically democratic.

> Her team’s vision is to make DemocracyOS the “operating system of a more open and participatory government.”

From: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/07/des...

Open a PR for a name change. Let people +1. Boom, democracy in action.

Well, I think that it's a relevant analogy to what an operating system does. Like an OS a system of government (like Democracy) manages a collection of physical elements (institutions) and serves as an interface between those and the end-users (citizens.)

That's a metaphor, and its confusing if not mildly infuriating.

Agreed. Within the demographic that understands the acronym (OS=Operating System or Open Source, etc.), it's likely to be confusing. Outside the demographic, it's not useful as a metaphor because they don't know have an expansion for OS in their heads.

A metaphor is a type of analogy, just so you know. Also, could you elaborate on what is so infuriating?

I was expecting a democratically run Linux distro or some kind of framework for democratically pulling open source software.

Its more confusing than infuriating. Mainly because the term os makes sense only to people like me, but doesn't match what up with what people like me know it as.

The OS part of the name doesn't help anything. I'm guessing its only there so you could have the name in the URL.

#1 An OS does different things, you might want DemocracyUI

#2 Its a technical term out of place that redefines what an OS does, as a member of the technical community feel a sense of ownership for a term that I routinely use. Its infuriating when you mess with something that is mine.

The kind of hardware we deal with it's called Congress. There's where the party we've built comes into place.

Agreed, why not just choose "Democracy"?

I actually know who owns democracy.com but still, democracy reminisces a 2000 year old system.. we need to update that.

In the spirit of the US Military. "Improved Democracy" Or "Updated Democracy". If you're not familiar with this...search US Army IOTV to get an idea.

How about "Future Democracy System" or "Joint Democracy Platform" ;)

Democracy2.0?

It worked for the web...

"democracy reminisces a 2000 year old system" ... you have something better in mind?

In my opinion, democracy is probably the best we've got. The challenges have to do largely with engaging people in the realities of the process.

Because the domain will be expensive?