[ohlookapony]

>Was the variable name an accurate description of what it was used for or not? If it was, let it go. If it wasn't suggest a better one.

>Opensource software is not the place to enforce your views on society on someone else.

While I completely agree, if you read the article he did suggest an alternative and submitted a patch.

Rather than the patch being rejected, he got banned from the community.

See below. Not a good look, but we only have one side of the story.

=== The second was a set of emails from Duncan Murdoch, President of the R Foundation and an R Core member, in which he dismissed my "bug report" (note the skeptical scare quotes he put on it) "about some variable name that you find offensive is clearly an example of nothing more than shit-disturbing" and stated that myself, and those who had commented in favour of changing it, were no longer welcome to participate in R's bug-tracker.

[sliken]

I did read the article. A developer in the authors words was "entirely proper, entirely reasonable", named a variable that describes what it does and filed a patch claiming it's "exclusionary as all hell".

Just the type of thing that will create drama, debate, and divide the community.

All because someone reads something into a variable name that wasn't intended... for a variable that is well named.

What's next banning unlucky numbers? Rating colors by political correctness? Favoring data structures because of their religious analogies?

How about saving bug reports for things that actually improve the application?

[ricksplat]

I don't find the use of the word fanny by Americans to be inappropriate, though it means something completely different in my sociolinguistic context. Even more similarly when a German colleague expresses her enjoyment of driving ("ich möchte fahrt") I'm not about to cry "filth" because one of the words sounds like a rude noise to my puerile mind.

[ohlookapony]

I agree with you regarding the patch, and the name doesn't bother me in the slightest.

However I think Duncan Murdoch, being the President of the R Foundation acted extremely immaturely by blocking the accounts of all involved.