Re: why must Debian call Taiwan a "Province of China"?
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In debian-devel Andreas Barth <aba@not.so.argh.org> wrote:
> Nothing. I consider it most appropriate if we use the name for any
> country in the way the people itself prefer to call it (except of
> course, if the name would be non-unique).
Exactly.
As the only DD from Taiwan (that I am aware of), I seem to be a little
bit late for the flamefest. In any case, I am of the opinion that
"Taiwan" should be used in place of "Taiwan, Province of China" for the
following reasons, listed in decreasing order of importance:
1. People in Taiwan prefer to be called that way, and many of them
have strong negative feelings being referred to as a province of
China. This is important because:
a. We are the people actually living there, and therefore
b. We are the people who will most likely make use of this entry
2. The phrase "Taiwan, Province of China" is politically biased, and
using politically biased terms tend to produce flame, attract
trolls, and generate lots of unnecessary bad feelings. Among the
common names used to refer to Taiwan:
Republic of China (official name of the country)
Taiwan
Taiwan, Province of China (duh)
The name "Taiwan" has generally been regarded as a relatively
neutral description by the parties involved, and thus should be
considered superior to the other two names for Debian's purposes.
3. Following (2), using the phrase "Taiwan, Province of China" could
set up a precedent that could eventually turn Debian into a
political battleground, which would have a negative impact on
Debian's goal of bring Free Software to the people.
4. The phrase "Taiwan, Province of China" is longer and does not add
much useful information compared to "Taiwan" from our users'
perspectives.
Using the phrase "Taiwan, Province of China" would only serve to
alienate our users in Taiwan and serves no useful purposes toward the
goals of the project. Therefore I recommend that we simply call Taiwan
Taiwan.
Regards,
- --
Chuan-kai Lin
http://www.cse.ogi.edu/~linchuan/
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