Re: Two Macedonias
On Fri, Sep 24, 2004 at 04:21:57PM +0100, MJ Ray wrote:
> On 2004-09-24 15:41:54 +0100 Florian Weimer <fw@deneb.enyo.de> wrote:
>
> >Following others in the area of geographical names helps to avoid
> >conflicts. It's not Debian's task to take side in such international
> >disputes.
>
> Should we follow the Republic of Macedonia, the EU foreign ministers,
> ISO or someone else? Unless we've a previously published decision, it
> probably will be interpreted as taking sides. Do we have one?
>
in case debian has to take sides, my opinion as an austrian debian user
currently working in (macedonia, the republic of macedonia, FYROM):
the whole name discussion is highly political it's not only about a
province in greece having a similar name with a post socialistic republic
and cultural heritage it's also about slavic minorities in greece and
communistic partisans after world war the second possible property claims
against greece and the such. but it's about macedonian (fyrom) nationlism.
there is historical reasons for all three mentioned names, but there would
be historical reasons to call almost every country in the world differently.
the main problem is finding a name for a country that has more or less never
really existed during history in terms what we understand as a country
nowadays, unill 1991, and whose borders have been set up rather randomly
during the balkan wars at the beginning of the 20th century.
still the people living on that piece of earth have developed a strong
identity refering to themselves as macedonians, while i guess the greeks
living in the greek macedonia could and do still take there lational
identity from greece. (i learned about alexander the great during greek
history and in ancient greek language)
to put it in short using FYROM sffends people in their national identity,
using macedonia (with or without the repblic extension) would offend a group
of people on a level lower than national identity.
furthermore debian as a system provided by people for people should respect
the right of a nation to choose their own name. and debian calling this
contry fyrom will not effect them to call themselves fyromians.
so i think we should call things by their name free software is somehow
political taking the side of the people and work for a world where we
won't have such problems anymore since people refer to themselves as
earthlings.
ffpx float
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