> The akritai (singular akrites) is a term used in the Byzantine Empire in the 9th–11th centuries to denote the frontier soldiers guarding the Empire's eastern border, facing the Muslim states of the Middle East. (Wikipedia)
Akron means edge or border, so "frontiersman" or "those of the border".
EDIT: Commenters seem upset about the Muslim part, I didn’t mean to imply anything, you cannot just copy-paste contemporary disputes and prejudices a thousand years ago. In the historical context it’s just like most borders between different civilizations. The point is that they were a collective organization getting together to defend their land.
So, in terms of a security project an Akritas would be you running an EDR agent on a machine that you own, not some of the signatory companies who basically do not own anything on the edge (end user equipment).
Remains to be seen whether history will repeat itself: when the tax breaks/ free AI use stops, will anyone keep doing this?
Disclaimer: I have had nothing to do with this initiative, and was not consulted on the name.
if true, then choosing this name was a very bad decision.
Imagine how Muslims would feel, demonizing them even more, before they were terrorists, now they are attacking open source and hence some organizations need akrites to defend from them.
I really wish such organizations which try to demonize anyone, to fail miserably
But still, the name is a bad, uninformed choice.
It's not Muslim related even at the time they exists.
I wish malicious interpretations like yours would fail miserably. The word for the soldiers is about them, not who they fought.
I mean I guess we have stop calling things the Great Wall because it repelled incursions from the Manchurians and maybe those people who live in their ancestral lands who were defeated and incorporated into modern Chinese society might feel a tinge of anger…
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Carney%27s_Davos_speech