On Fri, Sep 9, 2011 at 4:29 PM, Nelson Marques
2011/9/9 todd rme
: On Fri, Sep 9, 2011 at 12:29 PM, Lars Müller
wrote: On Fri, Sep 09, 2011 at 11:59:40AM +0200, Sascha Peilicke wrote:
+The SWORD Project is an effort to create an ever expanding software package for +research and study of God and His Word.
Maybe best if one of our English native speakers commnets on this.
As a native English speaker, I do think this is a problem. There are three possible areas of controversy and offence here. Two are easy to change. one is not.
Lets be honest here, this is a cultural issue and not a native language issue. In case you are not aware the Bible is the book translated to more languages in the world, which clearly ends up any discussion about languages.
I am well aware of that, but someone asked for a native speaker's opinion of the description, so I provided it. It seemed like a reasonable request since properly interpreting the full meaning of the description might be hard for non-native speakers.
1. "study of God" means that the Christian god is the one and only true god. This is the same as saying all other religions are false. Obviously members of other religions would be justified in taking offense at such a statement.
First misconception: YOU ARE ASSUMING IT'S A ABOUT THE CHRISTIAN BIBLE.
It isn't an assumption, the Sword project is created and maintained by a Christian organization for use with the Christian bible.
This brings problems, because if you read the email from Sasha, there's no reference to any religion in particular, this to say that:
The original email is irrelevant, the software is what it is.
2. It's contents, our shit here is about serving contents, not judging contents.
Please re-read the original post and the request I was responding to. The issue was with the description, not the contents.
2. "His Word" means that the Bible is the word of God. This has the same problem as the previous, it is saying that the Christian bible is the legitimate word of god, and by extension that others are wrong.
Could you please tell me where in Sasha's email is the word bible or any reference to Christianity? The rule of openSUSE on this issue should be pretty much neutral... We're not a theological community, we're a technology community, it's not our role to decide who God is, the verecity of his words or whatever men tells that are His words. We either serve this package or we don't, we are not in a condition to judge the contents, that's the priviledge that we delegate to users.
The software is designed for the Christian bible by a Christian organization.
3. The name "sword" has a violent and aggressive connotation, usually associated with more extreme and evangelical brands of Christianity.
The word SWORD has a high density in any of the three monotheistic religions. In fact in some cases God is metaphored with a Sword that defends the weak and punishes the guilty.
Lets not be radical... a sword is just a gourmet appliance :)
As I said, I do not consider a big deal, but others very well might considering its historical usage and current connotations within a number of Christian sects.
I am not longer Christian myself, but when I was a Christian I found the name off-putting. So the name might not only be a problem for non-Christians, but for certain types of Christians as well. However, I think this is a much smaller issue than the description, and is probably not worth making a big deal over.
We don't need to discuss people's beliefs...
The discussion had been framed in terms of non-Christains being offended. I was simply pointing out that certain aspects might offend Christians as well.
1 and 2 are easy to fix by simply changing the description to something like:
"The SWORD Project is an effort to create an ever expanding software package for research and study of the Christian bible and theology."
You are making a dreadful assumption, Sasha's email doesn't specify religion and can be any of the 3 biggest monotheistic religions. What if you change the description to that and SWORD is about Judaísm. You just offended a lot of people. And even if it is about the bible, we should not change jack on it, because there are quite a few versions of the bible... for example:
Once again, it isn't an assumption, it is the stated goal of the project. Have you looked at their website? I have, I think they are quite explicitly a Christian project.
Who are we to enforce such changes and what cost? Who is the the greatest Theology guy to guide us? Probably no one, so why not leave those issues that are irrelevant to us to the authors ? It's their work, not ours, they should call it and describe as they want... It's not our name that comes there.
I fail to see the relevance, the software appears to support a variety of versions of the Christian bible judging by the website.
I think that would be neutral and acceptable to me. As an atheist I have no problem with having religous software, the issue is when the openSUSE project has the appearance of endorsing particular religious views or denigrating others. The current description has this appearance, but that is easy to fix.
Neutral brings two options:
1. Serve as any other package 2. Do not serve as any other package that breaks any guideline.
None of such options give us the right to judge the contents, that you can do as your own private thingie, but not as a multi-cultural community, which is what openSUSE is.
I don't recall juding the contents, nor did Sasha. What we were judging was the description of the contents.
The name is more difficult to fix but in my opinion is not is not a serious enough issue to warrant any action. However, people who have had problems with evangelical Christians in the past, or cultures that have had problems with violence by Christians in the past, may have a more serious issue with the name.
Wrong thing to do... None of us who live today has any responsibility on what Roman Catholics did during the Spanish Inquisition, or even on what Christian did during the 1st Cruzade. None of us who live today were victims of it, or commanded/executed such deeds.
You should've been a judge to keep on judging people :)
Who are you to tell people what should and should not offend them?
So my personal vote would be to change the description to something that does not imply a judgement on the validity of any religious beliefs, while keeping the package.
All you did in the previous lines was to judge. Maybe you should've started your email with this block of text and forget about the judging. You were the one implying the usage of the word sword (which I will defend it is a gourmet appliance), implying christians in acts of violence... etc etc... where's the neutral non-judging stuff there?
I didn't judge anything. It is a fact that certain Christian sects use the sword imagery in a manner that could cause offence. It is a fact that references to things like the crusades or other acts of violence by Christians in the past have caused offence. You may think that is silly, but that is your judgement.
There used to be one or more Muslim prayer plasma widgets offered by KDE:Extra. They don't appear to be there any more. I think the rules should at least be consistent, so if they were removed based on their religious content then Christian software should also not be allowed.
Could you please provide physical evidence that such applications have been removed because they were related to Islam? I doubt that as been the reason... What I see packaged dropped is often related to lack of maintainers or no longer updated upstream. You are making a very serious accusation, and I strongly recommend that you provide substancial evidance that they were removed because they were related to Islam, if that is true, than all I can say is that we might be considering to enforce the same policy applied to Sirko Kemter to those who made such decisions because deep in the end we are a multi-cultural community and as such we can't do that kind of bullying based on people's beliefs. It's just not civilized.
On the other hand if they were removed because of a lack of a maintainer or lack of upstream updates then it is irrelevant to the current issue.
No, it makes all relevance. If they disappeared because they had no maintainer or not updated, that's one thing, if someone removed them because they were related to be connected to Islam as you implied above, it's really something very serious. That is called discrimination, it's pure plain prejudice and prejudice is far worst than bullying. So my stance is to prejudice is to apply the same rules applied to bullies, ejector seat.
I was not imply anything. I was not accusing anyone of removing it based on religious reasons. I figured it was possible that some people are under the impression that openSUSE has a prohibition against religious software while others do not. To me part of the importance of this discussion is to clarify these policies so everyone knows what should and should not be available. If something was removed based on the misunderstanding that religious content was not allowed, it should be rectified. I was not suggesting a specific anti-muslim bias, but rather a lack of clarity on the rules regarding the subject of religion. You really seem intent to read the absolute worst into everything I write. I was doing my best to provide a fair and neutral assessment of the situation and point out potential issues that some people might not be aware of. All of the implications and judgements you are accusing me of are in your own imagination. Please calm down and try to assume good faith on the part of others. -Todd -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org