An update: having been made aware of the issue, the developer has renamed his library to Enot[0], which is meant to evoke the Russian word for raccoon, yenot.
> should you censor a word that's otherwise perfectly fine
because of its use in slang?
Yes, you should. What is "slang", how about we just call it what it is: Language.
Also it began being used as a racial slur in 1837 so the point is completely moot anyway.
> Well North America is around 320 million people (not sure if that includes Canada at around 36 million). So the chances are that an English speaking programmer also comes form North America is probably quite high. Over here in the UK the word "coon" is recognised as a racial slur (so add 66 million more people). Probably the same in Australia and New Zealand (29 million combined) Unfortunate but the name could be more important than the project
I agree wit this guy.
I donno change the name or not. I'm not going to be telling my co-workers to check out "coon-hub" anytime soon.
In Australia it's a popular brand of cheese and named after the man (Edward Coon) who created the processes used to make it - it used to be made by Kraft.
Nobody would use it as a slur - that would be weird an antiquated - but you might recognise it if you watch a lot of American films.
Erlang should probably change the name though. So should node-gyp.
Upon further reflection: I disagree with people saying he shouldn't change the name / "muh PC culture", but honestly I kinda feel sorry for him because it's going to be a bunch of work for something that's REALLY not his fault.
An example of how rampant "political correctness" in media has become: closed-captioning sanitation.
For example, any word in which any segment of characters could be interpreted as a slur in any context has that segment obliterated by X's. Take an example from the film "True Grit" where Cogburn refers to a "coon (racoon) hunt", it gets converted to "XXXX hunt". Or when "suspicion" is spoken in NYPD Blue, it becomes "suXXXXion". "Nippy" (cold) becomes "XXXpy". Even the obviously benign "Cocktail" becomes "XXXXtail".
Such substitution seems to occur across the board: MeTV, Movies!, H&I, Decades, Cozi. I suspect they all subscribe to transcription services following similar rules.
That said, given that "coon" in isolation has an ugly history as a slur (I personally had never heard it in that vein before its use as such in the film "M.A.S.H."), it's best avoided.
Wow, what an unfortunate name. I'm not even American and I recognized the problem immediately.
I'm sure I've heard the slur used in movies (Forrest Gump, maybe?)
After reading parts of the thread, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that they didn't know the connotations of the name. Yet, they will save themselves a lot of trouble if they just rename the project.
Trying to defend the name on the grounds that they didn't know and that it is a slur that fell out of fashion in the 70's will not help them.
Even if it is the best tool of its kind, I still wouldn't want to use it with a name like that, if just to avoid embarrassment when talking to my colleagues.
[0] http://erlang.2086793.n4.nabble.com/Enot-Erlang-package-mana...