One _Final_ Comment (Seriously)

["Lefty (石鏡 )" <lefty shugendo org>]

I'm actually pretty bored by the completely futile rehashing of the same
ground on this matter, over and over, to no resolution. Clearly, RMS will
never feel anything other than "proud" about his ridicule of religion and
women. Clearly, Patryk and like-minded others, will never change their minds
about the "humor" of this. Further discussion really _is_ pointless.

At GUADEC 2008, in Istanbul, I got into a conversation with Behdad about my
impressions of the conference and the city. He liked what I said, and asked
me to repeat it, on stage, at the closing of the conference.

I spoke about how, in my various travels, I'd never made it to Istanbul
before, and how thoroughly different it was from anyplace I'd been
previously. I talked about how terrific our hosts had been. Mostly, I talked
about how the GNOME community seemed to be a sort of little "United
Nations", bringing people from vastly different cultures, with very
different outlooks, together in love of some common goals. I talked about
what a wonderful and amazing thing I thought that was.

I would not have been able, in any honesty, to make the same statements last
year. I could not, I think, make them this year.

The community I see today is not the community I saw then. If anything, the
situation for women (and minorities in general) seems to have worsened;
there's more discord over silly issues, more hatred, more intransigence,
less willingness to live-and-let-live, and vastly greater polarization.
There's sprung up a whole contingent of
apparently-otherwise-non-participating monomaniacal "free software
advocates" harassing and defaming others over differences of opinion on
_software_.

I cannot express just how much that saddens me. However, communities get
what they ask for. This is what we've asked for, people.

== 30 ==