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Date:      Mon, 17 Dec 2001 19:25:03 +1030
From:      Greg Lehey <grog@FreeBSD.org>
To:        David Greenman <dg@root.com>
Cc:        "Jason C. Wells" <jcwells@highperformance.net>, FreeBSD Chat <chat@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   Political Correctness on -chat (was: Why no Indians and Arabs?)
Message-ID:  <20011217192503.P14500@monorchid.lemis.com>
In-Reply-To: <20011216222651.A92038@nexus.root.com>
References:  <3C1CE49E.39FBBED2@mindspring.com> <Pine.BSF.4.21.0112161846210.45555-100000@server.highperformance.net> <20011216222651.A92038@nexus.root.com>

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On Sunday, 16 December 2001 at 22:26:51 -0800, David Greenman wrote:
>> It seems no one has come close to adressing Greg's question, save the
>> quick and common response that demographics have no bearing on
>> anything.  Somehow now we are talking of IE 5.0.
>>
>> I was actually looking forward to someone saying something like, there are
>> few computers in Arab lands. Or perhaps, computers are eyed with suspicion
>> in my home country.  It would have been interesting.  Something that would
>> expose issues as to, "Why no Indians and Arabs?"

It seems that I have completely misunderstood at least the US members
of the FreeBSD project.  FreeBSD represents a new social phenomenon,
and we've already discussed the demography in terms of male/female
(im)balance and age distribution.  An obvious other one is cultural
distribution.

It seems that people in the USA have a hangup about this; sorry, guys,
I didn't want to offend anybody.  I don't think there's anything wrong
in the question, though.  As somebody else pointed out, there are
times when you want to recognize people by their appearance or
ethnic/cultural background.  I don't agree with his criteria, but it's
an obvious thing to do.  I grew up with a large number of both Arabic
and Indian friends (to the point where, at the age of 12, I spoke
English with a Tamil accent), so you can hardly claim I was
discriminating against them.  I'm sure that most of my friends of this
time would be as surprised about the reactions to my message as I am.

>    Umm, but the assumption was wrong - there are both Indian and
> Arab developers working on FreeBSD. His question was based on false
> assumptions, so I don't know that there is anything to really talk
> about. :-)

Why should that mean there's nothing to talk about?  I now know of one
representative each of the groups I'm talking about.  Why so few?

Greg
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