[erlang-questions] Coon - new tool for building Erlang packages, dependency management and deploying Erlang services

[Fred Hebert]

You can very well name your software 'piss' or 'shitpile' for all I care.
Calling it a term that could be racist is certainly another thing entirely
and comparing piss to a racist term is certainly a false equivalency.

Anyone is of course free to name their software whatever they want. Picking
a racist name is however never going to be consequences-free as this e-mail
thread first shows on the first day of release, and adoption figures may
also reflect it. It also impacts the broader Erlang community to be sure. I
can't imagine someone doing a keynote in North America with that package
manager name and somehow expecting things to be fine, for example. If I
were on a program committee, I'd vote against it *and you could do nothing
about that no matter if you'd think I'd be offended for no reason or not*.
I could just choose to call the code of conduct in question and be done
with my explanation.

If the author of the *coon* package manager wants to keep going, I would
probably strongly suggest they put as many god damn image of raccoons as
they can on the website because there is certainly no cues as to what the
origin of the name is right here. If they care about the naming less than
the shitstorm and perception that will come back to them from it, then
maybe renaming is a good idea. For christ's sake, try *rcoon* if you
really *have
to name it after a raccoon* or something like that.

I would personally never want to introduce a tool with this name in a
workplace, tutorial, talk, book, or class. It's just not a good idea on any
level.

Nobody is forcing anyone to rename their packages here, but any marketing
person worth a dime would tell you that it does not matter that anyone
thinks others should be offended less. They'll react how they'll react and
you'll have to deal with the real world fallout coming out of it.

It's not presented well, it's bad optics, it's insensitive, and it's a bad
idea.


On Mon, Feb 12, 2018 at 9:34 AM, <zxq9@REDACTED> wrote:

> On 2018年2月13日火曜日 1時20分50秒 JST Dmitry Belyaev wrote:
> > By the way, do you know what a well known English word and a library
> Mocha mean in Russian?.. However it doesn't mean people should stop using
> the word.
>
> This.
>
> Emphatically this.
>
> I have a longer response, but I'm going to cool down a bit before I post
> it.
>
> Seriously, this crap has gone far enough.
>
> -Craig
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