Re: Question regarding "offensive" material
ke, 2005-06-15 kello 12:51 +0200, Ralf Hildebrandt kirjoitti:
> I'm asking for guidance regarding this bug:
> #313492: xscreensaver/GLSnake has sexually inappropriate imagery
...
> 1) Is it a bug at all?
> There's no technical problem in the program per se. It's just that
> this one person may find it contains "sexually inappropriate imagery".
>
> 2) Which "Severity" is fitting (if it is considered a bug)
>
> 3) Is there any section in the Debian Policy that addresses these
> social/psycholgical issues? I had a look, but could only find
> issues related to freedom and licenses.
I think the answers I would give are "yes", "minor or wishlist", and
"no".
I have no problems understanding that someone may be offended by even
abstract references to sexual organs. Many people are quite sensitive to
such things, whether it is sensible or not. On the other hand, there are
more serious issues with screensavers, such as fears that certain types
of quick animation can induce epileptic seizures, and more importantly
that running a screensaver makes the computer use more electricity than
necessary and is therefore bad for the environment. I therefore propose
that we do the following:
* Don't install any screensaver modules whatsoever, except one that
shows a blank screen and turns off the monitor after a while.
* All other modules go into a separate package with a warning that they
are evil.
* Work on getting suspend-to-disk (swsusp or whatever) working properly
on as much hardware as possible and then make the default to put
computers automatically to sleep (not just the screen) when they are
idle (no significant cpu or network use). Obviously this needs to be
configurable: wouldn't want a server go to sleep just because the
network has been down for an hour.
And no, I'm not joking.
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