On Wed, 2006-01-18 at 10:01 +0100, Gerfried Fuchs wrote: > * Matt Zimmerman <mdz@ubuntu.com> [2006-01-17 11:36]: > > Kennedy wasn't a citizen of Berlin, either, not literally. The world > > understood what he meant, though, when he said (somewhat awkwardly) that he > > was. > > Again my question: Do you seriously consider calling Linus and RMS > Debian Developers? Shuttleworth is using a *figure of speech*. A figure of speech is something not to be taken literally. Figures of speech are used all the time and they make language more interesting. Mr Zimmerman's reference to Kennedy is an excellent example of such a metaphorical construct. When Kennedy said that, there will undoubtedly have been people who uttered "Hey, he's not German! He's lying!". But luckily most people will have understood what he meant. Same goes for Shuttleworth here, if it wasn't obvious from the context already (which IMO it was), it's certainly clear now that this a way to express how important Debian developers are to the state of Ubuntu. And yes indeed, in the same sense could he have said that Stallman or Torvalds are Ubuntu or Debian developers. As an indication of how important these two people are for the foundations of our OS. Not literally. I hope this confusion is cleared up a bit now. Thijs
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