Showing posts with label milliyet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label milliyet. Show all posts

07 December 2006

Arrested for Sharing a Kurdish Ubuntu?

Here's a rum to-do:

Controversy followed the release of a Kurdish translation of Ubuntu in Turkey last week. The release was originally reported in Millyet, a Turkish national newspaper, on November 21. This first release of a Kurdish language operating system and software has caused a stir in Turkey, where, up until 1991, it was illegal even to speak Kurdish in public.

...

Subsequent reports in the Turkish press suggest that Mayor Abdullah Demirbas of Sur, a town in Diyarbakir, Eastern Turkey, is currently under investigation by the Diyarbakir chief public prosecutor's office following the launch. It is not clear what Demirbas is being investigated for, but it is probably related to Turkey's less than tolerant stance on the public use of Kurdish.

Who - aside from RMS - would have thought that making a distro could be a political act?