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A flag day for Fedora's flags
In FESCo's 2009-03-28 meeting a policy on Flag usage for packages in Fedora was approved. Due to an oversight, this policy was not announced here. ;( Please see: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Package_Maintainers_Flags_... and direct any comments to FESCo in a ticket or via the devel list. Thanks, and sorry for the oversight. ;( kevin _______________________________________________ Fedora-devel-announce mailing list Fedora-devel-announce@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-anno...-- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list (Log in to post comments)
A flag day for Fedora's flags Posted May 18, 2009 22:04 UTC (Mon) by foom (subscriber, #14868) [Link] Removing flags because certain people are offended by certain other people's flags just seems crazy to me...I really don't see why someone living in Country/Location X should have any say what flag (or for that matter, name: the same issue surely applies there) is used for Country/Location Y. IMO the correct reaction is: "Is the flag for you? No? Then it's none of your business, shut up and go away."
A flag day for Fedora's flags Posted May 18, 2009 22:15 UTC (Mon) by dtlin (✭ supporter ✭, #36537) [Link]
There are many localities around the world with local disagreements
about whose governance or flag is actually valid. That would be the main cause of offense here.
I, for one, would be very upset if I found the People's Republic of China
A flag day for Fedora's flags Posted May 18, 2009 22:47 UTC (Mon) by foom (subscriber, #14868) [Link] > On the other side of the straitExactly! And what do "the people on the other side of the strait" have to do with anything. They can choose their own flag and their own name. It doesn't even matter if there's a territoriality dispute between the two entities: the existence of a flag doesn't say anything about what territory it covers. But some countries seem to claim the right to decide that other countries don't exist, despite all evidence to the contrary (a functioning government and people who identify themselves as being part of said country). It simply makes no sense. It's probably a similar situation in the middle east. I don't know to what exactly that message refers, but I assume it's about someone being offended at seeing Israel's flag, because they want to pretend Israel doesn't exist.
A flag day for Fedora's flags Posted May 18, 2009 23:03 UTC (Mon) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link] But some countries seem to claim the right to decide that other countries don't exist, despite all evidence to the contrary (a functioning government and people who identify themselves as being part of said country).Suppose a part of your country was annexed by another country and turned into a quasi-independent entity. That may be quite offensive to see the flag of that entity among national flags. Even if you can say "it's not for me", you cannot say "it's not my country", especially if you lived on that territory and were forced to leave it. Northern Cyprus and Abkhazia would be prime examples.
A flag day for Fedora's flags Posted May 19, 2009 0:44 UTC (Tue) by foom (subscriber, #14868) [Link] Suppose a part of your country was annexed by another country and turned into a quasi- independent entity. That may be quite offensive to see the flag of that entity among national flags. Even if you can say "it's not for me", you cannot say "it's not my country", especially if you lived on that territory and were forced to leave it. Northern Cyprus and Abkhazia would be prime examples. I certainly agree that it sucks to get kicked out of your homeland, no matter what flag or name! But, taking Northern Cyprus as an example...it's my understanding that they currently have their own government which is widely accepted as legitimate by the people who live there, and who consider themselves (currently) independent. And it's my understanding that that is not the case for Catalonia. The widely-accepted government of that region acts as a part of Spain. When there is no recognized government, things certainly become trickier. But the cases that seem to cause the most consternation (Israel, Palestine, Taiwan) all appear to be one nation deciding that another nation doesn't exist, when the other nation most certainly does exist: it has a government, and a people. (and for those three, even presence at the U.N.) There are certainly many political reasons for one nation to expressly not recognize the existence of another nation. (A common example being that you don't agree with the way the nation was formed, e.g. by kicking out some of the people who previously lived there.) But as much as you may wish it would, that doesn't actually make the nation cease to exist, and I don't see that those exclusionary politics really have any place in software, where there's no real harm in being inclusive.
A flag day for Fedora's flags Posted May 19, 2009 1:12 UTC (Tue) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link] Yes, people should be more tolerant, but some are not. As the already referenced message says:I understand the desire for pretty icons, but having the wrong icon show up in front of the wrong person in the school I teach at could have some very unpleasant effects.It would be nice not to have those "wrong persons" in schools, but software alone won't help here.
A flag day for Fedora's flags Posted May 19, 2009 1:17 UTC (Tue) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] Fedora's practices reflect Red Hat's business interests; Red Hat might not want to see their software banned by countries that are somewhat passionate on matters like this.Debian lost their kernel package maintainer over exactly this issue.
A flag day for Fedora's flags Posted May 19, 2009 18:58 UTC (Tue) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link]
This is far from the true story. First the kernel maintainer has other issues with project, not the least a strong pressure from the project to change the way the kernel was packaged and maintained.
Secondly, he resigned over a proposed change which was rejected and thus never implemented, only posted to debian-devel. So I do not think this was much more than the "final straw that break the camel back" as suggested by the "this is too much" closing remark.
A flag day for Fedora's flags Posted May 19, 2009 20:03 UTC (Tue) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link]
> This is far from the true story.
I meant "the full story". Apology for this typo that makes the post somewhat rude.
A flag day for Fedora's flags Posted May 19, 2009 14:50 UTC (Tue) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link]
Nothern Cyprus ...
I'm not quite sure when the Turks invaded, but ...
AIUI pretty much ALL the people who now live there are either immigrants from Turkey, or were born, after the invasion, to immigrants.
The region has been pretty much ethnically cleansed of true Cypriots, Greek and Turkish alike. The place is run FOR immigrants BY immigrants. And that is why most Cypriots (INCLUDING Turkish Cypriots) would object.
The same is true of large chunks of the West Bank. And if you go back in history you will find that, sadly, this is common. Even in my own neck of the woods you find that history has been rewritten to hide this fact - the original IRA was largely *Protestant*, it was Northern Ireland that was the hotbed of revolt against the English Crown, etc etc. You'll see similar incongruities in Scotland and Wales - the majority of "Welshmen" are cornish, most "Scots" are Picts, etc etc.
Cheers,
A flag day for Fedora's flags Posted May 26, 2009 18:53 UTC (Tue) by jmorris42 (subscriber, #2203) [Link]
> And that is why most Cypriots (INCLUDING Turkish Cypriots) would object.
To which the only sane answer is to say, "So?" In the end there are only two choices available and one way leads to madness.
Option one: Free Software adopts a policy of simply reflecting the reality on the ground and never allows a precedent for exceptions to become established. What flag is currently flying over the territory where the set of localization options apply and what do the inhabitants call the place? Show that. Tell any who object that it isn't our problem, that if they object to that particular flag flying over that area to go settle it in meatspace by diplomatic or military means and that should they be successful we will change the software to reflect the changed reality.
Option two: Get into huge flamefests, legal battles, etc. and bring every conflict in the world into our development process. And don't be deluded that just removing flags will solve anything. Removing the flag for Israel or Taiwan and leaving the name will only encourage the intolerant to continue their political cleansing until the name itself is removed, because it isn't the image of the flag that offends them, it is the recognition that the hated foe exists they object to and there isn't a technical solution to that problem.
Flags and realpolitik Posted May 18, 2009 23:05 UTC (Mon) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] Some people want to think that Israel should not be considered a country. Others think that Palestina should be, and therefore would want to ban their flag (or at least hide it as a country flag). Not all countries accept all other countries as countries. And apparently not all countries count the same.But there are other situations beyond those you discuss. In Spain we have a few regions (Euskadi and Catalonia the most prominent) with nationalistic aspirations, and where many people do not want to belong to the Spanish Crown. (Many others do want to belong, so it is not just a matter of one country not giving the independence to another.) If you allow random flags then extremists will begin to fill your database with regions of dubious merits as countries. Combine both situations and there is a real problem to decide which countries to allow. You probably have to apply an external criterion such as recognition by the U.N. to break the impasse, and then you are back in realpolitik. You have to admire GNOME's courage in banning all flags altogether.
A flag day for Fedora's flags Posted May 18, 2009 23:26 UTC (Mon) by jameslivingston (subscriber, #57330) [Link]
As others have mentioned, what happens when people in Location X believe that X and Y are part of
the same country/entity and people in Location Y don't? e.g. Taiwan, the Palestinian occuiped territories, Albania.
Even more complicated is when flags are used to represent non-geopolitical things. Should you use
There are about 20 times more Portugese speaking people in Brazil than there are in Portugal, so
A flag day for Fedora's flags Posted May 19, 2009 4:38 UTC (Tue) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648) [Link] Even more complicated is when flags are used to represent non-geopolitical things. Should you use the flag of Spain to represent the Spanish language? Fortunately, flags aren't usually used to represent languages. A converse example to yours would be linguistically-bifurcated Belgium. Last I heard, India has twenty-two official languages, but I digress.
A flag day for Fedora's flags Posted May 19, 2009 5:31 UTC (Tue) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
Yep and there are hundreds of languages and dialects.
A flag day for Fedora's flags Posted May 19, 2009 9:22 UTC (Tue) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link] Fortunately, flags aren't usually used to represent languages.Really? I see them used for this purpose all the time, not just on various software but also on product packaging, multilingual notices, etc. Really silly. It really is the exception that some flag maps 1-1 to a language.
A flag day for Fedora's flags Posted May 19, 2009 17:38 UTC (Tue) by salimma (subscriber, #34460) [Link]
And that actually makes sense, because a language spoken in several countries tend to have subtle (and not-so-subtle) variations in each. When I see a German flag on a product packaging, I know that the notice is written in Standard German, rather than any of the German dialects spoken in several European countries.
A flag day for Fedora's flags Posted May 20, 2009 7:32 UTC (Wed) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link] know that the notice is written in Standard German, rather than any of the German dialects spoken in several European countriesBut isn't the official form of German the same in all of them? From my travels in Europe, I don't recall seeing dialects in written form, except in some advertisements, where they were no doubt used for effect (disclaimer: I am far from being fluent in German, but did study it at school long time ago). Anyway, if you can read German, you don't need a flag to see if the text is in dialect or not. In general, the text version in your native language generally stands out from the others, without being flagged.
A flag day for Fedora's flags Posted May 20, 2009 1:35 UTC (Wed) by shmget (subscriber, #58347) [Link]
"Really silly. It really is the exception that some flag maps 1-1 to a language. "
Except that is an irrelevant postulate.
No-one is seriously claiming a bijection between flags and language.
But many languages can be associated with at least one flag with little to no ambiguity.
If you display a Union-Jack, most reasonable people will infer 'english' language
Just because displaying a Swiss or a Belgium flags does not allow to infer a specific language doesn't not void the usefulness of the cases cited above.
A flag day for Fedora's flags Posted May 19, 2009 1:56 UTC (Tue) by gdt (subscriber, #6284) [Link] Back in the real world, display of some flags can get you arrested. The display of the Nazi flag being flat-out illegal in some European countries. It's particularly an issue when flags are used to select localisation. In past versions of Fedora these symbols were always present on the screen in the top bar. An operating system which used the Tamil Nadu flag to select a Tamil-speaking citizen of Sri Lanka would be causing its operators significant grief at the moment. God help them if someone with a poor understanding of geopolitics used the LTTE flag for that purpose, as being identified as a Tamil Tiger supporter this week ends with summary execution. Similarly, the display of a UK flag in parts of Northern Ireland was provocative during the Troubles. People were kneecapped for these sort of misinterpreted statements of loyalty. It's fine for people blessed with living in politically stable parts of the world to pontificate. They're not the ones at risk from ill-considered user interface decisions. My hope would be that people designing Fedora's user interfaces conduct a thought experiment where they are aid workers issued with a laptop from central office containing a default installation of Fedora. Opening a laptop and starting to work should not cause any social offence to the people being assisted nor give any official looking for an excuse to interrupt the aid worker's task any reason for doing so. The user interface certainly should not lead to the official arresting the worker.
A flag day for Fedora's flags Posted May 19, 2009 2:27 UTC (Tue) by foom (subscriber, #14868) [Link]
> The user interface certainly should not lead to the official arresting the worker.
You make some very good points here. I had indeed not thought of it from that position.
I stick with my earlier position of no sympathy for those offended by the presence of someone
But, I do have considerably more sympathy for the hypothesized person arrested for using a Linux
A flag day for Fedora's flags Posted May 19, 2009 5:58 UTC (Tue) by nicolas@jungers (✭ supporter ✭, #7579) [Link] I really doubt that the display of the nazi flag could be illegal in any European country. What may be illegal in European countries is the _use_ of the nazi flag as support of hate activities.
A flag day for Fedora's flags Posted May 19, 2009 7:06 UTC (Tue) by jku (guest, #42379) [Link]
Unfortunately you are wrong. Legislators in quite a few European countries really have thought they can fight nazism by banning the symbols. Publicly displaying a swastika is an offense in at least Germany, Hungary and Poland.
There are often exceptions for education and so forth, but generally speaking you can get arrested for having a swastika on you. So don't even think about showing that WWII model airplane to your friends... It's madness, I say.
A flag day for Fedora's flags Posted May 19, 2009 10:27 UTC (Tue) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link]
Actually it's not just the swastika, but (at least in Hungary) the red star is also banned, a left-wing politican was just detained at a demonstration for wearing a red star.
This also lead to some ridicule when the right-wing goverment bought some (according to some rumours) second-hand firework designed for a certain beer company that uses the red star in its logo and used it in the annual big fireworks, so at one point there was a big red star in the night sky over Budapest :-)
A flag day for Fedora's flags Posted May 19, 2009 18:49 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
There are special exceptions for aircraft in historically accurate
colours --- but I agree, there shouldn't *need* to be. (The problem is that if you allow it, a few odious neo-Nazi nutcases will start to use it: but the problem there is surely not the symbol but rather the odious neo-Nazi nutcases, and they'd be there even if the symbol was not, just harder to identify.)
A flag day for Fedora's flags Posted May 19, 2009 17:42 UTC (Tue) by salimma (subscriber, #34460) [Link]
There's a Nazi-linked clothing brand in Germany that is in trouble for using Nazi-linked names and numbers in their products. So it all depends on whether you have a reasonable justification for using such (e.g. in a history book or a historical novel). Without justification, Nazi attributes would be interpreted as displaying support for Nazism.
A flag day for Fedora's flags Posted May 26, 2009 19:04 UTC (Tue) by jmorris42 (subscriber, #2203) [Link]
> I really doubt that the display of the nazi flag
> could be illegal in any European country.
Oh yea it is. Stupid, but that's political correctness for you.
Nazi Germany is long since dead so that isn't a problem. Nobody should be able to object to displaying the flag that actually flies on flagpoles in a particular geographic area. They might not like the reality, but remember the old saying everyone is entitled to their own opinion but they are not entitled to their own reality. If we were having this conversation in the 1930s it would be silly to object to the Nazi Flag. What the heck else would one use to represent Germany? Same idea applies now, what the heck else would one use to represent a country other than the flag the inhabitants are currently flying?
A flag day for Fedora's flags Posted May 19, 2009 12:45 UTC (Tue) by ofeeley (guest, #36105) [Link] the display of a UK flag in parts of Northern Ireland was provocative during the Troubles. People were kneecapped for these sort of misinterpreted statements of loyalty.I really doubt you can point to a verifiable source in support of that statement. Knee-capping, and other horrific punishments, were used _within_ ethnic communities as punishments for drug-dealing and other activities considered "anti-social". I agree with the sentiment of the rest of your post however.
A flag day for Fedora's flags Posted May 19, 2009 6:14 UTC (Tue) by jengelh (subscriber, #33263) [Link]
>Removing flags because certain people are offended by certain other people's flags just seems crazy to me...
(Indeed.)
Oh can I have Ubuntu removed? because that really offends many more than just the flag matter!
A flag day for Fedora's flags Posted May 19, 2009 6:29 UTC (Tue) by jengelh (subscriber, #33263) [Link]
And the next move, when people get offended by merely listing names for countries in the "select a country/locale/timezone" list is that the country names are replaced by their GPS position. Works for 10 years in advance, because languages (as part of their evolution) do not move too fast, and timezones do not either beyond the usual political or timezone-db updates.
A flag day for Fedora's flags Posted May 18, 2009 23:59 UTC (Mon) by jimmybgood (guest, #26142) [Link]
We really only need the one flag that works for everybody. It's black.
A flag day for Fedora's flags Posted May 19, 2009 2:41 UTC (Tue) by PaulWay (✭ supporter ✭, #45600) [Link]
That actually leads to a good idea (IMO): for those areas where there is dispute over which flag should be used, simply display no flag at all or have an "in dispute" flag. That way you not only show that other people disagree (which only the complete zealots want to deny anyway) but the project doesn't take sides in the issue.
That seems to be the important thing to me - that Fedora and other i18n projects shouldn't be taking sides in nationality disputes, and should be able to remain neutral without being accused of 'implicitly' supporting anyone. I think that fundamental point - that we should be able to (agree to) disagree without being offensive - is the foundation stone for progress on this issue. If you can't agree with that - e.g. if a Chinese person were to claim that merely recognising an "in dispute" flag for Tibet was an offensive act in its own right - then there is nowhere further to go in the discussion; in that example a project cannot take China's side (and put a Chinese flag on Tibet) just because the Chinese person in the example wants to deny any contrary opinion.
(As an Australian, I wouldn't have a problem with either the Australian Aboriginal flag, or the Australian national flag, or the "in dispute" flag being shown for Australia. It's a good example of how people can disagree over something that might seem to the outside perspective to be already decided).
The real reason for flags being used is that they're an easy, font- and language-independent method of identifying settings relating to a particular country; they work in the majority of situations for the majority of users. I do feel strongly that we shouldn't let fanatical, 'cannot-be-swayed-otherwise' opinions to dictate what works for most people. (Whether that fanatical view is held by a minority or majority shouldn't need to be be considered here).
Have fun,
Paul
A flag day for Fedora's flags Posted May 19, 2009 4:03 UTC (Tue) by shmget (subscriber, #58347) [Link]
"That actually leads to a good idea (IMO): for those areas where there is dispute over which flag should be used, simply display no flag at all or have an "in dispute" flag."
The problem is that extremist are ... extremist. From their point of view the 'right'(tm) flag is not in dispute. And sure, in soe country these extremist actually run the show, putting people is possible danger...
BUT, I don't see the rational for making the DEFAULT something that concern an overall small fraction of the target audience, especially if there is a way to opt out of the flags thing.
Otherwise we might as well have a -pigs -kosher -nudity -alcohol -gay -science, etc...
If we have to make optional-in anything that may be considered 'offensive' by any possible nutcases out there... there won't be much left in the core...
A flag day for Fedora's flags Posted May 19, 2009 4:21 UTC (Tue) by gdt (subscriber, #6284) [Link] If we have to make optional-in anything that may be considered 'offensive' by any possible nutcases out there... there won't be much left in the core... You seem to be running a much more interesting Fedora than me. Methinks you are overstating your case somewhat?
A flag day for Fedora's flags Posted May 19, 2009 4:13 UTC (Tue) by gdt (subscriber, #6284) [Link] As an Australian, I wouldn't have a problem with either the Australian Aboriginal flag, or the Australian national flag, or the "in dispute" flag being shown for Australia.As an Australian, I wouldn't have a problem with either the Australian Aboriginal flag, or the Australian national flag, or the "in dispute" flag being shown for Australia. Thus illustrating the problem with using flags. The Aboriginal Flag is a flag of the aboriginal peoples of mainland Australian and Tasmania. It is not an alternative flag for the nation or people of Australia (such as in the way the Eureka flag is sometimes used). When the Aboriginal Flag is used as an alternative Australian flag many Aboriginal people feel as though white Australians are once again stealing their heritage and denying Aboriginal peoples their distinct identity. Fedora had a choice: endless flag-lawyering such as that above; or to do away with the problem entirely. I can perfectly understand their desire to do away with the problem entirely. I notice that mobile phone manufacturers have come to the same decision.
A flag day for Fedora's flags Posted May 19, 2009 6:30 UTC (Tue) by TRS-80 (subscriber, #1804) [Link] Further, the Australian Aboriginal flag is copyright and so can't be used by free software anyway.
Not all copyright works are non-free Posted May 29, 2009 0:54 UTC (Fri) by bignose (subscriber, #40) [Link]
> Further, the Australian Aboriginal flag is copyright
Practically *every* expressive work in the last century is covered by copyright. That in itself isn't a problem for free software; *all* free software includes work under copyright.
> and so can't be used by free software anyway.
That doesn't follow, as evidenced by the fact that the overwhelming majority of free software *does* include works under copyright.
Please don't make the common mistake of conflating it's covered by copyright with it's under non-free license terms, since the distinction is exactly why we have free software at all.
I think what you might mean is that the *license terms* on the Aboriginal flag from the copyright holder are incompatible for use in free software. That, as far as I can tell, may be true; I can't find any actual license terms for it, but there doesn't appear to be a general license on the work.
A flag day for Fedora's flags Posted May 19, 2009 9:04 UTC (Tue) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link] That actually leads to a good idea (IMO): for those areas where there is dispute over which flag should be used, simply display no flag at all or have an "in dispute" flag.But the question of whether or not a flag is 'in dispute' is also in dispute. Suppose you decided to replace the Israeli flag with an 'in dispute' logo. Wouldn't that offend large numbers of Israeli users?
A flag day for Fedora's flags Posted May 19, 2009 9:11 UTC (Tue) by johill (subscriber, #25196) [Link]
I do wonder though when the first bug reports will come in challenging the removal of the flags because they feel offended by the fact that their beloved flag is no longer displayed by the software :)
A flag day for Fedora's flags Posted May 19, 2009 12:03 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
Well at least those bug reports will be very very easy to resolve. Just label them 'won't fix', provide a link to the policy and something explaining the flag package, and leave it at that.
There are sometimes some things in politics that are very important were people must choose to make a stand and not back down even if it proves very unpopular and has a otherwise very negative effect on companies (say.. Redhat) or large software projects (say.. Fedora). Times like that is when you really know who has real commitments and has real morals and ethical guidelines.. and who are the people that are just mouthing the words and more or less just want to get along even if it means compromising who they are as a person.
Things like that are very important and tend to be very political and often have racial, religious, or other contriversial overtones.
I am thinking that whether or not to have a package that contains a set of flag icons installed by default or not is not going to be one of those important matters.
A person needs to know when to pick their battles, otherwise they risk losing credibility.
Country names and codes Posted May 19, 2009 2:46 UTC (Tue) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link] Even country names and country codes are tricky—you have to get the ISO country names and code elements, use those exactly, and if someone complains, refer the person to the ISO process.Long thread provoked by calling "The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" just "Macedonia."
Country names and codes Posted May 19, 2009 4:05 UTC (Tue) by shmget (subscriber, #58347) [Link]
"and if someone complains, refer the person to the ISO process."
You mean the same ISO process that got us MSOOXML ? Yep this beacon of integrity will surely bring a consensus.
Country names and codes Posted May 19, 2009 7:25 UTC (Tue) by ketilmalde (guest, #18719) [Link]
> You mean the same ISO process that got us MSOOXML ? Yep this beacon of
> integrity will surely bring a consensus.
Of course not, but it will take the problem elsewhere.
It seems most of the discussion here revolves around defining countries, nations and borders, rather than flags. Sounds like it would be possible to distribute the set of flags as such - that is, rectangular images, without blessing any as "national" or whatever? Or is it the case that people of certain nations deny the very existence of particular imagery?
Country names and codes Posted May 20, 2009 0:57 UTC (Wed) by shmget (subscriber, #58347) [Link]
"Sounds like it would be possible to distribute the set of flags as such - that is, rectangular images, without blessing any as "national" or whatever?"
Yep, one should hope so.
"Or is it the case that people of certain nations deny the very existence of particular imagery?"
Well, Yes some do... and the proposed policy basically give-in to these people.
The proposed policy is similar to requiring every restaurant to have a menu without any non-kosher items, and for those that don't care about kosher or not, a separate menu add-on that they are supposed to explicitly request, that would contain non-kosher items.
(you can replace kosher by vegetarian or any other arbitrary restriction you can think of)
Country names and codes Posted May 19, 2009 4:18 UTC (Tue) by foom (subscriber, #14868) [Link]
Yes, country names are just as much a problem as country flags. As with flags, I don't see how it's
justified to name a country by another name than that which it chooses for itself. Why should anybody else care that Greece doesn't like Macedonia's name for itself?
And, yikes, that thread has some pretty hateful comments in it.
Country names and codes Posted May 19, 2009 15:00 UTC (Tue) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link]
People SHOULD care. When I talk about "Macedonia" I would like to know where I'm talking about. Am I talking about the country that calls itself Macedonia, or the region that is called Macedonia (hint - they are - geographically - two separate places).
Cheers,
Good work Fedora! Posted May 19, 2009 5:16 UTC (Tue) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link]
Anything done to prevent nationalistic disputes from affecting a free software distribution can only be a good thing. I for one hope they push these changes upstream too so that other distributions can share the benefits. Inter-nation politics has no place in free software.
Good work Fedora! Posted May 19, 2009 10:01 UTC (Tue) by neiljerram (subscriber, #12005) [Link]
r = 1;
(Human languages are also political. Hence, by Fedora's logic, we cannot use any human languages by default. Hence my reply above in C.)
Good work Fedora! Posted May 19, 2009 13:50 UTC (Tue) by csigler (subscriber, #1224) [Link]
> r = 1;
> (... Hence my reply above in C.)
I'm _grossly_ offended by your use of the so-called computer language "C." Everyone knows the only true language is FORTRAN! ;^)
A flag day for Fedora's flags Posted May 19, 2009 6:34 UTC (Tue) by eduperez (guest, #11232) [Link]
I live in one of those places where deciding which flag represents this territory would lead to a never ending argument, so I perfectly understand the reasons behind this move. What I fail to see is the benefit of moving such flags to a separate package: now, instead of arguing over the flags in "package_x.rpm", will we argue about the flags in package "package_x-flags.rpm"?
A flag day for Fedora's flags Posted May 19, 2009 7:16 UTC (Tue) by shalem (subscriber, #4062) [Link]
There is more to it then just shoving them in a separate package, this
separate package may then not be Required by the main package. IOW, using purely GUI tools / the default install one will never get flags. Yet if you really want them and know how to use yum on the cmdline one can still get them.
A flag day for Fedora's flags Posted May 26, 2009 19:21 UTC (Tue) by jmorris42 (subscriber, #2203) [Link]
> I live in one of those places where deciding which flag represents
> this territory would lead to a never ending argument, so I perfectly > understand the reasons behind this move.
I fail to see a problem. End the arguments thus: Drive to the nearest official looking building. Observe what is on the flagpole. If your software isn't displaying that image file a bug report. This policy will work and no other will.
A flag day for Fedora's flags Posted May 19, 2009 8:43 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
There are two things that are worth avoiding:
1. Politics
2. Religion
When it's a good idea to avoid bringing up conversations about politics and religions in family
It's just good policy.
A flag day for Fedora's flags Posted May 19, 2009 13:03 UTC (Tue) by alecs1 (guest, #46699) [Link]
I agree with religion, but I found politics discusssions to be many times interesting (they reveal lots of problems which cannot be solved without trade-offs, I have changed my opinion many times after finding details, game theory, etc.).
On the discussion, I find the KXKB lacking of flag indicator to be a major block for me adopting Fedora, along with the packaging management and poor fonts (image here: http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=38348 ).
These hard problems should ideally stay out of software, but of course have to be solved and I appreciate Fedora for doing that.
I would give a button on the installer "I do care about country flags" to give the user the option to choose the world view of his liking. But this would obviouly not be enough to prevent that developer leaving Debian.
A flag day for Fedora's flags Posted May 19, 2009 15:18 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
Well using a flag for choosing keyboard layouts or whatever is a bad design decision anyways. There is a very low correlation between what a country's flag looks like and what sort of keyboard a person happens to be using under that flag. It may work for some countries... but that is just happenstance. :)
And the sort of politics matters a lot. There is politics in every group, but I am talking about nationalistic and government politics.
If you have yet to run into problems discussing that then it's simply becuase you only talk to people who mostly already agree with your stances. :)
A flag day for Fedora's flags Posted May 19, 2009 15:21 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
Oh, and context certainly matters.
There are places and times when people are more then willing to discuss these sort of things. I like having a good arguement as much as anybody else, probably more then most people. But, bringing them up in inopportune times or in inappropriate places means that a person is either being dumb or just very impolite.
A flag day for Fedora's flags Posted May 19, 2009 18:48 UTC (Tue) by alecs1 (guest, #46699) [Link]
For me it's a very good decission, with a glimpse of an eye I know the keyboard, without reading anything.
Correlation I think can work for a majority. For example I'm in Austria, now but I look for the German flag when I want German layout, not for Austrian. I believe there's a majority who doesn't have problems with the flags.
national flags for languages is a terrible idea Posted May 19, 2009 15:23 UTC (Tue) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] Not sure if such broad policy is necessary, but I'm convinced that using flags to represent languages is a terrible idea.
A flag day for Fedora's flags Posted May 29, 2009 20:52 UTC (Fri) by asdlfiui788b (guest, #58839) [Link]
Maybe they need *-flags-confederate, *-flags-lgbt, *-flags-europeans, *-flags-hispanic, *-flags-liberals, etc... so individual users/admins can decide which groups of humans whose existence they'd like to acknowledge.
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