Re: Censorship in Debian
Eldon Koyle <ekoyle@gmail.com> writes:
> In regards to the use of the word 'censorship', looking at the
> definition[1][2][3] of the word seems to support its use in regards to
> a-h removing feeds from planet for being objectionable (and does not
> imply any infringement on rights). Whether that form of censorship is
> good or bad or rights-infringing is a separate argument.
Language is messy and inconsistent and infinitely variable, and meanings
shift and people use words because they're stronger or softer or for
various other reasons. It can make it hard to communicate. But I don't
think the definitions of words are the heart of this discussion, so trying
to hammer out what definitions to use may not get us any closer to really
having the root conversation.
(The words below are random meadow plants and aren't intended to have any
connotations.)
One action: people preventing you from speaking or publishing an opinion
via force, either by killing you or by taking away your possessions or by
confining you, or by credibly threatening those things. We'll call that
action Clover.
Another action: people treating you poorly in ways over which they have
personal discretion, such as refusing to work with you, calling you rude
names, attacking you in public, and so forth, because of what you say or
publish. We'll call that action Dandelion.
Yet another action: people who were previously echoing your words or
republishing your writing, potentially to a much larger audience, stop
doing that because they disagree with your words in some way, but your
original (possibly much more limited) publication venue is unaffected.
We'll call that action Daisy.
Debian is clearly not doing, nor is capable of doing, Clover. A whole lot
of Dandelion happens all the time, and is probably unavoidable. One could
argue that Debian is sort of officially doing Dandelion at the moment;
personally, I don't think it is, but it's not 100% obvious.
Debian clearly did Daisy. We can all agree on that.
There's no point in arguing about Clover, because that's not happening.
The primary argument we're having is over when Daisy is and isn't
appropriate. I don't think changing the labels changes the core
disagreement, which is that some people want to have a far higher bar for
Daisy than other people.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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