Alexey Verkhovsky wrote:
> I want to ask one more question: why is the E-word anathema in this
> community? Yes, people choose fancy words for self-description. Yes, these
> words can become associated with bad things. And yes, staying away from the
> whole thing is a possible lifestyle choice. Changing the game is another
> equally valid choice, however. So, who or what are we, as a community,
> sending those "$&#* off!" signals to?
The problem with the term "enterprise" is that it doesn't seem to have a 
clear, consistent definition as applied to software (or, indeed, to 
anything else), which, in a software-centric community, makes it pretty 
worthless as a description.  As a result, it's not used within the 
community, and (speaking from my own point of view) we hear it from 
outside the community most often as "Ruby isn't ready for the 
enterprise," or "Ruby needs to support buzzword-feature-X to be taken 
seriously in the enterprise," so it's quite natural that a negative 
connotation should be attached - especially when those criticisms are 
unjustified.

Give us a rational, testable definition of "enterprise," and I think 
you'll find, negative connotations notwithstanding (and boy, do I love 
the term "enterprisey"), that the test will be passed without complaint. 
  It's just the utterly nebulous terminology (and the woolly thinking 
that often seems to accompany it) which gets peoples' backs up.

I see this as quite orthogonal to the "enterprise -> bloatware" 
association, although that may well play a part, however justified or 
unjustified it is.

All strictly IMHO, of course.

-- 
Alex