Re: Why are these packages in Debian?

[<nikos@altern.org>]

Hello,

> All the dictionary packages are not technical documentation and
> don't correspond to open source philosophy. And all the linux
> gazette packages, there are others too...

Apart from the three packages I've quoted before, all the doc packages are technical ones or correspond to open source's philosophy (I'm using potato stable). It's not the same thing for the linux gazette packages: they can be found on the WWW too, but they are information related to Debian. Because they are proselytism, because they defend Debian's philosophy, they are justified. It's a human reaction to defend its point of view. If Debian didn't do that, people wouldn't trust it, because they could think Debian doesn't trust its own ideas. It's not the same thing for these three packages: they don't defend Debian's ideas. But, as I already said, what shocks me with them is that they defend opinions which aren't shared by everyone.

> Because somebody packaged them.

Do you accept any package? Fortunately not! You don't accept any for technical reasons (for example, in the Debian Weekly News issued February 18th, 2003, it was considered to remove a package which contained an easter egg. I quote: "Removing mICQ from Debian? Martin Loschwitz proposed to remove mICQ from Debian entirely since the upstream author has placed a harmful and obfuscated easter egg in the code, bypassing the maintainer's testing."). But I'm also confident in Debian for don't accepting packages which defend xenophobic ideas for example. So why are these packages here?

Thanks for your answers.