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towsonu2003
November 29th, 2006, 06:07 AM
The news at Wikinews: http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Kurdish_operating_system_under_investigation_by_Tu rkish_attorney_general

Note: Please do not move this to the Backyard. It is about Ubuntu primarily and about politics secondarily (?)... Thanks.

Note2: I'm Turkish, I'm ashamed, I'm not surprised.

DC@DR
November 29th, 2006, 07:04 AM
WTF? It's a shame...:-(

mips
November 29th, 2006, 08:13 AM
The question is, "Why is it under investigation ?"

Hopefully someone from Turkey can elaborate ?

FurryNemesis
November 29th, 2006, 09:15 AM
I'm not from Turkey, but the Kurds as an ethnic group have been calling for the right to self-determination for a long time. The Turkish govt. doesn't recognise this right and seems to react - up to the level of state-sponsored violence, provoked or not - to anything that might lead to it. The localisation of Ubuntu will have set off alarm bells, as it increases community feel and "might" provide a minor rallying point for kurdish feeling.

Virogenesis
November 29th, 2006, 09:30 AM
well I do remember someone who was kurdishm, actually thanking for support and they were surprised to see it aswell.
This could infact be a good thing if it ends up on the news, free PR if the media mentions ubuntu or linux they might be interested to search to find out all the fuss.

gereksiz
December 13th, 2006, 08:10 PM
That is stupid. If you are a Turk as you claimed, you should have known that the investigation is not against Ubuntu. So that is a political problem first and none other.

Secondly, what happened is the following:

1. Turkish is the only official language in Turkey, as a result, all the municilities must use Turkish language in official business.
2. There was a news conference by one of the small municipilites in Diyarbakir to present a new computer which had Kurdish interface. They selected Ubuntu for its user friendliness.
3. All of this is the brain child of Reimar Heider, a known PKK supporter (a terrorist organization that has been recognized by so in international institutions). He was presented in the meeting as if he was an american programmer but he is a German who is looking over translating opensource project to Kurdish. I wonder why they hided his real identity.
4. The investigation is for using a non-Turkish language in official business.

It is true, you should be shamed but not for the investigation but trying to lie to the forumers here.

towsonu2003
December 13th, 2006, 09:35 PM
That is stupid. If you are a Turk as you claimed, you should have known that the investigation is not against Ubuntu. So that is a political problem first and none other.

at the time that report was out, it read like Ubuntu was under investigation as well. Afterwards, it turned out that the mayor was under investigation. The investigation was started because the guy supported multilingualism. It's a shame, even though the investigation was dropped afterwards. The guy got into trouble because he said:


"Whatever language it is in, we wanted it [our service] to be accessible multilingually (http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Kurdish_operating_system_under_investigation_by_Tu rkish_attorney_general) because multilingualism is our wealth."

I never claimed it was an apolitical problem. Where did you get that idea?


Secondly, what happened is the following:

1. Turkish is the only official language in Turkey, as a result, all the municilities must use Turkish language in official business.
which needs to change, but as I mentioned above, that was not the problem. the mayor said "I support multilingualism", and the investigation was due to that (afaik).

2. There was a news conference by one of the small municipilites in Diyarbakir to present a new computer which had Kurdish interface. They selected Ubuntu for its user friendliness.
and to present its support for Kurdish. but of course, you're prone to ignore that... see, I'm Turkish enough to be familiar with common tendencies ;)

3. All of this is the brain child of Reimar Heider, a known PKK supporter (a terrorist organization that has been recognized by so in international institutions). He was presented in the meeting as if he was an american programmer but he is a German who is looking over translating opensource project to Kurdish. I wonder why they hided his real identity.
what's your source that supports this information? -the information you gave is
1. that ubuntu-ku is a product of a PKK-supporter
2. and that Heiner is not an American programmer (as mentioned by the news articles) but a German PKK supporter (as mentioned by your unknown source)

4. The investigation is for using a non-Turkish language in official business. see above

It is true, you should be shamed but not for the investigation but trying to lie to the forumers here. thanks

Reference (http://www.bianet.org/2006/10/01_eng/news85560.htm)