I call out one area where I think additional discussion is valuable; see after the underscores. I'd like to thank Andrew for posting his summary of the discussion. As I have said over the years, I think such summaries are a critical part of driving discussions forward. I didn't ever get a chance to do this as DPL, but one of the great things about summaries is that anyone in the community can post an alternate summary if they think the summary misses the mark. So here's my summary. I want to stress that this is a summary here. I haven't gone around digging through vcs history or even looking at things like whether someone has tried to revert the NMU. We had a couple of things going on here. 1) Andrew asked the community whether we needed this package. 2) Jonathan Dowland made an NMU of fortune-mod removing fortunes-off. As I said I'm only focusing on the discussion. No one in the discussion made a claim about ordering or about whether these two events were related. Let's take the NMU first. In [1] Jonathan indicated that his action was reversible. > Anyone who wants to put their name to explicitly racist, sexist and > pro-nazi material in Debian is free to re-upload it. [1]: [🔎] 20221121153924.pstkh35rmnrer4s4@chew.redmars.org">https://lists.debian.org/[🔎] 20221121153924.pstkh35rmnrer4s4@chew.redmars.org No one has disputed the assertion that people are free to revert the NMU if they are willing to sign up to maintaining fortunes-off. Even Steve Langasek said that if someone wanted to do the work, they could [2]: > If someone wants to sift through the contents of fortunes-off to > separate > the wheat from the chaff, fine, let them do it. But the presence of > some > good fortunes in the package doesn't compel anyone to keep it, nor does > rightly pointing out the garbage that's in it incur an obligation to do > the > work to filter out only the stuff that conflicts with the project's > Diversity Statement. [2]: [🔎] Y3q5mxLTLEqp68bb@homer.dodds.net">https://lists.debian.org/[🔎] Y3q5mxLTLEqp68bb@homer.dodds.net (I have contested Steve's claim that the diversity statement is relevant to package content.) There were other messages that cast the idea of doing such an NMU in more positive light. My point is that there is a strong consensus that if someone wants to do the work of maintaining the package, they can do so. *However* There is a lack of consensus on what work a maintainer would need to do in order to maintain the package. The messages quoted above are typical of those claiming that significant work would need to be done. Also see messages like [3] [3]: [🔎] 20221120235552.GM4132468@tack.einval.com">https://lists.debian.org/[🔎] 20221120235552.GM4132468@tack.einval.com Other messages supported the claim that things are fine as they are. I see no consensus here. I claimed [4] that what we do when there's not a consensus about such things is trust our maintainers and defer to their judgment. [4]:[🔎] tslh6yppiqk.fsf@suchdamage.org">https://lists.debian.org/[🔎] tslh6yppiqk.fsf@suchdamage.org ________________________________________ And now we come to Andrew's question. According to Andrew, he was asking a question, not advocating for a specific decision [5]: >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. [5]: [🔎] Y3jtmIs52jJrIunf@einval.com">https://lists.debian.org/[🔎] Y3jtmIs52jJrIunf@einval.com Other messages from Andrew emphasize that this is a question, not even an advocacy for this change. I'll note that some of Andrew's questions are fairly leading, and many people including myself took Andrew's message as if he was advocating for this change. But even later [6], he was stating possibilities, not claiming them as his opinion: > It may be a fact that we don't promote Nazism but the presence of Nazi > texts > may itself be problematic to some people. There are other elements in > fortunes-off which are perhaps inappropriate within Debian. >It may be that fortunes-off doesn't constitute a corpus of (optional) > text that is worth retention? The fashion for fortunes has rather > disappeared in the last 25 years, after all. [6]: [🔎] Y3lEQimz1e8a+sfc@einval.com">https://lists.debian.org/[🔎] Y3lEQimz1e8a+sfc@einval.com (Which is to say were I judging consensus, I would not read Andrew's messages as in favor of removing fortunes-off. Be careful how you speak:-) However, several members of our community were more explicit in their desire to see fortunes-off go. In his summary [7] Andrew claims that this is *hard*: >There's been a grudging consensus that this is *hard*. It's very hard indeed >to draw good conclusions as to what to do when everyone agrees that something >could be done and disagrees with what that should be. [7]: https://lists.debian.org/Y35hKdU/7/HzApcv@einval.com I agree with Andrew's summary: there is no consensus on what to do. Above I've posited that given a lack of consensus, we don't have a decision ath this level, and absent something like a GR, package-level issues fall to individual maintainers. But, I think there's a certain area where we're talking past each other. And we might have more of a consensus if we explore that. It appears that people who are advocating against fortunes-off have one idea of how that database came to be [6]: >The fashion for fortunes has rather > disappeared in the last 25 years, after all. Or from [2]: >This package is a fossilized > collection of fortunes that some random people on Usenet found funny or > otherwise worthy of inclusion over 25 years ago. There are > subcollections > of fortunes in this package that are explicitly *categorized* as > racist, > homophobic, and misogynistic. In general, the assumption appears to be that these were collected because people found them funny, and that little more thought was put into the compilation than that. In contrast, Branden Robinson [8] appears to be arguing that the compilation criteria was more nuanced. [8]: [🔎] 20221120182859.k7ehjxuzt4zxpdal@illithid">https://lists.debian.org/[🔎] 20221120182859.k7ehjxuzt4zxpdal@illithid My take is that Branden believes that the compilers/editors of the collection had motivations related to historical irony, pointing out the evolution of ideas, and generally put a lot more thought into things than "these were funny." Certainly as a reader/user of fortunes-off Branden appears to be much more engaged than "hey that's just a thing on my screen." In particular, he has inferred properties of the collection as a whole, reminisced on how he wished the collection were different, etc. In many cases, texts that provoke that level of engagement and thought are given a higher level of protection than simple lists. In particular, in Branden's world, it's not at all clear that the editors agreed with the quotes or promoted their philosophy at the time they were included. Similarly, The Wanderer [9] explained what fortunes-off meant to them: [9]: [🔎] 637BF4D5.7000704@fastmail.fm">https://lists.debian.org/[🔎] 637BF4D5.7000704@fastmail.fm > I have never once interpreted them as promoting Nazi ideology. Rather, I > have always interpreted them as being a useful reminder of the sorts of > things that Nazis said and stood for - and it's important to remember > those things, both in terms of remembering the things that Nazis *did*, > and so that we have the additional warning if we ever find ourselves at > risk of stepping towards the same paths. In conclusion, it appears to me that people on different sides of this debate are viewing the literary context of fortunes-off differently. And that's a very complicated issue, because the reader and the context they bring is a very important part of the experience. Even that is showing some of my bias. I have tried to be relatively neutral here, but it's hard. I'd suggest several questions to explore if we want to try and build more of a consensus. Of anyone expressing an opinion: * What do you think fortunes-off is? * Why do you think the fortunes were added to that package? * What do you think users of fortune and fortunes-off are hoping for when they interact with the corpus? And questions generally to us as a whole: * How should we approach creative works when the context is ambiguous? * Where do we draw the boundary between encouraging thought about/exploration of uncomfortable ideas and promoting those ideas? * How do we want to approach things where a reader/user has to infer a lot of context and some approaches they might take are negative? Thanks for your consideration, --Sam
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