The Big ACL Opening

[Lennart Poettering]

On Thu, 16.10.08 13:37, Paul W. Frields (stickster at gmail.com) wrote:

> > I don't think using smelly worlds like that one and forgetting about their
> > history would be good for a formalized workflow like ours in
> > Fedora. I mean, we are supposed to be democratic with all our
> > board elections and stuff. But, uh, using Nazi terminology is not a
> > good way to promote that.
> > 
> > Or, if we have "Überpackagers", maybe it's time to rename normal
> > packagers to "Unterpackagers"? That would fit awfully well into our
> > pursuit for world domination, wouldn't it?
> 
> If we were to go with a dead language instead and say "ultrapackagers,"
> would that be less likely to offend?  (Serious question, not being
> snarky.)

It has been a while since my last lessons in Latin.

But yes, it's just the german prefix "Über-" used in this reference
that makes me feel uncomfortable. To my knowledge latin or greek
or.... english (woah!) translations of that word do not have any
similar connotation.

You never can be entirely safe, there are always words that in some
languages or to some people may be offending or have a questionnable
connotation. However, since Nazism is almost universally agreed to be
without comparison and practically a superlative of evil there are
more than enough reasons to stay away from terminology related to
Nazism.

Lennart

-- 
Lennart Poettering                        Red Hat, Inc.
lennart [at] poettering [dot] net         ICQ# 11060553
http://0pointer.net/lennart/           GnuPG 0x1A015CC4