No, local would NOT be just as good
Because local was already in use for something else. Changing what local did would have broken backwards compatibility in a large (and gratuitous) fashion.
It is a fact of life in any large software project. Things move in unanticipated directions. The name that you want is already taken. You therefore need a different name.
Cheers,
Ben
"good ideas and bad code build communities, the other three combinations do not"
- [link|http://archives.real-time.com/pipermail/cocoon-devel/2000-October/003023.html|Stefano Mazzocchi]