Michael Larabel over at Phoronix brings us news of a stealth Social Justice coup over at FreeDesktop.org:
X.Org, GStreamer, Wayland, LibreOffice, Mesa, VA-API, Harfbuzz, and SPICE are among the many projects hosted by FreeDesktop.org that now appear to be on a contributor covenant / code of conduct.
The Contributor Covenant for those unfamiliar with it is trying to promote a code of conduct for open-source projects that is trying to promote diversity and equality of contributors to libre software projects. From the covenant's website, "Part of this problem [of "free, libre, and open source projects suffer from a startling lack of diversity, with dramatically low representation by women, people of color, and other marginalized populations"] lies with the very structure of some projects: the use of insensitive language, thoughtless use of pronouns, assumptions of gender, and even sexualized or culturally insensitive names."
The covenant states in part that those contributing should use welcoming and inclusive language, be respectful to others, showing empathy towards others, avoid insulting comments, and avoid inappropriate conduct. For the most part, it's basically common sense.
Now it seems this Contributor Covenant is being forced onto all FreeDesktop.org-hosted projects.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday April 10 2017, @05:53PM
The Dutch language has two genders:
(1) Masculine or feminine
(2) Neuter.
Well, there are masculine and feminine personal pronouns, but those are used when speaking of obviously gendered things, such as people.
The noun 'meisje', which means 'girl' or 'little girl', has neuter gender. But if you refer to a girl using a pronoun, you use a feminine pronoun.
Many languages have gender built into them. But they don't clearly map onto two sexes.
I'm told there's an Australian language with eight genders.
-- hendrik