Bug#20030401: general: Debian is April 1st unaware.

[Gergely Nagy <algernon@debian.org>]

Package: general
Severity: important

It is the 1st of April, also known as the fool's day. However, I have
seen _no_ jokes appearing randomly on my system. (Well, except
phpsysinfo(), but that is irrelevant in this case). I would have
expected that Debian, according to the Social Contract, gives priority
to its users. And users need to be fooled on April 1st, they expect
it. Therefore, to keep the spirit of of the Social Contract, I propose
to implement april first hacks into such crucial tools as dpkg,
apt-get, tama, and probably others.

They should all come up with a brilliant hoax - each year a different
one -, to fool the poor soul who tries to use them appropriately. In
my opinion, embedding a well-trained megahal in them would do the job
just fine.

Another option would be to change the archive maintainance tools (DAK)
to fill the Packages and Sources files with random or non-sensical
data, or a joke database - on april 1st. But that's probably too
cruel... So maybe only the http and ftp servers and proxies (on all
mirrors, of course) could be changed to return "HTTP 401 April's Fool"
on every first request from an unique IP address (then continue as
usual upon subsequent requests from the same address). Of course, this
would need changes in apt-get to properly recognise that this is a
joke, and display an appropriate, fatal sounding... blue screen.

Of course, these are not all of the options, just a random set of
ideas to deliver the joy of april first to our beloved users. But
please note, that both the Social Contract, and our goodwill should
bind us to fulfil this need - the need to be fooled on this day of the
year -, and even if this years april first wasn't a memorable day,
next years one, and the ones after that, will be.

Thanks for listening,
-- 
Gergely Nagy