At 2022-11-20T23:55:52+0000, Steve McIntyre wrote:
> >As it was an NMU, this should be easily rectified.
> >Don't let cancel culture win.
>
> Are you volunteering to pick up the package and review its contents,
> removing the worst stuff that is clearly *not* fit for us to publish?
You adopt the aspect of Mephistopheles, sir. Alas, I have limited time
and a more preferred vehicle through which I would return to package
maintainership in main (if I don't try Colin Watson's patience).
> In its previous state it included:
>
> * content that is downright illegal in many jurisdictions
You should know better than to voluntarily self-incriminate. Have we
received official communication to this effect from any jurisdiction in
the world? My understanding is that even the dreaded _Mein Kampf_ is
not categorically banned where it is contextualized. This could easily
be done with counterpoints in the same entries from, say, Hannah Arendt,
Emma Goldman, or George Orwell.
(Admittedly, were I the curator, I'd indeed be tempted to throw out a
lot of the AH crap. Much more instructive would be to cite similar
sentiments by figures who enjoy more apologists, like Marine Le Pen or
Viktor Orbán, or greater efforts at rehabilitation, like Miklós Horthy
or Marshal Pétain. Or maybe juxtaposing their quotations with Hitler's
would rebut them more effectively than any critic could do. Convinced
neo-Nazis can't be reached by any means. We've had some over the years.
One went by the nom de guerre "krooger". Worst. Grocery. Ever.)
> * content that is impossible to justify against Debian's stated
> values
Has anyone cited any specific instances of these? I wouldn't be
surprised if there are some crappy jokes in fortunes-off given its age
and origins in a field with narrow demographics that were more cramped
still in the 1990s.
I observe this obnoxious gem that the NMU did nothing to remove because
it's not categorized as "offensive".
Personally, I don't often talk about social good because when I hear
other people talk about social good, that's when I reach for my
revolver.
-- Eric Raymond
This is a person's way of cautioning you that if you play iterated
prisoner's dilemma with them, they'll defect--every single time.[1]
Recalling that fortunes-off as a separate package owes its existence to
Bruce Perens, who was thick as thieves with Raymond at various times and
complained to LWN of death threats from him at others, it appears that
the notion of "offensiveness" applied was a snapshot of Bruce's personal
perspective.
With the removal of fortunes-off, we've lost the following riposte to
Raymond's posturing conservo-glibertarianism.
America ... just a nation of two hundred million used car salesman
with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing
anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.
-- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing on the
Campaign Trail"[7]
Perhaps some of our European friends would be surprised both at the
sentiment above and its categorization as offensive, given the usual
tenor of global public reaction to the U.S.'s frequent mass shootings.
> so simply undoing the NMU here is clearly not an acceptable route
> forward.
Clear according to whom?
I feel sure of one thing: unless things have changed significantly since
I was in leadership,[2] any attempt to restore anything like
fortunes-off to the archive can be vetoed by the archive administration
team without procedural recourse short of a GR, because the overrides
file will have to be edited to let it (back) in, that's a function of
said team, and said team is delegated by the DPL.[3][4]
Since Jon Dowland did the upload in question,[6] perhaps someone could
compose a galliard to commemorate the occasion. Whether a dirge or a
jig is up to them. I suggest only a title: "Fait Accompli".
Regards,
Branden
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOvAbjfJ0x0
[2] I recall that one thing did change, Steve--though I did not learn
of it until years later--and you and your predecessor made it
happen. You have my deepest thanks for that.
[3] Still called "FTP masters"[4]. Even long after FTP is deprecated
and Git repositories the world over have gotten their main branches
renamed to avoid terminology redolent of unjust power inequities,
we'll cling to our antiquated terms to the bitter end, won't we?
[4] Dare I hope that at least the _technological_ aspect of incoming
processing has changed to exhibit less allergy to changes in the
list of binary package names generated from a source?
[5] https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/FTPMaster
[6] https://tracker.debian.org/news/1385116/accepted-fortune-mod-11991-72-source-amd64-all-into-unstable/
Thanks to Mattia Rizzolo for pointing that out.
[7] It seems a damn shame to throw out so much H. S. Thompson. His
obituary for Richard Nixon has several of my favorite quotes, none
of which I think is in any fortunes package.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1994/07/he-was-a-crook/308699/
Some day soon, I hope, a successor to Thompson will reveal
themselves by writing with equally exquisite vituperation of the
unmournable Donald J. Trump.
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