Re: Anarchism package
Joey Hess told me that he'd killfile me if I talked on this thread,
but this is a legitimate subject to speak on. [*] In addition to this,
it's impossible for me to accept that the so-called resolution that
was settled in a previous flamewar is to be decisive and hence the
final word on this issue.
I'm mainly responding to this because Aaron has a misunderstanding
of my previous mail. [!] I'll write a proper RFC detailing why all mumbo
jumbo should be removed from debian in some future time. It won't
happen in the very near future, because I've other debian-related
projects before that.
Aaron Lehmann wrote:
>
> > My resolution: remove all this mumbo jumbo from debian (bible, quran,
> > anarchism, .*ism) etc. And keep the really useful ones like the dictionary.
>
> The only problem with this otherwise well-thoughout resoultion is that
> you are advocating the favoring of popular religions. Believe it or
> not, the bible would be considered a useful package by many people (I
> know more than one fundamentalist Christian who uses Debian).
Thanks, this means there's absolutely no problem with my resolution,
because I'm not advocating the favoring of the "more popular" [+].
Briefly I think a dictionary is a reference document. This means you
can find a dictionary in the reference section of a library. But can
you find the bible in the reference section? No. Because a dictionary
consists of the *facts* of language while the bible is a religious document,
and it is not generally considered to be the fact. And an anarchism FAQ
has nothing to do with the reference section.
Likewise, fiction is also quite popular and may be considered to be
generally useful. A lot of people read Shakespeare, but we simply can't
include every free book on earth. BTW, I'm very confident that a single
work of Shakespeare is 100 times more useful than bible or anarchism faq.
> Not like I'm taking any side... Ideally, a GNU/Linux distribution
> would contain software, but it seems that documentation is necessary
> too. You could extend this so far as to say that the documentation
> does not need to relate directly to the software, for example the
> dictionary. But by these criteria, something like the bible is
> acceptable as a package if a large number of users consider it useful.
There are kinds of documentation.
1 Doc. related to software in debian
2 Doc. related to computers in general
3 Doc. generally useful and considered necessary reference
4 Doc. generally useful but work of fiction/art/religion
5 Doc. not generally useful
A better classification can be made. I think only type 1 is eligible
for distribution in Debian. Types 2 and 3 may be dealt-with in a separate
text distribution. (like non-us, non-free...) Types 4 and 5 should
be eliminated promptly.
> Either way, it seems that policy on what can and cannot be packaged
> would clear up the situation and possibly prevent future flamewars.
A policy is required.
Thanks,
[*] And of course, as the author of the excellent DWN I'd expect that he
reads as much as possible without being biased on who writes the articles
and reports the content.
[+] I personally don't think "vi" is popular at all but we still have it ;)
[!] It is also an answer to some other posts on the same thread.
--
Eray (exa) Ozkural
Comp. Sci. Dept., Bilkent University, Ankara
e-mail: erayo@cs.bilkent.edu.tr
www: http://www.cs.bilkent.edu.tr/~erayo
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