We decided to avoid using “free” or “libre” in the name because we don’t think it does the project justice.

Extremely correct call.

“Luanti” is a wordplay on the Finnish word luonti (“creation”) and the programming language Minetest Luanti employs for games and mods, Lua.

In other words it’s the result of mashing Finnish and Portuguese words together. (Lua language is the word for “Moon”. Cue to the logo.)

Intended pronunciation is probably around ['luɐ̯n.ti], although the diphthong doesn’t exist in Finnish. I think that you can get close enough of that in English by saying “Loo an tea”.

Now, if you can only convince some Lemmy users to not say “play minetest luanti lol” once others ask something about Minecraft, even contextually unrelated… some at least have the decency to point out a specific Minetest→Luanti modpack. Plenty don’t even.

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against Luanti, and I have quite a few things against Microsoft. My issue is exactly what the blog editors are highlighting - it is not a libre Minecraft clone dammit, it’s its own thing. And in certain aspects it might become an even bigger thing, as a platform for voxel games in general.

And overall I think that it’s a good sign that the project is getting its own name instead of being named after something else.

We decided to avoid using “free” or “libre” in the name because we don’t think it does the project justice.

This is the best project naming decision you could make in the FOSS space.

“Luanti” is a wordplay on the Finnish word luonti (“creation”) and the programming language Minetest Luanti employs for games and mods, Lua.

And this is among the worst. I mean the programming language part. Even Rust projects strive to avoid this sort of naming, so focus on your project’s purpose and identity, cuz nobody that doesn’t actively do development cares, especially users. Roblox is a platform that involves playing and creating games, also uses Lua as its language of choice but you know what’s actively missing from it’s title? The name of the Lua language!

TLDR: They avoided putting the FOSS-ness in the name but put the programming language. To-may-to, to-mah-to. They avoid one naming fallacy only to embrace another.