On Thursday 02 December 2004 15:47, John Goerzen wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 02, 2004 at 12:28:20PM -0200, Fernanda Giroleti Weiden wrote:
> > "It is also the type of discussion that deterred me
> > from becoming involved in Debian for some time."
> >
> > http://lists.debian.org/debian-women/2004/12/msg00011.html
>
> Indeed, and in addition to the powerful legal arguments, this is another
> powerful argument.
for not including this package? "type of discussion" is a culture thing
completely unreleated to this package (other then that this ITP is an
instance that brougth this kind of discussion forth)
> If our goal is to advance the cause of a Free operating system, then why
> should we be including, in our OPERATING SYSTEM, images that serve no
> useful purpose, and instead alienate millions or billions of people
> worldwide? How does this advance our stated priorities: our users and
> Free Software?
The only thing that including this package does is give our users the
_option_ to install this software conveniently.
> Does anyone seriously think that we are being a
> disservice to users because we don't have porn integrated into the
> operating system?
Offering the possibility to install 1 package out of 15000+ is hardly
'integrating into the operating system', more like 'offering an optionionel
extension'.
(as to the 'pornographic':
given that foldoc, gcide, wikipedia. and the merriam-webster on my shelf all
include 'with the goal of sexual erousal' or some such in the definition of
pornographic, and given that the (stated) goal of these images is to
display an indication of the CPU load they arguably aren't pornographic.)
> Does anyone seriously think that including these
> particular images would be such an overwhelming benefit?
nope, then again the same can undoubtfully be said about most of the other
15000+ packages.
> Regardless of our personal opinions on this particular question, the
> fact remains that it is deeply offensive to many people. This is not
> the right way to show people that Free Software is the way to go. By
> all means, let's be open and inclusive and accept Free software from
> everywhere and users from everywhere. But at the same time, we don't
> have to accept images from everywhere nor any developer that knocks at
> our door.
> This is not our fight. Let's fight for Free Software, and let others
> battle this one out.
by actively excluding it you're making a stand in that fight, as your making
a choice for your users (thou shall not use this software!).
It is impossible for Debian to cater to all different ideas of what's
acceptable and what's not (prOn-lovers is just as valid a group as
prOn-haters). For that reason alone it's rather pointless for Debian
_as_a_whole_ to enforce any kind of policy (beyond 'it must be Free'),
What we _should_ do is make it easy for any group/person to exclude on CD's/
mirrors/installations whatever they find offensive/unacceptable. At the
moment is perfectly possible to exclude whatever you find offensive from
you own installation, what appears to be lacking is an easy way to exclude
those packages from a CD/Mirror (maybe something like an 'exlude everything
with a certain debtag' option for the CD/mirrorring scripts)
Any group of Debian users that cares enough about an issue (whether prOn,
religion, politics, vi-usage, ...) can then make their own set of metadata
to distinguish things acceptable from things unacceptable. It is not (and
should not be) Debian's job to cater to their sensitivities.
--
Cheers, cobaco (aka Bart Cornelis)
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