On Wed, Sep 03, 2014 at 09:00:04PM +0200, Alberto Garcia wrote:
Then there was the "bigoted people" part, which was certainly
unnecessary, but that he corrected immediately.
Ian Jackson wrote:
Linus described the FSF as `bigots'. That is clearly beyond the pale.
Note that "bigoted" is a word that's changed a bit over time, gaining a
much more negative connotation recently. M-W has his current definition:
"a person who strongly and unfairly dislikes other people, ideas, etc. :
a bigoted person; especially : a person who hates or refuses to accept
the members of a particular group (such as a racial or religious group)"
and google tosses out as synonyms, "chauvinist, partisan, sectarian;
racist, sexist, homophobe, dogmatist, jingoist"
But the old Webster (1913) says:
" 2. A person who regards his own faith and views in matters of
religion as unquestionably right, and any belief or
opinion opposed to or differing from them as unreasonable
or wicked. In an extended sense, a person who is
intolerant of opinions which conflict with his own, as in
politics or morals; one obstinately and blindly devoted to
his own church, party, belief, or opinion."
I wonder if people are reacting to the former definition, while Linus was
intending more of the latter. I think it's possible to find examples of
FSF being fairly unwilling to tolerate diversity of opinions on the
definition of free software, for example. And it's certainly different
(and reasonable) for Linus to describe them, in his opinion, as overly
dogmatic in discussions with him as to how freedom should apply to his
code--as opposed to describing them as racist homophobes (or whatever).
Certainly it's suboptimal word choice given contemporary connotations,
but it's not necessarily an attack of the sort envisioned by the CoC.
Mike Stone
--
Please respect the privacy of this mailing list. Some posts may be declassified
3 years after posting as per http://www.debian.org/vote/2005/vote_002
Archive: file://master.debian.org/~debian/archive/debian-private/
To UNSUBSCRIBE, use the web form at <http://db.debian.org/>.
|
|
