A group symbolizing Indigenous people today in technological innovation is calling on the Apache Software Foundation to adjust its identify, centered in part on the foundation’s code of perform.
Nonprofit team Natives in Tech writes in a blog site write-up that although many companies have appropriated indigenous society, “none of them are as big, prestigious, or nicely-regarded as The Apache Program Basis is in software package circles.” The firm normally takes situation with Apache co-creator Brian Behlendorf’s clarification for why he prompt the identify and its “Spaghetti Western” tropes, as well as the Foundation’s feather brand and its mentioned “reverence and appreciation” for a singular, broadly described “Apache” id.
In the 2020 self-sponsored documentary “Trillions and Trillions Served,” Behlendorf states he sought a name extra evocative than “New HTTPd” or the “Cyber-this or Spider-that” nomenclature that was well-liked at the time:
I was like, probably some thing a little bit a lot more appealing, a minor little bit far more passionate, and—not to be a cultural appropriator or something like that—but I’d just viewed a documentary about Geronimo and kind of the very last times of the Native American tribe known as the Apaches, correct? Who succumbed to the invasion from the West, from the United States, and they have been the previous tribe to give up their territory.
And for me, that practically romantically represented what I felt we had been undertaking with this net server undertaking, which was, at the time, Microsoft owned 95 percent of the desktops all they experienced to do was arrive up with a browser and a server, and if they owned both hyperlinks, it was sort of game over.
In a write-up authored by Adam Recvlohe, Holly Grimm, and Desiree Kane, Natives in Tech wrote that Behlendorf’s “frankly outdated spaghetti-Western ‘romantic’ presentation of a residing and vibrant group as useless and absent in get establish a know-how firm ‘for the better good’ is as ignorant as it is offensive.” The team calls on the Basis to “just take the needed actions wanted to convey the ally-ship they market so deeply on their web-site” and, in retaining with the Foundation’s code of perform, “be mindful in the terms [they] pick out” in any name transform.
The Foundation emailed a assertion to The Register in reaction to the nonprofit’s get in touch with for renaming. A spokesperson wrote that the Foundation has heard the fears and is listening. “As a nonprofit operate by volunteers, variations will will need time to be thoroughly weighed with associates, the board, and our lawful staff. Our users are discovering alternate strategies to address it, but we you should not have nearly anything to share at this time,” the spokesperson wrote.
A variety of website sources from the time of the Apache project’s founding, now located typically by way of the Net Archive (and compiled on Wikipedia), advise at the very least a concurrent contemplating for the name: Its world-wide-web server started as a series of patches to the NCSA HTTPd server. In April 2000, Behlendorf instructed Linux Journal that other folks in the corporation assumed the name was a pun on “a patchy world-wide-web server.” But Behlendorf insisted the pun wasn’t his intent. “It just kind of connoted: ‘Take no prisoners. Be sort of aggressive and kick some ass,'” he stated.
The notion of the Apache as a singular, extinct tribe, a single that place up a notable struggle in the deal with of a conquering aggressor, is at the main of Natives in Tech’s grievance. The group notes that there are 8 federally regarded tribes with “Apache” in their title, representing “hundreds and countless numbers of residing, breathing people today.” Notably, a stereotypical “pure, reverent, and straightforward” depiction (i.e., a “noble savage“) “distances Indigenous people today from modern technology, the incredibly point the [Apache] basis signifies,” Natives in Tech writes.
Reconsideration of Indigenous-derived names has been underway for some time, with much more momentum in new yrs. Past calendar year, the Cherokee Country questioned Jeep to change the identify of its Cherokee and Grand Cherokee SUVs. Specialist sporting activities teams in Cleveland and Washington, DC, have gone through identify and symbol changes just lately after decades of resistance.
