Since it is not presently clear when the patch to update comments is going to 
be committed, it appeared to make sense to log a separate bug:
http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=22079

I hope it's applied sometimes soon...

(In reply to comment #38)
> sergey is the xkeyboard-config maintainer, and i have full confidence in his
> maintenance.  i don't think he has any conflict of interest whatsoever and am
> not going to look at myself unless he asks me to.
I think the history of the country he apparently is a subject of, and his 
track record in this matter, suggest that the conflict of 
interest is in fact very likely to be present, whether intentional or 
subconscious, and whether ill will is present or not. 
IMHO, due to past experiences he should delegate at 
least Crimean Tatar (Crimean Turkish) related matters to somebody else. Also, 
I do not see avoidance of conflict of interest as something that denigrates 
a person, on the contrary it demonstrates good judgement and leads to better 
outcomes. Slightly off-topic, FYI: some examples of excellent lawyers avoiding it can
 be seen in TV show The Guardian.

If i came from your background, i would probably have sent roughly the same 
response. Unfortunately, the historical comparisons you made don't quite apply 
to this case.

> 
> the conflict of interest thing is ludicrous.  what happens when you have a
> project consisting of people from the united kingdom, the united states,
> russia, france, china, germany, japan, austria-hungry, the former ottoman
> empire, et al? everyone would have a legitimate complaint of oppression against
> everyone else.

If you are reading this sentence, I encourage you to read the following to 
gain better awareness of the conflict of interest concerns unique to Russia  
with regards to languages, and why comparisons with other countries are not 
applicable.

I tried to avoid going into this area before, but feel i need to raise awareness
of certain things:
1. Somewhat remote history:
1.1. it is ludicrous to force an exodus of a major part of a nation from its 
native lands
1.2. it is ludicrous to execute and exile individuals for writing poems about 
how they love their language and their people
1.3. it is ludicrous when a country forces dozens of nations to go through 
5 alphabets in approximately 1 century 
(Arabic, modified/vandalized Arabic, slightly weird Latin 
(sometimes more than 1 variant in less than 10 years), Cyrillic, and Latin 
again because coerced Cyrillic alphabet was the worst of them).
1.3.1. it ludicrous to use 2 letters (x and h) for 2 similar phonemes in a Latin
alphabet and then several years later to completely drop 1 of them 
with the adoption of a Cyrillic alphabet.
1.4. it is ludicrous to use different letters for the same phonemes in kindred  
languages just so that they look like they aren't really related:
къ-қ-к (the last one after or before back vowels)
and
нъ-ң
are just 2 simple examples, but there are many more of them.
1.5. it is ludicrous to expell the rest of a nation from its native lands and 
force 46% of the expelled people to die in the process.

To be clear, Crimean Tatar language and people have suffered from all of the 
above tragedies. But items 1.2, 1.3, and 1.4 also apply to many other nations 
and their languages, so unfortunately it's been a habitual state of affairs in 
that country.

2. Recent history:
2.1. it is ludicrous for a country to outlaw any alphabet but the Cyrillic 
alphabet for the nations that it conquered (i.e., to actually make a law 
outlawing any non-Cyrillic alphabets).
2.2. it is ludicrous for a country to assassinates people that its totalitarian 
rulers don't like, even if those people fled the country 
(why it's relevant: no sharp opposition of "party line" is tolerated):
2.2.1. multiple assassinations and court convictions in Qatar
2.2.2. assassination of Alexander Litvinenko w/ polonium 210 in London.
...

All of these things are ludicrous, but more than that they are tragic, 
outrageous, and unacceptable.
Also, no other country in the world has such a track record of totalitarian 
language-torturing and mind control: especially not for tragedies mentioned 
in items 1.3., 1.4. and 2.1. China might be the only one in the list you 
mentioned, and in the known universe for that matter, 
that has some similar history, but it probably has not been as abusive: AFAIK, 
they changed Uygur alphabet from Arabic to Latin, then back to the same or 
modified Arabic; and there's probably a lack of freedom for Uygurs to decide on 
the matter on their own. 
Any comparison to France and the U.K., or the U.S. and Japan, etc. isn't 
applicable: 
because one of them doesn't rule or have claims against the territory of 
the other (see: naval base lease termination in 2017, and Ukraine's concern 
about possibility of conflict due to other side not leaving), 
because they haven't practised totalitarian 
torturing of the other's language, and for many other reasons... 
So, the list of countries you mentioned isn't 
usable for a comparison here: in fact, i don't think you could find 
totalitarian language-torturing like that anywhere in the known universe. 
Therefore, 
Russia is obviously and unfortunately a unique from that perspective country. 
And even if it repeals its silly law, revealing the "party line" about forcing 
everybody to use Cyrillic 
alphabet (read hatred of Latin alphabet, 2nd-class treatment of other 
languages), one would need to wait a century to see what the practices really 
are on the ground before concluding that language-torturing is over.

I'm not accusing anybody in xkeyboard-config of directly having anything to do 
w/ any of the above tragedies, because i don't have any evidence to prove it, 
but excuse me if i may say that one's being a 
subject of that country may at the very least intentionally or subconsciously 
predispose one to not being quite fair in dealing with the matters of a 
language of the people which that country has been oppressing for centuries.

Arguably, the facts like the above alone would only raise the potential for and 
probability of conflict of interest. But i think Sergey's actions have been in 
line with that country's historical and present actions as it applies to 
languages:
a. he was unresponsive in the matter of opening the account: it took 1.5 years
to hear from him, included in that are 4 months after he was pinged by admins.
b. his very first action on the matter was to revert the layouts:
b.1. without any discussion.
b.2. without any basis.
b.2.1. the only rule that wasn't strictly followed had to do w/ spelling 
inconsistency, which as i pointed out existed in the code in the repo anyway, 
and didn't justify a revert 
(unless it takes place in a comedy about communism-style redtape):
b.2.1.1. One similar inconsistency that i pointed out 
(Dvorak, Polish quotes on key "1/!"):
http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=19730#c8
b.2.1.2. It was addressed 
("fixed" doesn't quite apply here cause nothing is broken) 
by Sergey w/o a revert here:
http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xkeyboard-config/commit/?id=ec657924a20dac8733650c1109b53f9600783e3a
c. Then, after a month and half of not following up, and not justifying his 
abusive actions, his first action was to close the bug as INVALID, again w/o any
discussion.
d. When all is said and done, it took him 3 months after the code was submitted 
and all of the above destructive behavior before his 
first constructive feedback. By then, the layouts had already been released by 
Ubuntu, which i pursued in despair over Sergey's actions, and the train was 
unfortunately a little off track due to his earlier mentioning .po as a reason 
for revert, and the enusing misunderstanding, etc. 
d.1. Btw., having .po (importantly: of a new locale) in the build, allowed me 
to come across the following bug during testing, 
which would have been fixed in time for the last release if the matter was 
dealt w/ constructively from the very beginning:
http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=21924

IMHO, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see a pattern and consistency 
in the 2 lists...

> 
> also, my understanding is that 16th-century tatars opressed/murdered russians
> and ukranians and traded them as slaves, 
I'm not a historian, but a lot of that is propaganda. I'm sure there have been 
injustices, but on balance they just don't compare: for one thing, as it  
relates here, no Tatar state, including Crimean Khanate, 
ever even thought of changing or controlling or imposing on anybody's alphabets, 
or religion for that matter, even when they could do so.

> so if there's any conflict of
> interest, it flows both ways and you have no right to judge sergey.

For it to flow both ways i'd need to have reverted something that deals w/ 
another language w/o any discussion (and do so based on dubious excuses),
etc. That is not the 
case, and i have no desire to torture or interfere w/ anybody's language. 
And if the places were in fact reversed, and somebody told me there is a 
substantial potential for conflict of interest, i'd simply delegate it to 
somebody more clearly neutral. Like i said, it doesn't denigrate a person, just 
like a lawyer stepping out of a room to avoid an interaction due to a conflict 
of interest doesn't denigrate that lawyer: quite the opposite.

> 
> hopefully this is the last we see of this insane political nonsense.
> 
I have presented my case more fully above. If that still isn't convincing enough
about the potential conflict of interest, there doesn't appear to be anything 
else i can do. To be clear, if there is a syntax error, or broken feature, 
obviously anybody can and should fix it. If it's a useful contribution without 
interference, imposition, and destructive behavior it should be welcome.
Most importantly, IMHO, the goal is not a gesture per se, but the absence of 
interference, imposition, and destructive behavior in the matters concerning a 
language, by people who aren't related to it, 
especially by people who are subjects of the 
country with uniquely unacceptable historical and present policies that have  
caused so much tragedy both for the language and the people that hold it dear.

I hope this overly long message served, if nothing else, to raise 
awareness of the possibility of conflict of interest, in case similar 
situations ever arise in the future, so that the red-line of no interference, 
and no imposition is not allowed to be crossed. That said, I sincerely hope 
that it will never happen, for any language whatsoever.

And of course, I hope the bug to update comments is resolved sometimes soon. 
I need to get back to productive work, just like, i'm sure, everybody else.