who wrote this

[Frank Shute]

On Mon, Nov 26, 2007 at 10:05:05AM -0600, eBoundHost: Artur wrote:
>
>
<snip>
>
> >
> >You also failed to address most of my points.
> 
> Frank,  No offense, but who has time to go through all points of every post 
> and respond.  There was much said here but i want to keep this post on 
> topic.

Artur, you shouldn't have kicked a hornet's nest if you aren't
prepared to respond ;)

<snip>
> 
> >And you haven't got the right to excise Hitler's name from FreeBSD
> >material. Don't you see the irony in that? When he banned certain
> >artists on the grounds of "decency" just like you're proposing to do.
> >
> 
> Two points
> 
> 1) first of all, i don't think that freebsd operating system is an 
> appropriate forum to express political views.  so whether we are for or 
> against censorship or democracy or fascism or communism, it really does not 
> matter.

chat@ is an appropriate forum to discuss politics as it relates to
FreeBSD and you bought it up in the first place! It's you who wants to
indulge in censorship.

As for your assertion it doesn't matter, it *does* matter. Most people
within this community are against censorship of any form, it goes with
the territory of open source software.

> what matters is how good our coding is, and how appropriate the 
> wording on our website.  because like it or not, we have to present a 
> decent website that does not offend our users and does not make us look bad 
> in front of non-users.

We went through this when the new logo was created. One of the reasons
it was created was a result of some stupid people thinking the OS was
to do with satanism (because of the daemon logo). My opinion, is that
if people are that stupid then they don't deserve to use FreeBSD. 

> 
> 2) That's the thing, banning hitlers name is not at all what i'm trying to 
> do.  I think we should keep his quotes in the database of quotes, if that's 
> what the community thinks is appropriate.  What I'm suggesting is that we 
> remove his name from the website: 
> (http://www.freebsd.org/internal/fortunes.html) because it seems to 
> innapropriately focus the attention away from the program (Fortune) and 
> unecessarily makes the FreeBSD community seem like a bunch of insensitive 
> jerks because we seemingly condone hitlers sayings. 

Where does it say we condone Hitler's sayings? It doesn't and maybe
some of his sayings are worth condoning.

All it says is they don't belong in the offensive fortunes just
because they happen to be said by Hitler. It's a good example made in
context.

> People who come accross this wording will not stop to think about
> all the deep philosophical reasons why the text needs to be there to
> protect freedoms.  All they will see is that we seemingly support
> Hitler.  Why don't we have other names controversial during our
> times like Mussolini, Stalin, or even Gorge Bush?

If people are so shallow that they think FreeBSD supports Hitler and
all his works from that page, then they don't deserve to use FreeBSD &
good riddance to them.

As to why we shouldn't have another name? Well, people would obviously
think we support all the satanic works of Mussolini, George Bush etc.
We'd be back to square one again.

> 
> >Just because he was "evil" doesn't mean he and the rest of his
> >henchmen didn't have something interesting to say about the human
> >condition. If you don't believe me, read "Brave New World: Revisited"
> >by A.Huxley.
> 
> This has nothing to do with anything that I'm saying.  Listen, my 
> grandmother also has some interesting things to say but you don't put her 
> name on the front page of the Fortune program because it's not appropriate. 
> Same thing here.  Just not an appropriate forum.

I just don't agree with you. His name is used entirely appropriately
on that page.

<snip>

PS. Please note that I use <snip> to indicate excised content & I
didn't quote you out of order or context.

Regards,

-- 

 Frank 

	
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