Red Hat is getting slammed for removing the Taiwanese flag from some of its files in order to “appease” the People’s Republic of China. Microsoft isn’t getting slammed for providing the Windows operating system used so heavily by Osama bin Ladin and his henchmen, but that may be because no one (besides me) noticed that Windows was the operating system behind most English-language Islamic terrorist group sites before almost all of them disappeared from the Internet after 9/11/2001. But I am glad anti-Microsoft zealots never picked up on the Al-Queda connection, because computing choices have nothing to do with either politics or religion.
Not long ago Apple demanded that a Satanist group remove a “Made with Mac” logo from its Web site. Apparently there are limits on just how “different” a Mac user is supposed to think.
A friend of mine once created a Web page for a mythical Linux distribution called “Jesux,” supposedly built on Christian principles. My friend is a devout evangelistic Christian, so he was half-serious about some of the ideas behind Jesux, but the Jesux site itself was far from serious. Even the name led to as many bad puns as Christian conversions.
I’m not kidding about heavy Windows (and IIS Server) use by Islamic terrorists. When Slashdot was covering 9/11 events on that fateful day, I was doing background research — and I am a chronic source code peeker and Netcraft “What’s that site running?” devotee, so I noticed that the Islamic Liberation Front and almost all of the other “Kill all Israelis and Americans” groups ran Windows/IIS. And if you looked closely at pictures of the “Captured Al Queda computers” found by U.S. forces in Afghanistan, you saw little “start” buttons in their lower left hand corners.
You also saw a lot of Toyota SUVs and pickups in pictures of Taliban military units, but no one seems to be demanding a boycott of Toyota over this misuse of their products.
Flags of all colors in Linux
One problem with software is that it’s hard to limit its use to “the good guys.” Sooner or later, if you put out good software, it will be used by evil communists, capitalists, Chinese, Taiwanese, Germans, French, Americans, Israelis, Palestinians, Floridians or … anyway, you get the idea. “Software doesn’t do nasty things, people do nasty things,” is a paraphrase of the U.S. National Rifle Association’s loudest pro-gun mantrum, and it applies at least as much to software as it does to guns.
I have met both Israelis and Arabs who develop Linux software. Indeed, the person who first showed me the Arabic version of KDE was an Israeli.
Some countries are offended by other countries. This is sad, but so it goes. I personally believe that the U.S. boycott of Cuba is counterproductive; that the best way to get Cubans to embrace American ideals (including private computer ownership, which Cuba currently does not allow) is to flood their island with laptop-toting American tourists and businesspeople. Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura agrees with me, while Florida Governor Jeb Bush does not — even though recent Cuban/American trade fairs have been heavily attended by Florida-based companies.
I have never quoted ABC/Disney newsmouth Peter Jennings before, but he said something in a recent Reader’s Digest interview that makes sense here: “Patriotism is loving your family whether it is good or bad, while always striving to make it better. Nationalism simply insists, ‘Hey, my family is the best.'”
I am an American patriot (as opposed to a nationalist), and I suppose if Linux was a country I would be a Linux patriot, too. As a Linux patriot I would want all countries’ flags removed from all Linux software on principle. And if a Linux distribution publisher removed one country’s flag from some of its files to make another country happy, I would gently chide that publisher instead of slamming them in public in ways that would make me look like a silly fanatic.
Boycott everyone! For everything!
I am almost 50 years old, and all my life it seems someone has been asking me to boycott someone over something. The United Farmworkers asked us not to buy grapes “back in the day.” Many human rights groups have asked us not to buy from Nike (which I don’t anyway because I can get shoes as good as theirs for a lot less from other manufacturers). The U.S. boycotts Iraq, although I don’t think the average U.S. citizen feels anything for the average Iraqi besides pity. I mentioned Cuba earlier. I remember my daughter (back when she was 10) asking me to boycott McDonald’s because it destroyed rain forests. And there are many good reasons to boycott China. And Pakistan. And Saudi Arabia. And Israel. And Great Britain. And New Zealand. And, of course, there are uncountable reasons to boycott The Great Satan itself, the United States.
I am tired of boycotts. I don’t turn over every tag on every piece of clothing at Wal-Wart (yes, I know I’m supposed to boycott Wal-Mart) to see if it was made in countries I’m not supposed to like this week. I haven’t taken all the computers I own apart to see if they contain parts made in oppressive Singapore. And I note that anti-American groups like Al-Queda sure use those Microsoft products a lot even though they talk nasty about America and the people who live here, and if they are as anti-Israel as they claim, they ought to boycott Microsoft because it has lots of facilities in Israel.
Then they’d need to boycott Linux, too. And Apple. And virtually all other computer and software companies and development groups.
Don’t I recall some sort of flame war on KDE email lists not long ago about Germans and KDE and Nazis and Zionists? Or is my memory playing tricks on me? Or am I mercifully blocking all that out?
We are all victims
My ancestors were treated badly by [fill in ethnic group here]. Yours were treated badly by [fill in ethnic group here]. The rights of [fill in country here] are violated all the time by [fill in country here]. Freedom to the [fill in group here]! Down with [fill in group here]!
And all this helps make Linux better how?
Open Source software is essentially seditious in that it gives control to the individual user, not to the vendor or a government. I notice that all the anti-China, anti-Red Hat yowlers point to places in the code where the Taiwanese flag has been removed to make Red Hat acceptable to the People’s Republic of China. Don’t they realize that there are plenty of computer-hip Chinese who will see this code and realize that their government needs to change? Isn’t it just barely possible that Red Hat’s action will cause some of the new generation of Chinese officials to feel a little shame, to change their attitude if not in big ways today, then in subtle ways over the years?
Personally, I am astounded that the People Republic of China allows Linux or Open Source use at all. If I ran a dictatorship I wouldn’t want my subjects to see how computers worked down inside — to view places in the source code where I’d forced other countries’ flags to be suppressed, as it were. I would not want my programmers to communicate freely with programmers in other countries with more liberal views of human rights than mine. I would allow nothing but closed-source software created to my government’s specifications, and all screensavers would contain “I Love My Dictator” messages.
Meanwhile, I wish Red Hat — and all other Linux distributors — Godspeed in their efforts to spread the Open Source freedom message all over the world, with or without flags.
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