You're not too far off. Companies have to, with growing size, do more and more stuff in french. At large companies that aren't exempt you must have a french keyboard for example and code comments have to be in french.
Any large company should have a policy document which states the absurd rules including installation of French software versions and use of French keyboards, hiring and e-mail policies. I believe the policies only apply to businesses with over 50 employees so you would not have encountered them in the public sector.
Wow. I've heard that all of these "you have to use French" rules in Quebec are a reaction to years of French-Canadians in Quebec being treated as second class to the English-Canadians. Doesn't make them any less stupid.
A more cynical one would be that very few anglophones would ever vote "Oui" in a secession referendum. Therefore the Parti Québécois had motivation to make life as uncomfortable as possible for english speakers, hoping they'd give up and move to Ontario.
Probably both explanations have some amount of truth to them.
I think it does. Language discrimination can be an extremely vitriolic form of oppression, and don't underestimate how much it sucks to be a second class citizen in your own country. Just look at the AAVE thread on HN a couple of weeks ago.
AAVE is one dialect among dozens in the US that will get you discriminated against. I grew up in Appalachia (West Virginia/southwestern Virginia line) and when I'm at home or with friends/relatives, my natural dialect is potent.
However, over many years, starting in late high school, I trained myself to speak in a more standard form of English to protect myself from the discrimination of the "hillbilly" stigma. This is my formal dialect, and I use it in business and in formal/sem-formal scholastic settings. My father was the one who encouraged me to do this. As a child, I noticed that he spoke differently when making business calls. He told me that, when "you are trying to make money, trying to learn to make money, or dealing with somebody who wants your money, you speak their language."
This knowledge of using a non-native, standard dialect in business/government/education communications is extremely common, and is especially common amongst the mainstream African American community. The issue with AAVE is only when children are raised in broken families by parents who are too ignorant/disengaged/etc to teach children the standard, formalized dialect that every other ethnic group in America is expected to adhere to. I can't speak in a courtroom in my native dialect and be taken seriously, even if I'm in Charleston, West Virginia. (The exceptions to this are in identity politics. Lots of deep southern politicians use their native accent, and then there is the Charleston dialect, which uses proper grammar but drops the "r's", so is therefore acceptable in formal settings.)
But that's my point. Dialects are entirely arbitrary, yet there is overt discrimination against particular ones, combined with classist and or racist overtones. Given that sort of discrimination, one can at least put together a picture of why the French in Quebec are as protective of their language as their historical marginalization.
My family is from Bangladesh, which separated from Pakistan (in an independence war), over language differences. Historically, those language differences were a proxy for the cultural marginalization of Bengalis within the Pakistani state.
So when we hear about the Quebecois requiring the use of French, and we think "oh those silly French Canadians" we have to remember that there is a lot more to language than just how people speak.
I agree with your description of the problem. In fact, its easy for people like me to forget that, rather than attack the classist, ethnocentric actuality of the fact that we are expected to speak a certain dialect of English due to old class systems, we have simply chosen to be pragmatic and use our own dialect at home, and the 'other' dialect in formal environments.
However, the Quebecois don't need to do what they are doing. They live in a modern nation with civil rights protections. Forcing people to use French is its own form of oppression.
Quebec? I don't see it happening. It has been like that for as long as I can remember. They can't even enter McDonald's contests like Monopoly. They have their own separate contests.
> They can't even enter McDonald's contests like Monopoly.
This is plain wrong. The McDonald’s Monopoly contest is held in all (participating) Canadian McDonald’s restaurants, including Quebec’s. Source: I live in Quebec.
Yes and it's run separately from the rest of Canada's monopoly. Look at the fine print on the prizes in the Ontario McDonald's monopoly which clearly states that it excludes Quebec. Source: I live in Quebec.
OK I'm a Cuban programmer and can tell you this measure sucks big time, if the blocked government wants anything from Google Code, Sourceforge or any other "restricted" place they have mirrors, nice people on other unblocked countries willing to help and as last resource a tor proxy will do. So this measure only asserts read-only access, nothing else. Actually US goverment looks stupid when do things like this, you can't stop software to spread all over the world it's nonsense.
Anyway I prefer Github, Google is not the cool company they used to be, now most of their products look like stripped-down copies of others.
#ifndef HUMOR
#def HUMOR
I think we on the "Evil Axis" should have our own code hosting platform.
Dude, you made my day. I'm pretty fascinated by my Gringo stereotypes of Cuba colliding with a programmer on HN.
I'm picturing a guy with a laptop, palm trees in the background, lots of antique cars driving on the street behind him, a brass band somewhere nearby, a pork sandwich on a plate. Please, please be wearing a Che/Fidel hat.
In all seriousness, I'm curious about the internet situation there. How's the bandwidth these days?
You missed the "Havana Club" rum bottle and a mulatta. ;)
Well, the internet access is a delicate topic, lots of schools have it, government offices, but not much civilians yet, they say is coming soon, but the problem is they fear technology (old people mostly), they see it as a possible way of US Gov. and Miami oppositors to take control of our minds or whatever.
Old people have fears, they have their reasons, young people have ideas, we want to push forward. And is like that, some get tired of waiting for a change and go away to a more tech-savvy place, but is not an option for everyone.
The bandwith is better than 5 years ago and improving, it's not wideband but we can live with that.
Anyway, it sucks to have studied IT Engineering (so far, thousands of us http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Information_Scien...) to end up setting up printers and not creating awesome stuff, people in charge have no faith in knowledge products.
I realized a big truth reading Peopleware: The "Spanish Theory of Value" is killing us.
As a fellow french speaking Quebecer, this is because of the "Régie des alcools, des courses et des jeux", the main office regulating alcool, races and gambling.
In our legislation, if you are making a contest with the intent of giving away more than CAD$2000, you must get a licence from them[1]. Many companies just don't want to get their head in this.
The main reasoning behind this is to keep track of the contests and make sure that no one is trying to scam you.
> The Contest is void in Cuba, Quebec, Saudi Arabia and Syria
> and where prohibited by law. Individuals and entities
> restricted by applicable export controls and sanctions
> programs are ineligible to participate in the Contest
Some could perhaps be explained by export restrictions on crypto code, although I would expect to see some other countries (Iran) banned if that were the case.
Quebec has rather stringent data privacy laws - perhaps these are not compatible with Google's personal data storage policy.
Quebec's case is rather their laws regarding contests, lotteries etc.
Basically any contest from outside Canada won't give a damn about working all of those rules in (if it's even possible at all), so they are simply banned from essentially all international competitions of this kind :)
If they want to offer their contest to residents of Quebec, yes, they must abide by local laws and regulations.
Running a contest in a given jurisdiction is a form of doing business in that jurisdiction, and so of course the contest is subject to whatever regulations that jurisdiction applies to that activity (contests, in this case). Imagine if this were not the case, and anybody could avoid complying with local laws just by calling their activity a 'contest' and running it out of some foreign jurisdiction.
So, by saying people in Quebec can't play, Google is not required to abide the unusual laws that they have there around contests and lotteries.
Probably, because Google has a Canadian subsidiary with offices in Montreal; they're subject to local law. If this wasn't the case they'd gladly not exclude Quebecois.
That's sort of right. Quebec's laws apply whether Google has an office there. However, because the contes is conducted virtually, Quebec wouldn't be able to do a thing to a contest holder with no nexus in Quebec. If Google was required to send a representative to Quebec to conduct their contest and didn't abide by the law, that representative might be deported, or in some stricter countries arrested. Google Code requires no such person, of course.
This is not true. Contests must abide by any local laws or regulations in any jurisdiction they're run in. If you don't run the contest in Quebec (e.g. if you disallow Quebecois entrants) then and only then are you exempt from their laws.
We're not making stuff up. If I run a competition and someone from Belgium enters (and wins) but I have no presence in Belgium, I'm in no way subject to Belgian laws. How can I possibly be? Google doesn't have offices in Venezuela, Colombia, Bolivia, Chile, or South Africa. I highly doubt they're complying with local laws regarding competitions in these jurisdictions!
Google are subject to Quebec's laws because they have offices there and a Canadian subsidiary. If these things weren't, they wouldn't have to abide by such laws. Even if Quebec said they had to, they wouldn't have jurisdiction.
I understand that this is something people don't get, but: yes, if you are doing something that can be construed as "doing business" in a country, then you get to be subject to that country's laws regardless of whether you have offices there or have ever set foot on that country's territory.
This is not particularly new. What is new is the general belief I've seen in many people that "but I did it on the internet!" is a magical answer.
Such laws would be really, really difficult, if not impossible to enforce.
I seem to remember there are certain laws the British government thinks applies to foreign companies that have no ties to the UK but otherwise do business with British residents, but in the same breath says they have no way to enforce them.
Enforcement's not so terribly hard. Look at the US campaign against online gambling; when they want to crack down, they can cut off the flow of money to customers in the US.
If you pay money to someone from Belgium for a service (which, in a legal sense, is how Google Summer of Code works) then that transaction is definitely subject to Belgian laws.
Just as if you sell something to someone from Belgium over the internet, both your and their law applies.
If I sell something to a Belgian and I'm, say, a Canadian company, I don't suddenly become subject to Belgian law. I don't have to account for distance selling regulations, data protection regulations, VAT, local taxes or anything else. I'd be subject to Canadian law, and that's all. Chances are the contract would even state that the jurisdiction were somewhere in Canada. (Yes, I know contracts aren't always perfectly binding or valid, and just because something is declared in a contract doesn't mean it's enforceable or valid.)
Consumer could sue in Belgian courts but the matter of jurisdiction would arise and that's where the claim would fail.
Jurisdiction may be disputed, and yes, in sales disputes it might be decided that Belgium doesn't have jurisdiction over that contract if you have no subsidiaries or other relations there. Still, even in your case the "target" country law does apply for whatever things happen on their side of the border - and it may impact you. Say, if the item is considered illegal there then it may be confiscated at customs, leaving you without the item and payment; and your local courts won't help you there.
But in Google Summer of Code case, if it's treated as 'work for hire' then the host country definitely has jurisdiction as the actual work happens there. And Google has subsidiaries worldwide (used for ad sales), so they can easily be targeted.
> although I would expect to see some other countries (Iran) banned if that were the case.
I remembered several years ago Iranian was also banned from the competition, but after sometimes they allowed Iranian, but I think they don't give prize in the case of winning.
Another example of Quebec being a totalitarian regime. A bit different from some others in this world though. A place where one can increase funding for a language Gestapo, who fines restaurant owners who don't properly translate pasta in their menu, while cutting social spending.
All for the benefit of the residents. Go Quebec!
(http://www.advertisinglawyer.ca/advertising.htm)
(http://business.financialpost.com/2011/09/08/why-many-contes...)