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Lastly, to put this thing to rest, one of the committers contacted a Minnesota (USA) based organization for protecting Native American culture. The agreement was that Geronimo will contain an internationalization module for one or more Native American languages. In other words, "they" are OK with it - so should everyone else.

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Wiki MarkupAlthough it is easy to say "\[the name] should be viewed as a tribute and should be taken positively," you cannot ignore the fact that it may not be. Even if that is our intent, it needs to be made more clear that that is our intent. I remember reading an article years ago on Bonobo (the component technology behind GNOME). Within the resources section, there was a point about the fact that the bonobo was also a monkey, and an endangered species at that, followed by a link for more information. Now, I may have missed something, but I've seen nothing of the sort in all my readings about Apache Geronimo. If the name Geronimo is chosen, I would encourage this project to follow suit. If you want to honor Geronimo, then explicitly state that on the main project web site. Include links for the interested reader to learn more about who Geronimo was. Make an honest attempt to ensure that anyone using your software is also made more aware of Geronimo as a real person, rather than just a marketing term. If steps along these lines are taken, and there are localization modules for Native American languages, and the Native American community shows it support for the usage of Geronimo as a project name, then I would see no problem with it. I believe the Apache project using Geronimo for a name would be better likened to Soviet Russia circa 1980 to use JFK as an airport name, rather than the US deciding to name an airport after JFK. We need to respect (and asking permission is a great way to show respect) the culture from which we are pulling the name Geronimo, rather than just assuming they will feel honored. We have no inherent right to use the name, unless that right is granted to us.

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What about the Washington Redskins? Or the Florida State Seminoles? I wander if people in Jakarta are offended? Let's not take ourselves too seriously with this name issue. Personally, I think Geronimo is great.

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