Re: END OF THREAD, GO HOME

[Jeff Waugh <jdub perkypants org>]

<quote who="Damon Chaplin">

> > 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 am offended that you would describe my offer to sing and dance as
"bullying". If you could only see my grace and subtlety in action, you would
be mesmerised.

> 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.

Flags are also removed from KDE by various distros, while Mac OS X uses
particular flags and logos (which are far more usable than flags in the
situations we're discussing in first place).

> 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.

"shippable vs. unshippable"

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

The threads are long and meandering, and some people have shown very little
effort to read previous discussions about it (recent and historical). It is
not an attempt to quash the debate, it's an attempt to stave off a pointless
regurgitation of previous discussions.

As far as I can see, the conclusion from the previous thread (and this
thread, oddly enough), was that we ship without flag images in the GNOME
tarballs at all, but allow distributors to add a flags module should they
choose to (and hopefully come up with a more usable and less controversial
solution later on).

- Jeff

-- 
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