I’ve been getting quite a

I’ve been getting quite a few different responses from yesterday’s query about Gnutella, only one of which provided any sort of evidence (opposed to the speculation provided by the other responses). Here’s a highly contradictory sampling of the responses:

- Drew Bell came up with some evidence (in the form of an audio interview on NPR with Gene Kan, one of the folks responsible for the Gnutella site) that Gnutella is pronounced exactly like the hazelnut spread: NUH-TEL-UH. I’m inclined to believe this.

- But some folks are convinced that the hazelnut spread is pronounced NEW-TEL-UH…and therefore the software product follows suit. I’m chalking this up to a difference between American pronunciation (NUH-TEL-UH) and European pronunciation (NEW-TEL-UH).

- Sticking a G in front of that, Gnutella would be pronounced GUH-NEW-TEL-UH.

- Supposedly, GNU is pronounced NEW. Not according to the GNU manifesto by Richard Stallman. Based upon that, we’re back to Gnutella being pronounced as NEW-TEL-UH.

- Based on the correct pronunciation of GNU, some folks think that Gnutella is then pronounced GUH-NEW-TEL-UH.

Confused yet? I know I am. Two things are clear however:

- People love to speculate and opine, even when specifically asked not to.

- Primary sources are hard to track down on the Web. The newness of the product in question, the sheer amount of information on the Web, and the relatively poor search mechanisms for sifting through that data all contribute to this.