Re: Censorship in Debian

[Martin Steigerwald <martin@lichtvoll.de>]

Dear Ian.

Ian Jackson - 05.01.19, 18:17:
> Very competently toxic people will calculate precisely what they can
> get away with: they will ride roughshod over weak victims or in
> situations with less visibility; when challenged by an authority who
> can impose consequences, they will lie and obfuscate and distract as
> much as they can get away with.  They will turn the dispute about
> their personal bad behaviour into a big poltical fight so as to
> increase the cost of enforcing the rules against them.  And if that
> fails they will do precisely as much as is needed to avoid further
> punishment.

Have you actually really seen such kind of behavior?

I disagree with calling people toxic.

Also I am not sure how you'd come to know about about any agenda behind 
the behavior. How do you know about the intentions?

One part of the code of conduct as I got it is to assume good 
intentions, here, if I got you correctly you assume bad, harmful 
intentions for at least some people, people that you call toxic.

I can concur that people are different, have different view-points, 
different ways to communicate, different language, different behavior. But 
people aren't inherently good or bad or toxic. Well there are people who 
just troll, but other than that?

For me, any code of conduct and its enforcement needs to be based on 
actual behavior, never on assuming intentions or assuming about how 
people are.

I just maintain some packages, but I am quite concerned about the 
current discussions on debian-project and other public mailing lists.

I am quite confused and don't really know what is going on. I feel kinda 
overwhelmed by all I read so far and it does not give me a clear picture 
on what is actually really going on here. That it appears that a good 
portion of discussions happen on debian-private or other private 
channels does not appear to improve transparency as well.

So just all the best for anyone in the position to do something 
meaningful to help improving the situation. At the moment I feel kinda 
uncomfortable about the Debian project.

Ciao,
-- 
Martin