Re: Why are these packages in Debian?

[Biella Coleman <biella@healthhacker.com>]

> You are right, the Bible, or the collected works of Shakespeare, are 
> important pieces for culture. But they have nothing to do in an operating 
> system! Why to privilege one religion or political opinion? How to 
> distinguish "useful" (as David Nusinow said) or useless texts? It's simply 
> impossible. So you will have to collect lots and lots of books to avoid 
> "Discrimination Against Persons or Groups" (as written in the Debian Free 
> Software Guidelines), and that's not the duty of an operating sytem.

There is no act of privilege just because there are cetain non
technical/non documentation text package.

Anyone is free to package other sorts of documents and as a researcher 
who uses Debian, I find these packages very useful. 

Also, although these texts may have nothing to do with an operating
system, and may seem like they have
nothing to do with "free software" I think that banning them would be
a form of censorship which is not in the spirit of free software. I
think having "rules" in which you could have the dictionary and then not
the works of Shakespeare or the Anarchism FAQ is tantamount to a form
of "privelege" of one type of speech over another and thus may not be
in violation of the Debian social contract but against the grain of
the underlying philosophy of free software. 

Biella

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Biella Coleman: http://www.healthhacker.com/satoroams
---------------------------------------------------------------------