Re: END OF THREAD, GO HOME

[Damon Chaplin <damon karuna uklinux net>]

On Tue, 2003-12-09 at 09:04, Jeff Waugh wrote:

> Arik was implying that including the flags was not worth the can of worms it
> opens... and he's right.
> 
> I can do a song and dance, or we can end the thread with my dignity intact.

I don't think bullying people into stopping discussion is a reasonable
way to determine Gnome policy. This is an important issue - we are
considering banning something from Gnome. It is bound to be
controversial.


I'll try to summarize the issue:

Against flags:
	o We know that the Chinese government doesn't want the Taiwan
	  flag shipped in China.
	o There may be problems with other flags now or in the future
	  and so flags may be more trouble than they are worth.

For flags:
	o They can improve usability of applications.
	o If we stick to flags from the UN/Olympics we avoid most of the
	  problems with regional flags and other little-known flags,
	  including the Nazi flag and Palestine.
	o Flags are used in quite a few places already, such as sport,
	  and on the web, even in Google:
	  http://www.google.com/language_tools?hl=en
	o Flags are already used in KDE and in Mac OS X.


I don't quite understand why some people seem to think it is a clear-cut
issue. There are obviously valid points on both sides of the argument.

It looks likely that we won't form a consensus. But constructive debate
should not be quashed.

Damon