-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Joey Hess was on the mark to criticize members of this list for rising to flamebait.
International technical fora are adamant that they discuss only technical issues and leave politics to the politicians. To help this international technical forum --- a mailing list about an operating system --- to do the same, let us remember what the politicians of the national government of most of the participants in this debate have done on this issue: The International Standards Organizations operates by consensus. The flip-side of consensus is that everyone has a veto. The ISO standard would not have happened without the 100% agreement of the United States Government. The United Nations' usage is one which the United States Government agreed to of its own free will over 30 years ago and from which no subsequent Administration, neither Republican nor Democratic, has wavered since. Far be it from any of us outside the USA to criticize the right of Americans to criticize their government's policy, or for any other nationality to criticize its government's policy, but an international technical forum is not the place to do it. It is perfectly reasonable of Debian to adopt an international standard. It raises Debian above the debate which is taking place here. - -- Bruce Miller Ottawa, ON K1M 2H9 CANADA GPG key ID 0x1B9200FC. Public key available from keyservers -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFAcNsUEWQpHhuSAPwRAmaMAKCQe6YckvrpDP0DYF9SlzD3SHABzQCg05Er FV/FbMIyNHgXjtlzBcoDSfc= =LEgx -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----