An Open Letter to the Open Source Community

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Thu, May 24, 2007 at 09:16:13PM +0200, Jan Claeys wrote:
> Op donderdag 24-05-2007 om 00:00 uur [tijdzone +0100], schreef Matthew
> Garrett:
> > On Wed, May 23, 2007 at 10:40:08PM +0200, Jan Claeys wrote:
> > > BTW: It seems like some people in Asia consider the term "FLOSS" to
> > > bring bad luck, who's going to remove the more than 1000 occurrences of
> > > that from ubuntu.com, so that we don't offend those Asian people
> > > anymore?  (Please don't!)
> > 
> > The fact that something in English is offensive if moved directly into a 
> > foreign language isn't a good argument for changing it. On the other 
> > hand, if it's offensive and we're including it directly in foreign 
> > translations, then we probably need to reconsider that.
> 
> The reason is because of the English meaning, or more precisely the
> "loss" part in it, and thus it only affects those who actually
> understand & read English: <http://www.amyjiangsu.com/?p=34>
> (Amy is on the Ubuntu planet btw...)

"F/LOSS" is easy even for a native speaker to confuse; I think this is much
less true of "FLOSS", which is what you cited above (not that I particularly
like the term).

-- 
 - mdz