Standardizing icon names: flags

[Daniel Stone]

On Wed, Nov 10, 2004 at 08:01:26PM +0100, Rob Kaper wrote:
> On Wednesday 10 November 2004 7:08 pm, Matthew Garrett wrote:
> > There is no ISO 639 letter code for Taiwan, as far as I know. Including
> > a letter code for Taiwan will result in some angry people. Failing to
> > include one will result in a different set of angry people. Both these
> > sets of angry people will be larger than the number of people that
> > failing to include flags will make angry.
> 
> ISO is good enough for C and C++ and a lot of other things, so it should be 
> good enough for other standards of ours as well. We're making desktop 
> standards here, we're not trying to make people less angry about politics.

For the reasons Matt listed, including flags is a stupid idea which will
only cause division.  Many other desktop projects and distributors have
gone through this pain already and come to the same conclusion -- kick
flags out.  For the amount of emotion (especially negative) it
generates, it provides no value.  Whatsoever.

C is apolitical.  If someone burns K&R, who cares?  But if someone
raises the wrong flag -- or sets fire to someone else's flag, or
whatever -- then that's cause for military
intervention/riots/punch-ons/whatever.  Comparing it to C is pointless
and a waste of time.

-- 
Daniel Stone                                            <daniel at freedesktop.org>
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