The linked project web site (https://free.oberon.org/en) proudly features a video with a thumbnail showing a rendition of the USSR's parliament, the so called Supreme Soviet, with some screenshots added in.
Extremely poor taste.
The linked project web site (https://free.oberon.org/en) proudly features a video with a thumbnail showing a rendition of the USSR's parliament, the so called Supreme Soviet, with some screenshots added in.
Extremely poor taste.
I suppose it's just imagery from the heyday of Wirth's Oberon, ca 1987.
BTW Oberon was / is not just a language, but a whole very interesting interactive computing environment.
I think some of the devs are Russian and a quick scan of the video doesn't show anything other than a shared screen for the bulk of the time (using the mouse to grab the time pointer and move it quickly through the length of the presentation).
Pascal is quite common in Russia - many schools teach comp sci with it.
> Extremely poor taste.
How so?
Soviet imagery in countries that have been conquered by or subject to Soviet imperialism is seen extremely poorly. USSR loved its ethnic cleansing and purges, with several declared as genocide. Try, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_the_Crimean_Tat... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Lentil_(Caucasus) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Operation_of_the_NKVD Soviet imagery has also been widely used by Russian propaganda in its current war against Ukraine, so it’s not only a historical matter.
Some people use My Little Pony characters as avatars, some use history books characters and propaganda poster characters. It means nothing in itself, people rarely stick to what they preach.
If you think that dumb nostalgia about “good old times” and complete ignorance/acceptance of any murders if they are considered state-sanctioned is somehow different in your own country (any country at any time), you must come to conclusion that some people inherently have lesser “quality” than others based on papers that they are given at birth by this or that organisation calling itself a state. Problematic, as they say.
Sure. But there are also a significant number of people who are nostalgic for it and might be offended by this use for that reason, hence why I asked.
Given the existence of both groups I think just the claim that it’s offensive, without explaining why, is ambiguous and just reacting defensively doesn’t address that.
Given all we know about the USSR, I don't think anyone needs to explain why. This plus your other comment suggest you're replying in bad faith.
It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.
Nope. I just evidently know people with more varied opinions on the USSR than you do. (Including people who grew up there.)
Opinions... There are people with varied opinions on Nazi Germany. That doesn't mean squat.
The USSR eradicated everyone with a deviating opinion about the regime. They perished in the dungeons of the KGB and in the Gulags. What remained were opportunists and followers. Opinions!
Indeed, that accusation of bad faith is such blatant projection ... essentially "It's bad faith to disagree with me, and there's no need for me to justify my claims."
This whole diversion is off topic and can be seen as a form of bad faith.
I’m not even disagreeing, I’m saying that there are different (and somewhat opposed) ways in which someone could find an image offensive, so it’s worthwhile to provide further context.
> Given the existence of both groups
This is a false equivalence between those who suffered from USSR and those who are ignorant of the suffering of others. I don't think we should care about feelings of a group who are for whatever reason nostalgic about a genocidal oppressive regime.
Would you treat an image of the US House of Representatives the same way? The United States has caused an enormous amount of suffering in the world and has in the past had an explicit policy of genocide and oppression against a number of groups (including my wife’s ancestors), as well as a number of other horrific policies. If you would not treat an image of the US House of Representatives the same way as you treat an image of the Supreme Soviet, it’s worthwhile to interrogate why.
Peoples’ feelings about the nations they are born into and told to love from birth are complex and multifaceted. The people I know who grew up in the USSR have both good and bad things to say about it, just like the people I know who grew up in the USA (like me) at the same time (the 1970s-1990s) have both good and bad things to say about it. And that isn’t just about our own experiences growing up in these respective nations, but about learning our birth nations’ true histories, and how closely (or not) the ideals espoused by their founders and politicians and important figures in their histories were reflected in their actions.
Thus I really, truly do believe it’s ambiguous for someone to say, without any further context, that they find an image of a legislature with some screen shots of an IDE placed into it offensive. Is it offensive because it’s referencing a body they consider evil or is it offensive because it’s trivializing a body they consider good? Without context it’s impossible to know, and acting like everyone shares the same context about this is just refusal to engage with the world as it is rather than the world as you’d like it to be.
> Would you treat an image of the US House of Representatives the same way?
No. The right analogy is an image of the Reichstag with Nazi banners.
If we asked people around the world which country should be most feared, I wonder what they would say?
https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2026/06/07/study-world-usa-b...
A lot of people will disagree with you on that.
A lot of people might also have coherent reasons to think that analogy applies equally to the US House of Representatives and the US Senate.
> Soviet imagery has also been widely used by Russian propaganda in its current war against Ukraine
That alone makes it very bad taste to use any of the Soviet imagery. I'm not sure why it's even a debatable topic at this point.
[dead]
That's bait. Go find your history school books. Byebye.
How about you just explain what you mean?
You’re the one who made the statement. It’s on you to support it.
[dead]
They use Yandex for e-mail, so probably a Russian group behind this.
So what? Russians are good programmers.
[flagged]
More info please? I have severe doubts that GOG actually had that intent.
This one [0]. Which German QA picked up and said 'no way', and so German customers didn't get the newsletter. But everyone else still did.
[0] https://www.pcgamer.com/games/gog-apologizes-for-emailing-na...
What’s that got to do with FreeOberon?
Whataboutism is in poor taste.