What does POI stand for?

POI stands for Poor Obfuscation Implementation. Why would we name our project such a derogatory name? Well, Microsoft's OLE 2 Compound Document Format is a poorly conceived thing. It is essentially an archive structured much like the old DOS FAT filesystem. Redmond chose, instead of using tar, gzip, zip, or arc, to invent their own archive format that does not provide any standard encryption or compression, is not very appendable, and is prone to fragmentation.

Poi is also a Hawaiian delicacy that Merriam-Webster's dictionary defines as: "A Hawaiian food of taro root cooked, pounded, and kneaded to a paste and often allowed to ferment." This seemed strangely descriptive of the file format.

So if you like acronyms, then POI is an acronym. If you hate them, then we just used the name of the food for our project. If you wish to signify your love or hate for acronyms, use POI or Poi to refer to the project, respectively.

Taken verbatim from the POI Documentation