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

[Fred Hebert]

What I'm saying is that it does not matter how I interpret things. I asked
and the author said publicly it was a raccoon. I'm okay with that
explanation and I'm ready to believe it.

My point is that other people won't ask the author, won't know who he is,
and will pick an interpretation and stick with it. They won't need the
context, they won't need anything. They'll just do it. The name can be
interpreted in a racist way, and so it's pretty much guaranteed that it
will be eventually interpreted that way. The author is free to go ahead and
keep the name, and the users and onlookers will be free to read whatever
they want in that name.

That is 100% my point.

On Mon, Feb 12, 2018 at 11:17 AM, Krzysztof Jurewicz <
krzysztof.jurewicz@REDACTED> wrote:

> Fred Hebert writes:
>
> > 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.
>
> Merriam-Webster online dictionary (naming itself as “America’s
> most-trusted online dictionary”) says that there two meanings of “coon”:
>
> ⒈ raccoon;
> ⒉ offensive — used as an insulting and contemptuous term for a black
> person.
>
> I presume that context matters. What makes you think that in this context
> this word means ⒉? Wikipedia in the article about raccoon says that is also
> known coloquially as “coon”, so I guess this is not a very uncommon usage.
>
> Or are you saying that non-racist usages of words that have also racist
> meanings should be eventually abandoned?
>
> (I’m not a native speaker, so bear with my eventual ignorance).
>
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