Some of the current means of naming applications on a server:

unix: /opt

Prevalent in the System V variants of Unix, this standard places each application into a seperate directory/folder based on the name of the application and sometimes the name of the vendor.

Flaws:

• No means to manage multiple versions of the same application
• Vendor of the application is largely unecessary in the name
• NO definition of where to place data

Benefits:

• Applications are seperated from each other

unix: /usr/local

Virtually ubiquitous with modern unix installations. This convention has been pushed most prevalently by the open-source community.

Flaws:

• NO seperation of applications (everything is in one big bucket)
• NO definition of where to place data

Benefits:

• It is seperated from the Operating System

MS-Windows: {drive}\Program Files

This standard in windows is much like /opt in Unix. Each application has a folder in this root folder. The same Flaws and Benefits exist as for /opt

MacOS-X: /Applications

This standard in MacOS-X is much like /opt in Unix. Each application has a folder in this root folder. The same Flaws and Benefits exist as for /opt