"viral" (was RE: Licensing options for firmware)

[John Cowan]

Joichi Ito scripsit:

> I think "viral" doesn't work. It has some very specific means in the
> marketing world. Virality is basically the rate at which a product or meme
> is propagated. If it is greater than one, it increases and a virality of
> less than one slowly dies. You derive this number from the probability that
> an infected person transmits to others, the number of people they transmit
> to and the probability that a recipient becomes infected. Virality is a
> variable and doesn't express very well the point I don't think.

What is more, outside that world it has drawn to it (or rather has had from
the beginning: the Latin word _virus_ means among other things 'poison' and
'slime', which is why it has no Latin plural) some pretty negative connotations.

-- 
They do not preach                              John Cowan
  that their God will rouse them                jcowan at reutershealth.com
    A little before the nuts work loose.        http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
They do not teach                               http://www.reutershealth.com
  that His Pity allows them                         --Rudyard Kipling,
    to drop their job when they damn-well choose.   "The Sons of Martha"