Linux Mint

[Steve Litt]

On Wednesday 15 July 2009 10:40:06 am geoffrey mendelson wrote:
> Following up to Omer's sig, does Linux Mint boycott or advocate a
> boycott of Israel?
> I read the postings he linked to and I can see that the founder asked
> for one, but is that still active?

The short answer is "who knows?"

The long story is this: On or around 5/3/2009 the Mint founder, Clem Lefevbre, 
put a generally anti-Israel post on the Mint official blog stating that they 
do not want any monetary or code contributions from supporters of the Israeli 
government. Within 1 day that post was removed from the Mint blog and placed 
on Clem's brand new personal blog.

Over the course of the next 3 weeks, Clem's viewpoint slowly became more 
balanced, including a post that it's a complicated issue and that he feels 
sorry for the victims on both sides.

Soon after, I emailed Clem personally asking him to repudiate **MINTS** last 
word on the subject, which was his 5/3 blog entry. Ensuing emails between him 
and me caused me to reduce my demand to the following statement, displayed 
prominently on their website:

========================================
The Linux Mint project welcomes users, contributors and community members from 
all political persuasions. We regret earlier Linux Mint Blog statements to 
the contrary.
========================================

In an ensuing email, Clem wrote me saying the project voted on this and 
declined to do it.

To me, declining to put this innocuous little statement is much more telling 
(and damning) than the original post. My interpretation of this refusal is 
they're either pandering to Israel's enemies, or they're really anti-Israel. 
Either way, they're forcing free-software participants to choose sides in an 
international conflict, so I could no longer support this distro and began to 
make plans to document a way to make Ubuntu a more Mint-like distro.

In summary, although Mint immediately removed the offending post, that post 
remains their last word on the subject, and not by accident.

HTH

SteveT

Steve Litt
Recession Relief Package
http://www.recession-relief.US
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