Zaheer Abbas Merali

I have received lots of comments on my previous blog entry on the istanbul 0.2.0 release saying things such as:

• “giving one’s political opinion when it’s published world wide (Planet GNOME) is not a good idea”
• You know, not everyone has the same opinions as you do, so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t pollute Planet GNOME with your biased political crap
• Istanbul is great but please leave away your propaganda from Planet Gnome
• Regardless of my feelings on the issue, it was rather sneaky to put that line in a release announcement.

To all those people and others who share these views, this is what I have to say:

This is a weblog, mine in fact. We work on free software because it is our freedom to do so. Should I not be free to write my opinions on my own blog? Should Michael Meeks not be free to write about things in the bible on his blog?

Come on guys (and girls), get real. I did not even say anything in the slightest controversial. I did not condone any suicide bombings, in fact I stated that I felt for the Lebanese and Palestinans who have been bombed by planes. Do these people deserve to be bombed? If I had a blog on 12th September 2001 and I had said that I had felt sorry for the people of New York and Washington DC, should I get these kinds of comments saying to keep my opinions to myself?

So now, please feel free to give suggestions on what you want in Istanbul and I will listen to them. But I will now ignore comments that tell me to shut up. Yes, I promised that Istanbul will be in portage very soon. It is coming!

This entry was posted on Friday, July 14th, 2006 at 9:00 pm and is filed under Gentoo, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.