On Mon, Dec 15, 2003 at 11:03:00PM +0000, Roger Leigh wrote: > Branden Robinson <branden@debian.org> writes: > > > [I am not subscribed to debian -bsd.] > > > > What would be unacceptable about it, and why is it only a "borderline" > > case? What would push it over the borderline? > > Demons are evil, Demons don't exist. Consequently, their moral value is undefinable. > and the BSD mascot is a demon (albeit a stylised one). What does a *non*-stylized demon look like? Have you ever met one? Can you bring it over to my house so I can get a good look, put it in my car, and drive it to the Indianapolis Zoo? I'm sure they have some hungry students there who'd just love to get a paper in _Nature_ out of it. > On the other hand, it's not /intended/ to be evil. Eh? I thought you just said demons *are* evil (meaning, I presume, that evil is an inherent and essential characteristic of demons). Where, pray tell, do the intentions of the originators of BSD enter into the picture? > In this particular case, my personal thought on this is that the > intent outweighs the fact that it's a demon (come on, the BSD daemon > on the front of my FreeBSD Services box is holding a spanner and > wearing trainers--that's not exactly evil, is it?). What's evil about a name? > >> I don't have any good ideas as or an alternative right now--it's worse > >> than a tiebreaker! > > > > This is revealing. > > If you say so... > > > The fundamentalist mind is much more practiced at identifying what > > it's opposed to, than at identifying what it supports. > > Err, I disagree with choosing a name of evil meaning, Surely it's excusable, if our intentions are not evil, per your argument above. Or perhaps it isn't excusable, because intent cannot change essential characteristics, also per your argument above. > but haven't got a (good) alternative readily to hand, so suddenly I'm > a "fundamentalist"?! That's quite amusing. I'm amused as well as enlightened by your manner of argument. John H. Schaar said, "a fundamentalist is someone who hates sin more than he loves virtue." You appear to be letting your subjective valuations of names from medieval Christian demonology outweigh your subjective valuation of the Debian *BSD porting efforts, which I presume you regard as a virtuous activity (else, you'd exhort us to stop doing it). So, from my perspective, the shoe fits well. A coherent rebuttal is welcome. -- G. Branden Robinson | Exercise your freedom of religion. Debian GNU/Linux | Set fire to a church of your branden@debian.org | choice. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |
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