For Good Reason, Apache Foundation Says ‘Goodbye’ to Iconic Feather Logo

The Apache Software Foundation is making changes in an attempt to right a wrong it unintentionally created when it adopted its name 25-years ago.

The iconic feather logo that has represented The Apache Software Foundation since its beginning is on the way out. Over the years there have been two of them. The first logo was used from the time of the foundation’s founding in 1999, and was replaced by a more modern looking logo in 2016. Both are pretty cool (I prefer the earlier version, but that’s neither here nor there), and both feathers have compelled some folks to have tattoo artists ink them onto their skin.

For a little while longer the feather will remain as ASF’s logo. That’ll change on October 7, when a new logo will be unveiled in Denver at the organization’s annual conference, which until last year was called ApacheCon but which is now called Community Over Code.

“ASF Members will have the opportunity to contribute to the branding process and vote on the new logo,” Shane Curcuru, the foundation’s chairperson said in an announcement on the ASF website on Thursday. “Changes to our brand will also apply to ASF open-source projects using indigenous imagery. Watch the ASF blog for updates on progress and join us October 7-10, 2024 at Community Over Code where we’ll unveil the new logo.”

As to the “ASF open-source projects using indigenous imagery” part: Curcuru indicates that Native American themed art will no longer be allowed and that the foundation’s marketing folks are already working to get in front of that before the October deadline arrives.

“If your project uses a logo that includes indigenous imagery, ASF M&P [Marketing and Publicity] can provide graphic design services to update your logo to be in compliance,” he said. “If we have not contacted your project yet, get in touch with us.”

Respectfully Righting Wrongs

This year’s dropping of the feather logo serves the same purpose as last year’s dropping of the ApacheCon name, of course. It’s being done out of respect, and out of an awareness that we should treat Native peoples with the same respect we expect for ourselves — with “we” being anyone who’s not Native American.

“As a non-Indigenous entity, we acknowledge that it is inappropriate for the Foundation to use Indigenous themes or language,” is how Curcuru put it. “We thank Natives in Tech and other members of the broader open-source community for bringing this issue to the forefront.”

The name “Apache” was originally suggested by one of the foundation’s founders, Brian Behlendorf, a well known open-source leader who’s now associated with Linux Foundation, EFF, and Mozilla. He spoke of the “Apache” choice in the documentary Trillions and Trillions Served:

“I had just seen a documentary about Geronimo and the last days of a Native American tribe called the Apaches, right, who succumbed to the invasion from the West, from the United States, and they were the last tribe to give up their territory and for me that almost romantically represented what I felt we were doing with this web-server project.”

Sounds good, eh? The noble red man attempting to hold on to his identity until the very end.

That’s not quite how that sentiment is understood by 21st century Apaches.

It’s a “frankly outdated spaghetti-Western ‘romantic’ presentation of a living and vibrant community as dead and gone in order to build a technology company ‘for the greater good'” is how Adam Recvlohe, Holly Grimm, and Desiree Kane put it in a January 2023 article taking ASF to task.

Respect. Not Politics

To me, actions such as those currently being taken by ASF are best when motivated out of respect for others and not by what is politically acceptable — and with some reservations, I feel as if that’s what’s happening in these cases. In a way it’s like a tale of two tribes, one being a tribe of open-source software practitioners trying to make amends and fix the damage that’s been done by usurping the name and reimaging the culture of a tribe that predates the arrival of Europeans by a millennium or more.

Regardless of what I think, there are some who are accusing ASF of giving in to politics. On Friday, the website Tux Machines proclaimed in a headline that Apache Software Foundation Becomes Politics, which isn’t surprising given publisher Roy Schestowitz’s penchant for conspiracy theories.

Even at sane and sensible LWN, a commentor with the handle rweikusat2 couldn’t be dissuaded of the notion that a right was being trampled because birds and feathers also exist where Apache people do not:

“Birds live in all parts of the world, they’re not exclusively native to America. Consequently, feathers have been used by cultures all over the world. In particular, feathers, usually, goose feathers, have been used for writing with ink until fairly recent times (at least until the first third of of the 19th century) and that’s exactly what the Apache feather looks like (and very probably, was originally supposed to allude to, although that’s just a conjecture of mine).”

At least on LWN there was a consensus among other commentors that the feather logo representing an organization called “Apache” superseded any notion about the universality of birds and feathers.

ASF’s Halfway Measures

To my way of thinking, small moves such as coming up with a new logo or changing a conference name don’t address the elephant in the room, which is that the foundation is still named after the Apache people, which makes the actions ASF has so far taken seem to be something short of a collective halfway measure.

ASF needs to just bite the bullet and change its name — but it claims that would cost too much money, be too time consuming, require too much work, and would “divert the majority of our funding and volunteers away from our primary mission of providing software for the public good.”

Doesn’t that just sound like someone speaking with forked tongue?