[TUHS] etymology of cron

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

On Thursday, 24 December 2015 at 10:17:53 -0500, John Cowan wrote:
> Clem Cole scripsit:
>
>> Rik in his role as the editor of ;login is going to try work with Doug and
>> to get something "published" into the next edition which should satisfy the
>> Wikipedia folks.   There is a minor issue is that Rik is technically past
>> the deadline but due to the holiday, there are a few days of grace that the
>> workers putting the issue together have said they will thankfully try to
>> handle.
>>
>> So maybe we can have get this fixed shortly.
>
> I don't think so.  Is ;login: a peer-reviewed journal?  It doesn't
> look like it to me.

One of the original references was from the proceedings of an AUUG
conference.  From personal experience I can confirm that the level of
review for the conferences fell far short of what USENIX did.

> Still, the current state says:
>
>     The origin of the name cron is from the Greek word for
>     time, ???????????? (chronos), according to its author Ken
>     Thompson[2][better source needed]. Others have suggested that the
>     name comes from the Greek God Chronos[3] or that it is an acronym
>     for "Command Run On Notice"[4] or "Commands Run Over Night",[5]
>     but the references lack substantiation.
>
> Even if someone is still grumbling on the talk page, that doesn't
> substantially misrepresent anything that I can see.

Yes, that last sentence was my update.  As I mentioned in an earlier
message, I think that it's appropriate that it should stay, if only to
stop people making the claim again in a more forceful manner.

But it would be nice to be able to remove the [better source needed].
It seems that there's only one person objecting to the changes.  I've
asked him on the talk page what he really wants.

Greg
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