> You cannot expect people from Finland, Spain, Turkey, Namibia, or Japan to behave the same way, talk the same way, express themselves the same way. You cannot expect them to just normalize to a cookie-cutter template and move on. That does not work. And yet, that's the expectation, because that's how the US-centric IT world is designed.

This. Right here. The fanatics in the OSS world (and Tech at large) seem to have forgotten that Silicon Valley != The World. This is not 1984 with a standardized society defined by the Big Brother in Menlo Park.

You will find that most of these "cultural/offensive" flame wars in tech are fought because someone forgot to step out of the silicon valley bubble they reside in. Take what happened with Redis. The Master/Slave terminology does not raise much eyebrows outside of USA simply because these parts of the world did not have large scale slavery of black people. And yet some SV people expect to everyone to know American history and culture. They seem to live in a dream world where only the American culture exists and then get violent when the reality hits them.

And before someone comes with a respect and work with my culture shtick, please remember that it is a two way street. We are not under any obligation to respect only your culture and mannerisms. You also have a responsibility to understand other cultures and respect them and understand their mannerisms and way of thinking.