Re: No Flags "Policy"

[Guido Schimmels <guido schimmels freenet de>]

Am 22.11.2003 13:46:42 schrieb(en) Jeff Waugh:
> <quote who="Jens Bech Madsen">
>
> > I wasn't aware that Gnome is a commercial entity which relies on
> sales
> > figures to keep it's stocks rising.
>
> It doesn't have anything to do with commerce or sales. Do we want a
> global
> audience? Then we need to respect global issues.

The problem I see with your reasoning is that it puts i18n as a whole  
in question. In the Taiwan example the issue is the flag. In other  
cases the very existence of any kind of i18n for some ethnical group  
might be considered offensive by another. How ever you look at it, when  
Gnome includes locale support for an ethnical group, the Gnome project  
is giving it legiticamy. But there are literally hundreds of ethnical  
minorities in many countries of the world, stubbornly sticking to their  
language and culture, despite large and sometimes violent efforts from  
the reigning regimes to "assimilate" those groups. Do we reject the  
translation of some Mongol tribe living an isolated life somewhere in  
China? If a Spanish govermental agency announces the deployment of  
100.000 Gnome desktops, but raises the condition that any traces of  
Basque need to be extinct from the Gnome servers, will we give in?
What do you mean with "respecting global issues"? Do I need WMD to gain  
this kind of respect?

I think Gnome should stick to international law and national law as  
long as it is not in conflict with the former and leave the rest to the  
distributors.
With regards to flags in general, if the UN isn't accepted as an  
authority, I would suggest the Olympic Committee next. Or do we want to  
give the impression that the Gnome project is more opportunistic than a  
bunch of greedy corrupt 80year old?

I'm not all that against making foul compromises in the case of the  
large blocks like USA and China. Yeah it's a big bad world out there.
Wanted to point out that "drop the flags, case closed" is too easy.
It is not that easy.

Wether flags are a good idea for gswitchit is another matter  
alltogether. I have no opinion about that.