Re: Fortunes-off - do we need this as a package for Bookworm?
On Saturday, November 19, 2022 9:52:08 AM EST Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
> All,
>
> This is in the context of a mail to the Community Team raising a query about
> fortunes-off - the fortune cookie database that contains offensive
> fortunes.
>
> The specific query was about Nazi quotes from someone in Europe - I don't
> believe our database currently contains these, as they were purged from the
> BSD package from which ours is derived but I would be prepared to be very
> wrong here.
>
> The point was made that if the database did contain Nazi quotes / a swastika
> it might make it illegal to host the content on mirrors in at least Germany
> or Austria.
>
> The database dates back to 1997 or so - I note one of the upstream
> maintainers from around that time (Amy Lewis) having concerns about
> fortunes-offensive categories.
>
> This database contains some quotes categories that probably don't fit in
> with our Debian values or general societal values 25 years on - ethnic,
> homophobia and a few others.
>
> This does raise the wider question: we're about to freeze for Bookworm.
> Removing leaf packages and packages with a small user count might be
> profitable at this point. Fortune-mod has some bugs at the moment
> preventing testing transition and has had several NMUs prior to the latest
> upload.
>
> Would it be a good idea to at least remove fortunes-off and the
> corresponding data file for Bookworm at this point and going forwards?
> It saves a tiny amount of space and a few translations and represents a
> small simplification of Debian at minimal cost.
>
> We don't have to ship the whole world of data just because it's available:
> if anyone wants to package their own collections of fortune quotes for
> themselves, the instructions are readily available to do so on the 'Net.
>
> Your thoughts, please.
Binary was dropped three days ago:
https://tracker.debian.org/news/1385116/accepted-fortune-mod-11991-72-source-amd64-all-into-unstable/
Scott K
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