[abronan]

This applies to the entire industry, we are often inflating our products with terms that do not describe the reality. Technical accuracy is important because it can drive a purchase decision when comparing features with a competitor. Companies and individuals invest time and money on these software/services, misleading them with inaccuracies can harm them directly or their business.

At least it's an honest statement from SpiderOak, it's better to fix a misuse of a term and admit an error than throwing a misleading term describing a product used by thousands of people and then delete it as if nothing happened.

When I see this post, I cannot help but think of how Docker described "Swarm mode" orchestration features during DockerCon 2016 using the terms "self-healing" and "self-organizing". Obviously, "Swarm mode" was neither "self-healing" nor "self-organizing" and a possibility is that they had no idea what those terms meant, but it looked good on paper and from a marketing point of view. While they have fixed it in the documentation after pointing this out internally, these terms have leaked in many blog posts and are still in plenty of talks recording on Youtube. It became hopeless to stop the spread of misinformation.

Despite this change, a lot of SpiderOak customers are still going to use the term Zero-Knowledge to describe the software to their friend/co-workers or business partners. The term will stick to them for awhile.