If you're talking about the name "scuttlebutt" then where I'm from (Upstate New York, USA) it's basically a synonym for chatter or gossip.
Butt is such an innocuous word for arse it is used by preschoolers and cartoons. It isn't offensive to anyone and clearly it no more means arse in this term than it does when referring to the end of a cigarette or gun or hitting someone with your head.
I once had a client see a server monitoring package refer to daemons and I thought I was going to be the victim of a satanic panic but I quickly pointed out how the spelling differed from the usual biblical version and that a bunch of hippies in california in the 60s were into mythology and the name stuck. People are weird.
In a similar vein, there's a CPU architecture called "brainfuck", oft-stylized as "brainfck". It's a lot* more memorable than something like MAOIIA or something.
I tend to be rather conservative in what I utter myself but I will actively defend the right of projects to use uncommon English words as names.
In fact I think it is a net positive.
If anything, if people actually cared about the disabled they should rejoice that this word is getting a new meaning. I for one didn't know the original meaning of that word until someone line you told me.
Oh, and if we give in on this the battle doesn't stop there, seems "butt" is next in line: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20831167
:)
Still, I like the name and would be sad if they changed it!
"Scuttlebutt" sounds like a hokey old timey word and it has only one definition.
As an English speaker, it's also miles better than "toot"(Mastodon) which has multiple definitions and the most common is "to fart".
It's just surprising to me since butt always was less formal than "posterior" and less rude than what we'd more frankly call an "ass".
I definitely want to acknowledge that I know not all environments are similar to mine :)
I'm just surprised to hear there are contexts where someone might find the phrase "I've fallen on my butt" to be more rude than if any other body part was mentioned. I would have assumed the problem is less the word choice and the fact that people are being rather prude about bodies and their function, much like grade schoolers are like to be.