There was a huge dust-up in the IT community this week after Microsoft caved to a developer who complained about a festive Santa hat embedded in the code, saying the "religious" symbol was "offensive."
The drama played out on GitHub, the leading open-source code repository, which hosts Microsoft's open-source projects, including the popular developer tool VSCode.
Earlier this week, a user named Christian-Schiffer opened an "issue" on the platform complaining that someone at Microsoft had inserted an " Easter egg" into the code, displaying a Santa hat to users. "Santa Hat on vscode insiders and pushing of religion is very offensive to me," he wrote in the subject line.
"Additionally xmas has cost millions of Jews their lives over the centuries, yet even if that was not the case, pushing religious symbols as part of a product update is completely unacceptable," he went on to say. "Please remove it immediately and make it your top priority. To me this is almost equally offensive as a swastika."
Yeah, right. Exactly like a swastika. I mean, who doesn't remember the jackbooted Santas storming the Warsaw Ghetto?
Let's take a moment, shall we, to appreciate the irony, not to mention the cognitive dissonance and hubris, of a user with the name "Christian" complaining about a Santa hat as a "religious symbol." (We'll get back to him in a moment.)
Christian-Schiffer included a screenshot of the itty bitty Santa hat that had offended his fragile sensibilities.
https://pjmedia.com/trending/santagate-microsoft-removes-santa-hat-icon-after-a-single-user-complained-it-was-pushing-religion/
