Re: GNOME Speaker Guidelines

[Murray Cumming <murrayc murrayc com>]

On Fri, 2010-06-25 at 10:06 +0200, Fernando Herrera wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> As a GUADEC Speaker this year I went through the Guidelines and I'm a
> little bit worried about this, because I reviewed my talk at last
> GUADEC (GNOME 1,2,3, with the amazing Xan) and I think it failed to
> comply all of those guidelines.
> 
> At the end, the document says: "Please keep in mind that the GNOME
> Foundation is not the right forum to debate whether someone should
> feel offended or not" so I not going to debate  it, but I would like
> to stand that with every single sentence I can say there are potential
> people all over the world that can feel offended, so I just cannot
> control or avoid it.

I doubt that.

However, you should assume some goodwill. The guidelines are vague
because we cannot specify in exact detail everything that would offend
somebody, and we don't want to become lawyers that spend their time
interpreting precise rules, and because that just shouldn't be
necessary. It's a simple request to consider peoples' feelings a bit.
You are fully capable of doing that. 

> I also don't think the ending is appropriate: "These guidelines do not
> constitute censorship since you have many other forums and
> opportunities to say whatever you wish.". That is a pretty evil
> justification and probably Governments in Iran, Saudi Arabia or North
> Korean can use it.

I don't think they do. And leaving your country to escape actual
punishment is hardly comparable to adjusting the text of your speech. 


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