Re: inappropriate racist and other offensive material
* Lazarus Long (lazarus@overdue.ddts.net) wrote :
> On Wed, Mar 13, 2002 at 12:47:25AM -0700, Adam Conrad wrote:
> >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Lazarus Long [mailto:lazarus@overdue.ddts.net]
> > > Sent: Tuesday, March 12, 2002 5:55 PM
> > >
> > > Yo family's so black, when they hold hands, it looks like a
> > > stretch limo.
> > >
> > > There's no excuse for racism in Debian.
> > >
> >
> > So, your take is that Debian should censor upstream so we can be more
> > politically correct? If you don't appreciate the author's off-colour
> > humour, then don't use his script(s).
> >
> > When Debian starts making decisions about what is and isn't appropriate
> > for our users to see, that's when I stop contributing. We should not be
> > about censorship.
> >
> > ... Adam Conrad
> >
> > (PS: Yo mama so white, when she gets naked, yo daddy's retinas burn
> > clean off)
>
> Again, there is no excuse for racism in Debian. Other packages have
> elided the inappropriate material in the past, as they should. An IRC
> client has no business being racist. Debian is a distribution that
> specifically caters to children; note the debian-junior project. As it
> stands, your package is inappropriate to be on the box my daughter uses.
>
I'm wondering about "Debian is a distribution that specifically caters to
children" comment. Debian-jr might well do that, but debian as a whole
caters for a diverse community, most of whom agree that censorship (such as
the type that you're suggesting) is a denial of their freedoms.
And, the whole comment may be true for your values, therefore, don't use the
package. Why do you get to apply your values to anyone else? The whole point
of this is freedom of choice, freedom of speech and freedom generally.
Cheers,
-Thom
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