Re: Proposal: DNS change irc.gnome.org becomes A record and irc.gimpnet.org starts getting phased out.

[meg ford <meg387 gmail com>]

Hi Philip,

On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 3:15 AM, Philip Van Hoof <pvanhoof gnome org> wrote:

On Thu, 2013-05-09 at 17:06 -0500, meg ford wrote:

Hey Meg,
>
> On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 2:53 PM, Philip Van Hoof <pvanhoof gnome org>
> wrote:
>         On Wed, 2013-05-08 at 10:02 -0700, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote:
>
>         > We are looking into changing our irc server name from
>         irc.gimpnet.org
>         > to irc.gnome.org and looking for feedback.
>
>         Why?
>
>         > Essentially, it's become problematic to have 'gimp' in the
>         name of our
>         > server.  To many, 'gimp' is an offensive term an given our
>         dedication
>         > to a11y it seems counter-intuitive to have this name in our
>         > infrastructure.

>
>         Yet another PCPOS in GNOME. When will this stop? Is there an
>         end? Any?
>
>

> Yeah idk how "PC" it is to not use the term gimp. The US, where I
> live, has pretty strong free speech laws, but people don't use this
> term because it's too offensive. So I think this is kind of an I18n
> issue.
>

However, GNOME's origin is partly Gtk+ (which even predates and from
where GLib came). Gtk+'s origin is Gimp's toolkit. Gimp was ~ GNOME's
first and or one of its first projects and actually sort of predates
GNOME as a sort of ancestor of the project and this community.

What we're discussing here is that for PC reasons, GNOME wants to tell
its father that it is no longer its father. I think that's crazy.

I'd be completely ok with adding a irc.gnome.org and perhaps even
changing the MOTD of the IRC server to mention less GIMP and more GNOME.
That's natural as indeed GNOME today stands on its own feet. But why
remove the GimpNET domain? You don't have to use it if you don't like
the word Gimp.

GNOME is a heavy user of Gtk+ which stands for Gimp Toolkit. With this
latest line of PC thinking, shouldn't GNOME also stop using Gtk+? You
know, because Gtk+ has an 'offensive' name in its acronym.

I think you're all taking this way way too far and I think its becoming
POS, whatever people like Karen think about Code of Conducts (that I
actually have helped write - go look up in the mailing list from what
discussion 'Assume people mean well' came from and who the actors in the
formation of that part were).

In general when people use the term "PC" in the US, they are talking about being adopting extra careful/ newly coined language. That's not what I'm saying. You wouldn't use the term gimp when talking to someone unless you wanted to indicate that you hate them or had were trying to start a fight. There isn't anything pc about not using such a  term. You would only use it if you were specifically trying to offend someone. Just to clarify, are you saying that it's pc to say we shouldn't use derogatory epithets, or are you disagreeing with my assessment of the word?

I'm saying that it's an I18n issue. I recently read that the GNOME foot is insulting in Thailand so we are trying not to use it there. We aren't getting rid of it entirely because it's specifically offensive there, but not everywhere. I would guess that gimp isn't offensive in languages other than English since we are only hearing about this from English speakers. In the case of the GIMP I can see why they a name change would be really problematic and potentially harm the project. In the case of GNOME irc I think don't see that there is an issue wrt making the change. However, maybe that's because I speak English. But since English is the official language of the project, so maybe it's important to consider making a change. What do you think?

Meg

Kind regards,

Philip


>         > The proposal is to make irc.gnome.org be an DNS A record and
>         we will
>         > continue to honor irc.gimpnet.org as a CNAME for one year in
>         which
>         > case we will then remove it altogether.
>
>
>         Gimpnet is cultural inheritance of GNOME, I think it's a bad
>         idea to do
>         this for that reason.
>
>         Kind regards,
>
>         Philip
>
>
>         --
>         Philip Van Hoof
>         Software developer
>         Codeminded BVBA - http://codeminded.be

>
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