Re: Just a single Question for the Candidates
* Andrew Suffield (asuffield@debian.org) wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 07, 2004 at 11:40:21PM +0000, MJ Ray wrote:
> > Further generalisation:
> >
> > Don't do anything to us, just because of what we are.
> >
> > That has the benefit of being non-sexist and fitting most (all?)
> > discrimination.
>
> It's entirely unworkable, however. At some point you have to draw the
> line - Debian is founded upon discrimination against non-free things
> and against broken code, and by extension, their creators and
> users. The NM process is founded upon discrimination against the
> stupid and the useless. The US is founded upon discrimination against
> the poor. Etcetera.
There is a major difference between discrimination based on
sex/gender/sexuality/religion/race/etc/etc/etc and discrimination on
quality of code/non-free licenses/etc/etc/etc - the first set tend to be
inherent to the person being discriminated against, while the second set
can be changed.
When we discriminate against poor code, we are not saying ``You are
beneath us, go away'', we are saying ``This needs fixed - go away and
make it not suck''.
The line we draw, therefore, is at the point where things change from
being implicit and unchangeable, to explicit and changeable.
cheers,
iain
--
"If sharing a thing in no way diminishes it, it is not
rightly owned if it is not shared." -- St. Augustine
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