Re: jive - what is the message being sent here

["Sean P. McNamara" <smcnamara@soma-tech.com>]

>>>>> "Nicholas" == Nicholas Merrill <lists@mojo.calyx.net> writes:


    Nicholas> I have wanted to bring this up for a while- Is it really
    Nicholas> in the best interest of the mainstream acceptance of
    Nicholas> OpenBSD to include 'jive' in the ports tree?

    Nicholas> I'm just asking how having jive in the official ports
    Nicholas> tree reflects upon the OpenBSD project.

It doesn't "reflect" on the OpenBSD project at all.  The ports tree is 
a set of software that has been patched and packaged to be in-line
with the security concerns of OpenBSD and nothing more.  The port was
done by someone who thought that others would want to use the program
while maintaining the integrity of their OpenBSD box.

You could speculate that the choice of program ported reflects upon
the individual that ported the program, but that is itself a stretch,
since someone may have ported it simply because it was there.

Jive (from dictionary.com)
	Deceptive, nonsensical, or glib talk: "the sexist,
	locker-room jive of men boasting and bonding"

So the name in itself should not be offensive as it attributes nothing 
to a specific gender, race or creed.

The output generated by the program _could_ be construed as offensive, 
but not necessarily so.  If it could be proven that the translation
was done according to the grammatical rules attributed to the style of 
speach that was championed as part of the ebonics movement of the late 
80s and early 90s, and the translator was called "ebonics" would you
still find the package offensive?

As others have noted, it would be dangerous to begin to remove
software due to perceived offensiveness, and since having software in
the ports tree neither condones nor rebukes it's use, in addition to
which the port was provided by a volunteer who felt that it is a
desired component, I personally see no compelling reason to remove it
from the ports tree.

If concerns about issues like this are commonplace, maybe it should be 
handled on an policy-openbsd list instead of here.


-- 
Sean P. McNamara		<smcnamara@soma-tech.com> 
SOMA Technologies, Inc.		<tank@thursday.org>
				<tank@mcla.org>
				<smcnamara@acm.org>