Re: Anarchism package

[Eray Ozkural <erayo@cs.bilkent.edu.tr>]

Yotam wrote:

> Howdy,
> I was wondering, is there really room for the package anarchism? 
> According to how I see it, anarchism doesn't relate directly to computers.
> Bascially, it performs the duty of expressing a political opinion.
> Should Debian officially endorse political material?
> Another thought, if Debian is to include political material, shouldn't the 
> entire spectrum be heard? I don't think that Debian exists in order to tip 
> the balance in the favor of anarchism.


There had been some discussion about this I recall, but I cannot verify 
it at the moment
(since mailing list is usually a mess, I don't really think I can find 
it with the search engine
very quickly) It would be nice if somebody could give a pointer.

My quick opinions:
 * debian has, for instance, dictionaries which are not directly 
related to computers. so we can't
    say every document in debian has to be related to computers.
 * debian may contain anything that is generally useful.... broadly, as 
the social contract
    holds users as the first priority together with freedom of software.
 * on the other hand, it makes sense that debian remains neutral in 
issues such as politics or religion.
    i don't know how to put it, but there shouldn't be anything wrong 
with a nazi or a fundamentalist
    contributing to debian but there *is* something wrong with a 
fundamentalist distributing
    _free_ documents that convey his religious/political views 
*through* debian.
  * although there are some proponents of anarchism (obviously) in the 
debian project, nobody can
    verify whether that document describes anarchism (as philosophy, 
etc..) good enough or whether
    such a document _is generally useful_

If you'd like to hear my opinion, it isn't generally useful. If need be, 
these people can maintain
the same information on the WWW. Which is in my opinion the way it 
should be. [*]

From another point of view, freedom of software matters to debian, 
freedom of speech in general
*does not*. Assume that one of the developers is a poet. He's been 
writing poems since he was born.
He has written 20MB of poems, and wants to make 15 packages out of these 
poems. I think these
poems could not be in any sense of less use to people than the anarchism 
documents.

So, I request that my argument should be seriously discussed. Perhaps, 
Thomas Bushnell, BSG could
give us a hand here?

Thanks,

[*] I personally favor anarchism... at least some thinkers' arguments.

__
Eray