"When the technology was originally devised, it ran over optical fiber cables only and, as such, was called "Fiber Channel". Later, the ability to run over copper cabling was added to the specification. In order to avoid confusion and to create a unique name, the industry decided to change the spelling and use the British English fibre for the name of the standard."

And this reduced confusion how?

@jbcrawford because British English is fucking ridiculous, and full of inherited oddities, so we're used to insane legacy words that don't mean what they used too. Obviously American English has inherited many of the older examples of this, but the Brits have just kept up with the habit of not using words consistently.