Re: Questionable Package Present in Debian: fortune-mod
On Mon, Aug 21, 2023 at 05:32:22PM +0000, Jeremy Stanley wrote:
> On 2023-08-21 20:16:22 +0300 (+0300), Dmitry Baryshkov wrote:
> [...]
> > According to Debian's CoC we use non-offensive ways to communicate
> > within the project, so that everybody is welcome to speak and
> > contribute. But we should not censor software. If there is a
> > misogynistic comment in GNU HURD sources, should we censor it out?
>
> For that matter, if Debian was going to get into book burning over
> racist, homophobic and misogynistic writing, all those packaged
> versions of religious texts would presumably be the first things
> tossed onto the pyre.
> --
> Jeremy Stanley
OK. With respect to Branden, Sam, Rodrigo Sanchez and Wouter - this isn't
*just* a free speech matter and Debian isn't particularly censoring content.
That being said: In some sense, the Code of Conduct governs how we behave with
respect to the outside world and definitely colours how we appear there to
Debian outsiders. We have a Code of Conduct and folk expect us to follow it.
In this instance:
fortune, fortunes-off and so on: it's a GAME. It's not a core package.
Fortunes-off is a leaf package of a small package.
Fortune as a *thing* existed before the BSDs but it became widely adopted
with Unix v6 and then BSD.
FreeBSD - our "upstream" apparently abandoned all fortunes apart from those
relating to system administration in 2017 - because of complaints about
Hitler quotes.
Ubuntu - our "downstream" has abandoned fortunes-off as incompatible with
their Code of Conduct (which is strikingly similar to ours).
We had complaints in November and then a reminder in this thread.
The US has guaranteed freedom of speech within the US: other jurisdictions
specifically have provisions against Nazism, Nazi symbols, Nazi quotes in
public. [France/Germany/Austria and others, particularly in Europe].
More cogently: where are we going to get our fortunes from - where's the
canonical source now that FreeBSD has gone?
Who is going to take responsibility for checking quotes and translations
in all languages and dealing with requests for additions and deletions?
[Each language should have the full quota of quotes where feasible - compare
the Debian installer or the wiki - no language should be inferior as far
as this is possible]
If it is the package maintainer, is this an appropriate burden for a package
on which others may judge the project as a whole, rightly or wrongly?
Whose freedom to select quotes trumps all other opinions?
Branden - if you introduce a new "fortunes-nsfw", this is a new package
which will obsolete all previous ones and will need to go through NEW?
if you really want the Project to continue with this package / these
packages, may I suggest a straightforward series of small changes?
* Make the fortunes package a reader for fortune-format files.
* Add a doc package detailing how to create the valid format of files that
fortune as a program will read. How to form a fortune from arbitrary text.
* Debian as a whole stops shipping fortune formatted files and lets users
compose or download/translate their own fortune databases.
There's no censorship of files/thought/speech
Each user is free to create their own fortunes to suit how they feel
The Debian Project as a whole does not have to take a position on the
content of any file, though noting that the removal of the prior fortunes
files follows established practice by other distributions when encountering
these problematic files with no sources, poor attribution or other issues.
With every good wish, as ever,
Andy Cater
[amacater@debian.org]
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