On 2019-08-14 00:12:22 -0400 (-0400), Zane Bitter wrote: [...]
My understanding (which may be wrong because it all seems to have gone down within a day that I happened to be on vacation) of how we got into that state to begin with is that after Tony did a ton of work figuring out how to get a local name beginning with U, collected a bunch of names + feedback, and was basically ready to start the poll, the Foundation implied that they would veto all of the names on the grounds that their China expert didn't feel that using the GR transliteration would be appropriate because of reasons. [...]
(Sorry about the late reply, but I'm finally catching up on the thread after a week of nonstop in-person meetings.) I think this particular detail spun out of control and got unnecessarily exaggerated with the retelling, yet people believed the exaggeration and allowed it to unduly influence decisions. The *only* references I'm aware of to this consultation are: 1. In the #openstack-tc IRC channel, mnaser said, "I think it might be better to hold off on that a little bit. I have talked with Horace a bit regarding this and it doesn't seem like it might be setting us up for success. We're likely ending up in a position where we don't have much choice of names (and the usage of GR seemed to have some not-so-ideal background because of it's popularity in Taiwan and not being used in China)." <URL: http://eavesdrop.openstack.org/irclogs/%23openstack-tc/%23openstack-tc.2019-... > 2. In the governance change to establish the original poll details, Mohammed Naser commented, "I've taken the time to discuss this with Horace (the OSF's China community manager) regarding the choice of name that we're about to have. They've shared a few concerns with me about the choice that we're making here and I think we should re-consider it before we actually make a decision to go with it. First of all, it seems that the GR romanization isn't exactly popular in Mainland China and it's actually quite more popular in regions outside of it (in Taiwan) for example. Therefore, it wouldn't probably be a great image of our community to do that for our Chinese contributors." https://review.opendev.org/666974 I interpreted neither of those as a statement that OSF would "veto" GR names, merely as a suggestion in support of broadening our regional criteria or choosing to allow exceptions so that we don't rely exclusively on GR-transliterated options in the final poll. I also questioned this second-hand assertion, as a week earlier in the same review, Eric Kao commented, "Gwoyeu Romatzyh is not in use in Taiwan, avoiding another possible sensitivity." There was no response to further explain the apparent contradiction there, and in retrospect I'm sorry I didn't push for further clarification on the matter. -- Jeremy Stanley