I alwways thought that free software was free like 'free as free speech' not like 'free as in china'. Gnome policy about flags is the beginning of the end for freedom. (that is to say, stopping to speech - not distributing flags - to obey some orders). Today, that just talks about a flag, tomorrow that will be some screensavers or background screen discarded , the day after tomorrow that will may be a software that prevent to post some news on special sites or specially include a patch that prevents to write some words in a word processor.
This "no flags" policy is wider than GNOME. For example at OpenOffice.org is *forbidden* the use of any flags, even inside native language/local subprojects.
Personally, I disagree with this, but the only way to put a flag on the subproject where I'm one of the maintainers was to disguise it: http://ro.openoffice.org/gfx/logo_ro.png
-- nicu
I could understand in example that spain is not the only spanish speaking country.
Spanish, English and french are more used out of Spain, England, and France than in. The people out of this countries have the right to complain, but the use of flag icons is very fast to understand. If anybody has better alternatives please tell us.
Personally,I don't want to fall into surrender the truth because of some people desires. Taiwan is an independent country occupied by chinesse people that didn't wanted to be communist. What Chinese government want is to extend its great Firewall over all of us, trying to control what we think and do. As Herve said it's only a start, as they are a lot of people that want to control us.
Jose Hevia