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Comment by patmcc | Hacker News Reader

Is anyone else displeased by their use of Grace Hopper's name? Has this academy contacted her estate for permission or blessing? If not, using her name to advertise a for-profit company is unethical at the very least.

Admiral Hopper is a pillar of computer science. It's shameful to make money off of her name like this.

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I agree this is scummy for what appears to be a profit-driven organization. Even if they had the approval of Hopper's estate (which isn't mentioned anywhere on the site), this is one area where the word "appropriation" seems fitting. This company is not a tribute to Grace Hopper's legacy.

I don't think it's OK to commercialize a dead person's name even with the permission of their estate. I wouldn't want my great grandchildren selling off the rights to my name to some organization I might have actively disliked when alive.

I wonder if Admiral Hopper would approve of a curriculum that directs graduates towards a specific career path in bootcamp format. Probably not.

Admiral Hopper was famous for explaining complex technical subjects in a simple way. This bootcamp doesn't seem to reflect that belief.

Do other Grace Hopper institutions have rights to the name, provided by Grace Hopper's estate?

http://ghc.anitaborg.org/about/

I assume you have the same problem with Tesla?

I'm not crazy about it, but using just a last name feels different than first+last - to me the latter seems like an active endorsement. Also Telsa has been dead 50 years longer than Hopper, which helps. And some names become genericized, almost like brands do - Einstein was a person but is now a synonym for smart/genius, so the Einstein Academy would bother me even less. Telsa feels somewhere between Hopper and Einstein on that scale.

I'd also have a problem with a 'Steve Jobs school for iPhone app development' or the 'Robin Williams comedy training centre'.

Also, Tesla is the SI unit of magnetic flux density, so it's in the lexicon independent of Nikola Tesla himself.

True, although both the company and the unit were named after Nikola, so not sure if that changes much.

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