Let's just put it this way, I'm not advertising in anything associated with my professional credibility that I use "lunatic", for the very obvious reason that it's possibly offensive to some people and that the word offers nothing to convey meaning. I don't have to find it personally offensive to not want to associate with it.
On the other hand, there are other people who might apply a different heuristic and guess that a project named 'lunatic' is less likely to attract the sort of people who might take, for example, a code of conduct as a tool to beat other contributors about the head. (I'm not saying that's you!)
I guess there are "swings and roundabouts" and peoples' rules of thumb differ, which is perhaps diversity that's all to the good.
To me (without reading any of their stuff, I don't know if this is what they were shooting at), "lunatic" makes me think "high performance" and "this is a very difficult project with high payoff if we succeed, we're a little bit crazy (in a good way) to try, eh?".
> definition of "lunatic" - "a person who is mentally ill (not in technical use)."
Have you, your relatives or your friends ever used the phrases "are you insane?" and "are you out of your mind"? Were they being insesitive. Should you/they be more thoughtful how it would be perceived by other people, that you/they so casually use a very modern (and not 19th century) refernces to mental illness?
What about, I don't know, Insane Clown Posse who formed in 1989 and won Outstanding Hip-Hop Artist/Group at Detroit Music Awards? They probably need to re-think their name, too?
Looney Tunes? (Looney is the same as Lunatic) Or looking at some of the adjacent terms, perhaps Animaniacs?
I personally thought it was a witty name. Had a tiny mental chuckle when I read it.
Better question is, why not? If it's not offensive, then what is the reason you "wish they had called it something else"?
> It's just a really strange choice
Doesn't sound like a real criticism to me...