Re: Ideology / ChangeLogs

[Christian Neumair <chris gnome-de org>]

On Mi, 2003-12-31 at 00:41 +0100, Ronald Bultje wrote: 
> On Wed, 2003-12-31 at 00:09, Jon Trowbridge wrote:
> > On Tue, 2003-12-30 at 16:23, iain wrote:
> > > All that coming from the same guy who flames me endlessly about being
> > > politically offtopic in release notes :)
> > 
> > I don't think that it is unreasonable to ask EVERYONE to avoid off-topic
> > political commentary.  As Iain has kindly reminded us, Dennis' ChangeLog
> > entry is hardly the first time someone has used GNOME as a platform for
> > their politics.
> 
> It's not that weird for us, who spend all our free time in something as
> beautiful as opensource, to ask for a little fun like giving our weird
> opinions on random subjects once in a while? This one-minute-of-fame
> feeling is one of the many things that makes all this so much fun.
> 
> Don't get too rigid on this, guys. It *should* be fun. :). Maybe Dennis'
> stuff isn't that good an idea, not up to me to device, but I generally
> like Iain's release announcements, and I wouldn't mind seeing some more
> random nonense here and there. It's cool.
The problem is that this isn't "random nonsense". It's all about abusing
a platform for individual ideology. Release notes won't be taken serious
anyway, but I don't think that you'd find it funny if a software
developer from Iraq or Afghanistan would repeat CNN news on dead US
soldiers, or if an Israeli said "lets extirpate Palestinians" or the
other way around in a ChangeLog that is actually meant to tell others
what has been borked by a commit.
By basically saying "lets have some fun" you show me that you are not in
the know. I think you don't see the danger coming from such demagogic-
ideologic texts. We must have some kind of dogma here that forbids such
things.
I'm not conservative at all, I'm just sane and as a human being I feel
like death warmed over when noting that kind of ideology.
I hope that you are aware of humanism and I convinced you in some way to
just let it be.

regs,
 Chris