主题：工作中的小政治 -- 多数

今天用了一个软件：http://www.gromacs.org/

是个化学计算软件， 运行时出现了这个：

gromacs-4.5.3-gcc346/bin/pdb2gmx_d --help

:-) G R O M A C S (-:

Go Rough, Oppose Many Angry Chinese Serial killers

:-) VERSION 4.5.3 (-:

Copyright (c) 1991-2000, University of Groningen, The Netherlands.

Copyright (c) 2001-2010, The GROMACS development team at

Uppsala University & The Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden.

我当即草拟了一份信， 给作者的大学和机构。 思考后， 我又修改了信件， 改成给原作者， 表达了我的抗议：

I am shocked to see GROMACS is interpreted in this sentence " Go Rough, Oppose Many Angry Chinese Serial killers".

I don't know the author(s) of of this software original intention to put up such race words. As a Chinese, I feel offended by such words. This improper image spreads over the academic and research community worldwide. I hope this message could bring up your attention to correct this mistake and certain remedy could be done at this software community (mailing list) as soon as possible to minimize the damage.

Thanks for your attention,

作者很快就回了信， 解释了这个是从数据库里随机选出的500条之一， 没有其他含义：

First, Chinese is a nationality and not a race, just like Swedish. This is one of hundreds of random sentences beginning with the letters G-R-O-M-A-C-S. Nothing against China; it's a beautiful country that I enjoy visiting, although just as there are Swedish serial killers I guess there could be a Chinese one too... There are probably at least five more or less stupid things I've said in the last 10 years there too (with my name clearly listed), but I would never dream of dream of having those either removed...

Second, if you still feel deeply offended by a random sentence that might show up in 1 of 500 cases, simply set the GMX_NO_QUOTES environment variable to anything, and you'll never see it!

Cheers,

解释是真诚的， 但我觉得这没有解决问题：

I appreciate your prompt response and nice tip to turn the quotes off.

After I retype the command, the quote is changed. So the quote is random selected. This convinces me the software doesn't inventively to bring other factors other than research/academic purpose.

Each country/nation has all positive/negative. No matter which country, showing up in the academic environment may be interpreted out of its original intention. It is very misleading if I only use this software once and happening to see the sentence. If it showing up as other countries, I still will think why the develop team has problem with this country and want to express it in the software.

Hope you would reconsider to remove this quote from your software release.

best regards,

现在在等待他的回复。 这不是个恶意的句子， 但在研究学术环境里很明显不合适， 特别是在公开的软件中。

如果对方没有进一步措施，我想把这个事发到他们大学层面去。

望得到各位指点， 如何有理有节去处理这件事？

谢谢