Re: not a first amendment question
On Sun, 30 Nov 1997, Herbert Xu wrote:
> bruce@va.debian.org wrote:
> >
> > I think we can safely draw the line somewhere before sex with animals and
> > incest.
>
> I am happy with this as long as you get rid of kjv-bible.
Although, personally, I am a religous person, I tend to agree here. The
Bible _does_ include reference to sex with animals (in the contect of
putting to death those caught doing do) and does mention incidences
of incent. If we are going to exclude things, lets be consistent.
For me though, this is not the reason Debian shouldn't include the Bible.
We shouldn't include it because it is outside the scope of Debian, and
solidly in the scope of Project Gutenburg. If we include the Bible (kjv)
then are we going to include the Qur'aan, Torah, Talmud, Bhagawad-Gita,
and Book of Mormon too?
Debian is _not_ here to distribute texts, pictures, information, or silly
sex quizzes, unless they happin to directly relate to Unix, Debian, Linux,
and Free Software. I can see how texts such as the Linux-Howtos meet this
criteria. The Bible, the silly "purity" program, and a whole lot of other
stuff falls solidly outside the scope of Debian, however. If it is
outside the scope of our project, we should not include it in the
distribution. This is independent of personal religious convictions,
opinions about nudity and sex, and the local legality of the stuff in
question. If it fits in the scope of our project, we should include it,
again independent of the "naughty" words it might contain (i.e. the
kernel), the local legality of the stuff (i.e. encryption), or personal
opinions about religion, sex, and nudity (i.e. absolutly nothing blatently
religious, sexual, or depictive of human anatomy should be included unless
it has direct bearing on Unix, Debian, Linux, and Free Software).
If people want to download and run/read/look at stuff that is outside the
scope of Debian, they are welcome to do so. The net is full of such
things. Debian, however, shouldn't be.
-Erik
--
Erik B. Andersen Web: http://www.inconnect.com/~andersen/
email: andersee@debian.org
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