It's a real piece of free software (if you didn't already know; my irony detector is sometimes impaired). The inspiration for the name is ironically unironic: 'Jay Kreps chose to name the software after the author Franz Kafka because it is "a system optimized for writing", and he liked Kafka's work.'

Apache Kafka - Wikipedia

ahhh, interesting. I thought it was a joke first. Thanks for the article link. Might look further into this, it seems useful for a nostr relay. :)