Re: Supertuxkart 0.9 moving things forward
Hi all,
On Tue, May 5, 2015 at 2:46 PM, Markus Koschany <apo@gambaru.de> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I think it is time to move things forward. What I am missing in this
> discussion are bug reports. If you think that Debian should diverge from
> upstream and remove game content, then you really should file a bug
> report and explain why. Someone has already proposed a patch. Please
> attach it to that bug report.
>
> Although Supertuxkart is maintained by the Debian Games Team there are
> real human beings who spend their free time to improve the gaming
> experience for all of us. In this case Vincent Cheng is the sole active
> maintainer and he should decide if he wants to accept patches and
> diverge from upstream or if he prefers to follow the upstream
> development of the game. After all removing game content should never be
> taken lightly. In consequence it means more work for the maintainer and
> other users might become upset that Debian gratuitously modifies games.
> More bug reports are inevitable.
>
> There was another suggestion to add parental advisory to the package
> description or the game documentation. In general I like the idea and
> think it should be further discussed. I would probably use a new DebTag
> to document violence, sexualized content or suitability for certain age
> groups. Obviously this affects all media content distributed by Debian
> and not only games, so a general solution would be preferable.
>
> In my opinion all depicted cartoonish characters of Supertuxkart 0.9 are
> harmless and I don't share the concerns voiced during the past days.
> However I accept that there are people who are seriously concerned about
> this game content.
>
> I believe that Debian should only censor or remove content and thus
> diverge from upstream in those situations where it is absolutely clear
> that the content in questions is immoral or widely condemned by most
> human beings or when it is agreed that it would violate laws in most, if
> not all countries.
>
> I don't think this is the case with Supertuxkart. I believe the best way
> is to discuss these matters with upstream, move the discussion to them
> and get involved in the further development of the game.
>
> Some people have quoted Debian's social contract "Our priorities are our
> users and free software". Please don't forget that the developers of
> Supertuxkart are also part of this community and they have done a
> remarkable and outstanding job in the last decade. For all who have
> quarrels with them, please remember their contributions, they are not
> our enemy.
>
For those who are subscribed to pkg-games-devel, you may have noticed
that I've just uploaded supertuxkart/0.9-1 to sid a few minutes ago.
Sorry for the delay! I had intended to prepare some preliminary
packages last week while this discussion was still ongoing, in an
attempt to encourage people to actually try out the new release before
coming to conclusions, but I unfortunately wasn't able to get around
to doing so until yesterday/today. In any case, I may as well provide
instructions here on how to unlock all the tracks in the game so that
people can playtest the game and come to their own conclusions: run
supertuxkart 0.9, create a local/online account (either is fine), then
close the game and open up ~/.config/supertuxkart/0.8.2/players.xml in
your editor of choice and replace all instances of "none" with "hard"
(thanks to upstream for the brief instructions!). "Gran Paradiso" and
"Cocoa Temple" are the two tracks that Vincent Lejeune was concerned
about in his initial email to debian-women.
I've played those tracks a few times myself and took a look at the
promotional material that upstream released for their 0.9 release (and
skimmed through the relevant threads here in debian-devel-games,
debian-women, and upstream's list), and my own opinions are largely
echoed by Markus' quoted email above. In addition, I don't think the
upstream developers had any intention of releasing sexist/racist
material in STK 0.9.
Regards,
Vincent
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