On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 06:05:41PM +0100, Christian PERRIER wrote: > Quoting Dmitry E. Oboukhov (unera@debian.org): > > PW> As an example of the practical effects of flags in the context of > > PW> Debian; a number of years ago we lost our kernel maintainer, partially > > PW> because KDE in Debian included a flag of a country the maintainer (and > > PW> his government) disapproved of. A team formed to replace him, but > > PW> losing contributors still sucks. > > Hgm.. > > When I saw KDE (it was 1.xx version) it contained lang switcher which > > used flags as language indicator. What happened to it? How is this task > > resolved now? > Paul is slightly wrong in his example. We lost the kernel maintainer > because he was thinking that using a compromise in the iso-codes > package to have a common name for TW that is "Taiwan" and not the > official "Taiwan, Province of China" name....was offensive for him and > China "mainland" people (while having "Taiwan, Province of China" > only was offensive to citizens of the island that everybody in the > world names "Taiwan"). > So, nothing to do with flags, indeed. But, besides the underlying > problem (that has no "good" solution), that example shows that > anything related to political geography is highly sensitive. And, for > this, Paul's example is correct. Herbert's resignation mail is here: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/05/msg00276.html I've always found it ambiguous what Herbert was referring to when he said "this is too much" - the use of the Taiwanese flag? The original listing of Taiwan as a country that started the thread? Denis rudely telling Herbert that he should resign and join Fedora? - but I don't conclude that his resignation had nothing to do with flags. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/ slangasek@ubuntu.com vorlon@debian.org
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