Re: Fedora: Freedom is a Feature.

["John Babich" <jmbabich gmail com>]

On 10/5/07, Karsten Wade <kwade redhat com> wrote:

<snip>

> If you said to me, "Freedom is a feature of our school," I would
> understand that meaning without knowing the CS-specific context.  Why
> wouldn't that apply to the usage in Fedora?
>
> In other words, knowing the CS-specific meaning adds depth to the
> understanding of the slogan, but not knowing the CS-specific meaning
> doesn't detract from the slogan.

Likewise, a variant on "freedom is a feature" is

"Freedom is a feature, not a bug".

If that is hard to translate due to CS jargon, then it can be
expressed (in English) as

"Freedom is a feature, not a flaw",

which, I believe, conveys pretty much the same meaning with nice alliteration.

What is lost is the play on words from the common jargon saying,

"It's a feature, not a bug".

The point is that "Freedom is a feature" is a good slogan in that it
translates well and provides fertile ground for further elaboration.

John Babich
Volunteer, Fedora Project