from Hacker News

Natives in Tech asks Apache Software Foundation to change name

by jeremiahlee on 1/10/23, 4:36 PM with 133 comments

• by qazpot on 1/10/23, 5:02 PM

  Just leaving this here

  According to The Apache Software Foundation, its name was chosen "from respect for the various Native American nations collectively referred to as Apache, well-known for their superior skills in warfare strategy and their inexhaustible endurance".[15] This was in a context in which it seemed that the open internet -- based on free exchange of open source code -- appeared to be soon subjected to a kind of conquer by proprietary software vendor Microsoft; Apache co-creator Brian Behlendorf -- originator of the name -- saw his effort somewhat parallel that of Geronimo, Chief of the last of the free Apache peoples.[16][17] But it conceded that the name "also makes a cute pun on 'a patchy web server'—a server made from a series of patches".

• by fidgewidge on 1/10/23, 5:54 PM

  Renaming Apache on any kind of sane timeframe is impossible. The name is baked into hundreds of millions of lines of Java in such a way that if you attempted to rename it, all you'd do is cause chaos, bugs and security vulnerabilities on an epic scale for the next 30 years and it still wouldn't be done by the end. Renaming git master branches is a quick walk in the park compared to that.

  Which is why the correct response to these people is to tell them they're welcome to maintain forks of Apache software that uses different names and advertise them to other people, but they should not attempt to go further, like by insinuating that everyone writing and using Apache software (millions of people) are racist, because that is inflammatory, wrong, and outside of the USA most probably libel.

  And for those who haven't figured it out yet, this is exactly why so many of us were and still are opposed to the stupid git master branch rename. Only the wilfully blind couldn't see this sort of escalation coming. Until people power tripping on bogus victimhood claims are consistently given the cold shoulder the amount of chaos they cause will increase fast and hard.

• by BeefWellington on 1/10/23, 5:20 PM

  Making no judgements about this, I would point out that the name Apache, like a lot of names for native American groups were used by the Spanish as they went across that part of the Americas. Various Spanish "explorers" of that era had many different names for the same group, per Wikipedia[1] and its citation[2]. The name Apache was settled on to be the descriptor for the various groups sometime in the late 1890s/early 1900s by the Federal Government.

  Obviously every discussion of naming winds up being controversial. On one hand, the name wasn't strictly culturally part of their identity until the Spanish came along, and probably not even until 1900s or so. But, the government essentially making it that particular group of people's identity then solidified that and enshrined it.

  A question I would pose to everyone responding negatively here is this: If it were clearly a profit-motivated company using this name, like, say, Microsoft, Apple, or Google, would it be as obvious that they "shouldn't change their name"?

  I'm not convinced there's a good answer here but maybe the authors do have a point regarding the Apache Foundation's support of native communities that bear the name they've trademarked and use.

  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache#Name

  [2]: Brugge, David M. (1968). Navajos in the Catholic Church Records of New Mexico 1694 - 1875. Window Rock, Arizona: Research Section, The Navajo Tribe.

      In a detailed study of New Mexico Catholic Church records, David M. Brugge identifies 15 tribal names which the Spanish used to refer to the Apache. These were drawn from records of about 1000 baptisms from 1704 to 1862.

• by londons_explore on 1/10/23, 4:57 PM

  Renaming things is the classic example of wasted effort. The ROI is nil - both in a monetary sense, but also in a discovery and invention sense.

  But in this case, there is a "return" - that is lack of confusion of all users between the apache software foundation and the Apache group of tribes.

  Your stance on this issue will be determined by what you view as the bigger cost: The time taken by everyone who has to deal with a rename of all apache references, vs the loss of value caused by confusion between the group of tribes and the software foundation.

• by RegnisGnaw on 1/10/23, 4:49 PM

  I really think the overestimated the marketshare of Apache HTTP Server: "and the Apache® HTTP Server, which is used nearly everywhere to proxy requests to incoming servers."

• by vfclists on 1/11/23, 3:33 AM

  The name of the group Natives In Tech says it all.

  A group probably sponsored or backed by some white owned and controlled foundations, just like Black Lives Matter.

  I'd love to see their articles of incorporation.

• by latchkey on 1/10/23, 5:00 PM

  My favorite ASF project name: https://geronimo.apache.org/

  (Disclosure: i'm an asf member)

• by steve_gh on 1/10/23, 4:57 PM

  More proof (if any were needed) that "Naming things" is one of the two* core computing problems.

  * Alongside "Cache consistency" and "Off-by-one errors"

• by dstroot on 1/10/23, 5:02 PM

  I had always heard that the original name for the HTTP server was because it was just “a bunch of patches”. Seems a better name for the foundation is a good thing.

• by meltyness on 1/10/23, 5:38 PM

  Harms claimed:

    This type of erasure undermines the abilities of Native and non-Native people to work together
  
    Romanticizing Indigenous culture [...] is harmful. It categorizes Indigenous people within the bounds of the stereotype [...]
  

  Obviously diversity is important and stereotyping is bad, but Apache is just a nation. It's like demonizing using "pangea" or "constantinople" for a street name. Obviously it wouldn't offend me if Apache took action to remediate, but I think the importance of the complaints in this article are overstated.

  At the risk of being guilty of cultural erasure, maybe it would be in the author's interest to be constructive about amplifying culture rather than destructive. This isn't about pedagogy amplifying some narrow view, it's barely even an homage, it's a positive view of history written hundreds of years ago. If you want to discredit that history, you'll have to be more specific.

• by johnea on 1/10/23, 6:30 PM

  Maybe they should use: Apatchy

  In conformance to the many needed patches roots?

• by LinuxBender on 1/10/23, 4:58 PM

  I am not sure if this is the elephant in the room but might this eventually lead to renaming most of the United States either to a neutral name or back to the names that Native Americans gave them? [1] Many websites also still refer to Native Americans as Indians. Louis C.K. has a bit about that one but I shall refrain from linking to it, because language. I support renaming the states.

  [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_place_names_of_Native_...

• by dvaun on 1/10/23, 5:29 PM

  @dang Why is this story flagged?

• by badhombres on 1/10/23, 4:50 PM

  It's going to take a little more than a sed statement to make this change

• by roughly on 1/10/23, 6:17 PM

  There seems to be a lot of people here conflating the effort it would take to make the change with whether the ask is justified.

  Europeans committed genocide in America - that's not a questionable statement, that was the stated policy of the early United States government, as well as that of most colonizing powers. We then named a bunch of things after the folks we committed genocide on, and made a bunch of racist caricatures of those people and slapped them on buildings, sports teams, and other cultural institutions. The survivors of that genocide are asking we stop doing that. It's a reasonable ask. It's probably not going to happen in this case, because it's a lot of fucking work, but it's a reasonable ask. They'd also like their land back, as well as their worldly possessions, maybe an apology, and, like, whatever else you do to make up for trying to wipe out several distinct entire peoples, and that's also sort of morally hard to argue with, even though it's also not going to happen. It's possible to say that a claim is justified and also that the work to do it is sufficiently large that it's not going to happen. It doesn't feel good, but it shouldn't.

• by gamache on 1/10/23, 4:53 PM

  It started out as a patchy version of NCSA HTTPD. That's the joke. A patchy webserver.

  EDIT: I am aware that the name was retconned into a more "sophisticated" origin story, but the original project docs back me up. https://web.archive.org/web/19970415054031/http://www.apache...

  > Why is it called Apache?

  > The Apache group was formed around a number of people who provided patch files that had been written for NCSA httpd 1.3. The result after combining them was A PAtCHy server.

• by yehudalouis on 1/10/23, 4:52 PM

  I'm still not sure I understand the cultural appropriation argument as a whole, including this one.

• by recuter on 1/10/23, 4:55 PM

  I'll just leave this here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APACHE_II

    APACHE ("Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II")

• by seydor on 1/10/23, 4:53 PM

  ,

• by GiorgioG on 1/10/23, 4:46 PM

  Who is going to touch this discussion with a 10 foot pole?

• by poszlem on 1/10/23, 4:55 PM

  I am sorry, but this is an absolutely insane take that will add a huge amount of work for people for no good reason whatsoever. It's the github master -> main debate all over again. I really hope we are past peak woke now and this won't fly. The amount of hours of work wasted for pointless renaming just has to be accounted somehow.

• by pmjones on 1/10/23, 4:53 PM

  I first read the title as "naive" technologists.

• by bitwize on 1/10/23, 4:47 PM

  Good. It's time for this to happen.