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Comment by jszymborski | Hacker News Reader

I think the continued co-opting of the name of a first nation as their "brand" despite repeated calls from stake holders to do otherwise has caused plenty of harm to the ASF brand.

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It's no worse than Amazon being named after the rainforest and river despite not originating there, or Apple being named after the fruit despite not being a greengrocer. Names get reused, it's not a big deal.

Amazon is a place. Apple is a fruit. Apache is a people. Specifically, a people that had genocide committed against them. It’s at least a little worse.

> Co-founder Brian Behlendorf states how the name 'Apache' was chosen: "I suggested the name Apache partly because the web technologies at the time that were launching were being called cyber this or spider that or something on those themes and I was like we need something a little more interesting, a little more romantic, not to be a cultural appropriator or anything like that, I had just seen a documentary about Geronimo and the last days of a Native American tribe called the Apaches, right, who succumbed to the invasion from the West, from the United States, and they were the last tribe to give up their territory and for me that almost romantically represented what I felt we were doing with this web-server project..."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Apache_Software_Foundation...

That is almost certainly a retcon - their FAQ used to say otherwise, back in the late 1990s:

> Why the name "Apache"?

> A cute name which stuck. Apache is "A PAtCHy server". It was based on some existing code and a series of "patch files".

https://web.archive.org/web/19970106233141/http://www.apache...

Hm, interesting. I guess they both could be true, like I could totally see myself sitting around trying to come up with a fun name for my software project and being influenced by a film I saw the previous weekend. But given that the documentary where the quote originated smells more like marketing than anything else, I would not be surprised at all if this were indeed a retcon. I wish the docu was still up.

When Microsoft started getting into the web server business with the gift that keeps on giving that’s IIS, they were using that “patchy server” as a dig on Apache and how more professional IIS is. The Apache project then scrubbed it from all their docs.

Worse how? The ASF isn't murdering anyone or saying that mass killings from hundreds of years ago were a good thing.

All they did was reuse a name. What's the problem?

I'll take it that you really want the answer to these questions. The Apache are a group of tribes in Southwest. The name comes from Spanish when the Conquistadors invaded. The tribes didn't have a strong group identity. This changed over the next few hundred years.

More than can fit in an HN comment, entire cultures were destroyed. This was through disease, war, imprisonment, and outright repression. "Apache" is an identity that some still hold on to after this genocide. And someone saw this history, thought what these people went through "romantically represented" his web server project, and took on the name.

If you don't see how this is any different from calling your company Apple so you show up ahead of Atari in the phone book, I don't know what to tell you.

> despite repeated calls from stake holders

Last time I checked it was a small organisation run by 2 or 3 people with no real standing to speak for anyone but themselves. And AFAIK that was also the only time a major objection was raised.

And look, if you dislike the name then by all means voice your objections and let's have the discussion. I dislike the reactionary "STFU" response, which just shuts every discussion down. What I also dislike is this kind of pretence, which also shuts down the discussion.

I don't recall tell anyone to STFU, I'm just doing what you said, voicing my objections. The brand is tarnished in my eyes by their use of the name of a first nation.

I think your comment is pretty good evidence that I haven't shut down any discussion, I just know where I stand on the matter.

I just realised this now, technically every race/group is the name of a first nation.

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