What RPM stands for

What RPM stands for

Posted Sep 19, 2003 20:11 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954)
In reply to: What RPM stands for by lovelace
Parent article: Revisiting RPM Package Management

RPM does not, in any common usage, stand for anything. Like most acronyms, it is a word in its own right and means much more to the reader than any 3 word phrase that the letters might stand for. In other words, RPM is an acronym, not an abbreviation.

"Red Hat Package Manager" is the etymology of the word. You can't declare the etymology to be different after the fact.

Still, people like having underlying phrases for acronyms, just for fun.
They make them up even for words whose etymology is not acronymal at all. In that spirit, we have whimsical things such as "RPM Package Manager."

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