I agree that the word may be down on the offensiveness scale, but it is still offensive to some people.
Large organisations have such policies because they are aware that they are composed of people from diverse set of backgrounds. Unless you know exactly who the message is intended to, the delivery will always sounds vague / generic.
Before coming to Australia, I never knew that showing picture(s) of a deceased Aboriginal person is a cause of offense. If, say for example, a fatality occurred and the last group photo with the deceased Aboriginal was circulated (e.g. in memoriam memo), they would regard it as an offense even with the best of intentions.
TL,DR; Let's just be respectful and not call each other names.
>I agree that the word may be down on the offensiveness scale, but it is still offensive to some people.
Who gives a shit? 'fuck' is offensive to some people and it's all over github. This enforcement is completely arbitrary and this is what is causing the backlash.
But, as I mentioned in some other comments, GitHub is made up by many individuals that holds different values (just like you and me), thus it is nearly impossible for them to be 100% consistent.
I think the backlash happened mainly because there is a disagreement on the conduct. Just so happened, someone who stumbled upon the repo thought it was inappropriate, reported it, and the reviewer agreed (my speculation).
Large organisations have such policies because they are aware that they are composed of people from diverse set of backgrounds. Unless you know exactly who the message is intended to, the delivery will always sounds vague / generic.
Before coming to Australia, I never knew that showing picture(s) of a deceased Aboriginal person is a cause of offense. If, say for example, a fatality occurred and the last group photo with the deceased Aboriginal was circulated (e.g. in memoriam memo), they would regard it as an offense even with the best of intentions.
TL,DR; Let's just be respectful and not call each other names.