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

[Tristan Van Berkom <tvb gnome org>]

On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 5:47 AM, Michael Hill <mdhillca gmail com> wrote:
> On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 2:50 PM, Tristan Van Berkom <tvb gnome org> wrote:
>
> > People have common sense, they know that since we are at the zoo,
> > there actually are monkeys to go see.
>
> Tristan, your analogy should have been based on a word whose
> legitimate use did *not* precede its use as an epithet. If the
> original authors of the software knew the meaning of the word and
> chose it anyway, who am I to excuse the name as anything better than
> an unfortunate choice?
>
> I agree with you about not getting carried away. However, in light of
> the fact that the target group of the slur is one of the target groups
> for GNOME, your defense seems misplaced.

Alright, I suppose I can afford to write one last email.

Many may look at my arguments and think that I am somehow
promoting bigotry (although I doubt that most of you do see it
this way)... this seems to always be the case whenever someone
stands up for freedom of expression.

So let me explain just a little, I did not jump into this debate to
defend the term "GIMPNet" itself, but rather in an attempt to
defend our position regarding freedom of expression, a defence
which is always risky and racy, and an argument that is too
seldom made.

What the people who make up the GNOME community have in
common is a beautiful thing, Free Software.

Whether we do it for the freedom of users, or whether it be for the
sake of writing software in public, sharing knowledge and
consequently producing better, more stable/reliable software than
software written in the confines of a lab/company, we are in this way
forward/radical thinkers.

What I'm getting at here, is that the very thing which brings us all
together is an idea which goes against the grain. In a way, we are
all revolutionaries of sorts to be partaking in this venture.

Over the past decade, I've seen this community grow more stiff,
more rigid and more conservative in what we deem 'acceptable'
in public. This saddens me greatly.

It is very difficult to express radical thinking, forward thinking in
ways which are perfectly politically correct (possible, but difficult),
and what I think is so beautiful about our community is exactly
this forward radical thinking, this rebellious ideal of Free Software
which brings us all together is what makes our community so
vibrant and great.

I just think that, in general, if we want our community to flourish
and grow and thrive, we need to be more accepting, not more
restrictive, about what we think is acceptable in public.

Imagine how many radical/racy/forward thinking blog posts we've
missed out on, just because the author thought it might be too difficult
to express their ideas in a way that is perfectly "politically correct" ?

Best Regards,
    -Tristan