IMO this is a very American outlook that is now being forced onto the rest of the world. There are multiple situations where developers would use a word, and be trampled by American developers for the choice of words.
Hiawatha didn’t know what “America” was and presumably wouldn’t have conceptualized himself as being part of a pan-“Native American” identity.
Assuming you could even explain the concept of a web server to a pre-industrial person, it’s impossible to know how he himself would have felt about this.
I'd love to have input from people who are Mohawk, Onondaga, Oneida, Cayugaa, or Seneca.
BTW, I decided to take a look at Apache Incubator's projects to see if there's any outrage over (non-exhaustive list):
- Kafka (Bohemian Jewish writer)
- Chukwa (a dialect of Kulung language of Nepal)
- Geronimo (Apache leader)
- Hama (a city in Syria)
- Apollo, Hermes, Aurora, Aries, Isis (multiple Greek, Roman, and Egyptian gods)
- Joshua (Hebrew name)
- Kylin (name of a mythical creature from East Asian legends)
- Omid (Persian name)
- Onami (Japanese destroyers)
- Pig (insensitive to Muslims)
- Trinidad, and, you guessed it, Tobago (also many other geographical names)
...