Re: ITA: fortunes-mod (was: SUMMARY [Was Re: Fortunes-off - do we need this as a package for Bookworm?])
On Wed, Nov 23, 2022 at 03:05:29PM -0600, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> [I'm using the pseudonymous respondent's message to reply to Mr. Cater
> as well. Mind the angle brackets for quotation context.]
>
> At 2022-11-23T14:14:38-0500, The Wanderer wrote:
> > On 2022-11-23 at 13:06, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
> > > Thank you for your considered opinions thus far. We have various
> > > developers who have written defending free speech: we've had others
> > > who have expressed various reservations with one aspect or other of
> > > the status quo.
> > >
> > > There's been a grudging consensus that this is *hard*.
>
No - there is a consensus that splitting things based on cultural preference
is hard - you and Sam both agree on that point - various other people in
the discussion have had other viewpoints. Notably, I'm not actually
suggesting that it's straightforward for all the reasons put forward by
everyone in the discussion.
> I gather that you don't join in that consensus, because your
> prescriptions are quick and easy. Mr. Dowland's assessment of everyone
> who wants his action reversed as being desirous of association with
> racism, sexism, and pro-Nazi sentiment[1] is facile, hasty, and
> fallacious.
>
The reason I brought this to debian-project is absolutely that CT had a query
from someone living in Germany as to the desirability of Nazi quotations in
fortunes-off and the suggestion from that person that this *might* be illegal
to host in Germany, Austria [Czech Republic and France at least also have
similar laws I believe]. As I wrote, I wasn't sure that Nazi quotes were still
there - they are - and you were helpful in identifying where several of them
are.
Notably, I haven't assessed anybody's motives in this.
> Neither you nor he, therefore, is well placed to present a
> (presumptively neutral) summary of the discussion. (Neither am I.)
>
I don't have a categorical view one way or another on this hence bringing it
to this list. It did seem to me that some of the quotations wouldn't fit well
with the Code of Conduct. If you take Sam's view, that's OK, because this is
a game and we shouldn't apply the spirit of the Code of Conduct to software
Some of the people replying have one view, some another.
> > > Notably, Sam Hartman and Branden Robinson have pointed up flaws with
> > > the existing categorisations and with a blanket removal based on
> > > preference. It's also noticeable that this largely comes down to
> > > consideration of fortunes in English - almost nothing has been said
> > > about other fortunes files or other languages, though Sam talked
> > > about cultural perceptions.
> > >
> > > A serious suggestion: it is not necessary for Debian to package
> > > fortune files at all.
>
> I'm going to have to add "a serious suggestion" to "honestly" and "trust
> me" as linguistic tags that flag a declaration as deceptive.
>
It should be obvious from Debian list archives that I try to think through
what I write and consider who is reading it. It's not a frivolous, spur of
the moment sentence: it's not axiomatic that we should still package
fortunes and translate them. Nor is it necessary for us to police what others
would choose to read or select for themselves.
It is a serious suggestion because it's thought through: you may note
from what I write that I'm endeavouring to be even-handed and transparent.
I also try to write clear prose and not weasel words.
Just because it was done that way in 1995 doesn't mean we have to do this now.
> Have you worked on embedded systems, ever? It's not _necessary_ for
> Debian to package much of anything. We could arguably serve just as
> well as "universal OS" by providing only a nucleus, say, a high-quality
> microkernel.[2] Minimalism has never been an objective of the package
> archive. This fact has been so transparently obvious for so long that
> it is difficult for me to maintain the presumption that you are arguing
> in good faith.
>
I'm not arguing in *bad* faith; I'm thinking that we don't have to package
everything that we always have just because we've always done it that way
> > I find this suggestion demotivating and discouraging.
>
> Sorry to hear that. My own reaction is better termed "pissed off".
>
> > I believe that this statement is inaccurate. There are parts of the
> > collection which are Debian-specific (the earliest of which, per the
> > changelog, were added in 1999), and others which have been added far
> > more recently than 1995 (there have been what seem like substantive
> > additions at least as recently as 2006).
>
> Yes, some of them were collected by Joseph Carter ("knghtbrd"), a former
> Debian developer, ca. 2000 and for some time afterward.
>
> > The way the Debian packaging splits the collection into various files,
> > which I understand is not necessarily done upstream, can also be
> > valuable.
>
> I agree with this. If I were maintainer I think I'd thus segregate the
> sort of mathy stuff I'd like to see, in acknowledgement that some people
> just aren't edified or provoked to thought by such things. Similarly,
> some people just aren't up to being randomly confronted by exemplars of
> human folly, which characterizes the 1.5% or so of the fortunes-off
> package at issue, even if they _type_ "fortune" at a shell prompt.
>
With the possible exception of the knightbrd files, the files are
segregated fairly well following the Github repository which itself looks
to have been derived from ibiblio.org
> > > The upstream Github repository is potentially only one of many
> > > disparate sites on the 'Net and the English language collection
> > > doesn't reflect the languages of Debian users worldwide.
>
> Is anyone being prevented from submitting fortune collections localized
> to other languages? Several are already present.[3] Would you be able
> to recognize a Hitler quote rendered in Cyrillic? Might such a quote
> not carry context for a person with family who participated in the Great
> Patriotic War that you don't share? Perhaps some derogatory quip about
> the inferiority of the Slavs, when Russians culturally well remember
> hoisting the hammer and sickle over the Reichstag on 2 May 1945 (as my
> countryfolk do a similar event at Iwo Jima).
>
I might well be able to recognise a Hitler quote in Cyrillic, yes - that's me.
I'm not guessing as to the context other people may have: I do note that
there are relatively few languages represented in the translations of fortune
files in Debian. I could quite easily be missing out on something interesting
in French, Spanish or Italian, for example - I don't have context for
non-European languages apart from Welsh.
> Your response, to exclude it all and _foreclose as a matter of policy_
> the curation and maintenance of such resources amounts to declaring the
> Debian Project impotent to address the challenges here.
>
It's a relatively straightforward approach that simplifies things. It
would also propagate to Ubuntu and other Debian-derived distributions if
they took the change forward.
> It's my turn to cite §2.1.1 of the Debian Constitution as Steve Langasek
> did to me. You are not _required_ to deal with fortune cookies. You
> don't have to install them or use them. There are many packages that
> any given user will never employ, or even be aware of.
>
> The Project does not require your paternalistic supervision.
>
I'm not supervising the Project - we're all equals here, no?
> Remolding the archive to more closely resemble your personal corpus of
> installed packages is a curious way to serve the principles of plurality
> and diversity.
>
Everyone has their own Debian ...
> > > If Debian doesn't distribute fortune files but instead provides the
> > > means for users to make/download their own choice, nothing is lost.
> > > Debian is not responsible for maintaining any file content, whether
> > > questionable or unobjectionable depending on viewpoint, and we lose
> > > the burden of translation, maintenance and policing of content.
>
> If you don't want these responsibilities, don't adopt them. Same goes
> for Mr. Dowland.
>
I'm not adopting them: I'm suggesting that the project disclaim the
principle of selection, translation and maintenance in favour of letting
a user decide on what they want in 2022.
> > I am reasonably certain that this would just lead to far fewer people
> > bothering to make use of the fortunes database(s) at all, thereby
> > creating a self-fulfilling prophecy about how irrelevant this is in
> > the modern world.
>
> The people who try to ban books in the United States employ a similar
> multi-level strategy. If censorship of the local public library's
> collection is unsuccessful, they propose withdrawal of funds for the
> library, removing a much greater volume of common resources from public
> facility.[4] No doubt to the satisfaction of the oligopolistic
> publishing industry, which views public libraries as frustrating its
> extraction of monopoly rents.[5]
>
> > From my perspective, this whole discussion looks like someone whom
> > I've respected coming in and proposing to take away one of the small
> > things I somewhat like having around, and that taking-away happening
> > almost immediately despite the existence of pushback over it, and then
> > that person reacting to the pushback by proposing to take away a
> > *bigger* thing that I even *more* like having around. I imagine it's
> > not hard to see how that could be upsetting or demotivating.
>
> I have to disagree with Sam a bit here, while "be bold" is _often_ good
> advice, especially in volunteer communities, it is not always. Apart
> from the present contretemps, I can think of another (again from the
> United States).[6]
>
> Apparently the package's maintainer has not done an upload since
> 2013.[7] Even groff has managed to release twice since then![8]
>
That's part of the point - there have been a bunch of NMUs and various hands
involved. The current maintainer is a Debian Maintainer who would probably
welcome help.
> I therefore solicit a volunteer who is fully up-to-date with packaging
> processes to privately advise me so that I can avoid making tedious
> mistakes. E.g., I don't know if filing bugs against "wnpp" is still
> necessary or recommended for adopting a package with nine years of
> inattention. Please email me privately if you feel yourself qualified
> and are supportive of my intended action. You don't need to be
> enthusiastic about the package's _content_; I am not myself--there is a
> lot of crap in there IMO, even apart from the stuff at issue here.
>
Great - thank you for stepping forward to help in getting the package into
shape.
> In the short run, my plan would be to ensure that the package is
> policy-compliant (and therefore can't be sniped again before release on
> a technicality by some "deeply principled" person), evaluate the handful
> of categories that are suggestive of group prejudice, and decide on some
> kind of updated disclaimer (if necessary) so that the package can warn
> about itself. In the years since fortunes-mod was first packaged for
> Debian, the abbreviation "NSFW" has become commonly known for tagging of
> materials like this. That may be more communicative than an "-off"
> suffix in the 2020s. But if a rename will frustrate the package's
> progress through the incoming queue, I won't do it before the bookworm
> release. The NSFW annotation can easily go in the package description.
>
> In the long run, I expect to curate as suits me personally; I'll
> document my actions (of course) and if someone wants to package the
> items I throw away, that's up to them. One can expect the addition of
> items reflecting my personal interests, like math, retrocomputing, music
> theory, and Catalan revolutionaries.
>
There are a bunch of low priority bugs where folk have also suggested
either individual quotes or categories. One is for Terry Pratchett, for
example.
> I don't have the desire or--especially--the time to undertake major
> changes in the package before the bookworm release. I have something
> else I'm working that brings me joy and I'd like to get that solid for
> GNU release and thence into Debian. Approximately 400 upstream bugs
> fixed--it does an old XFree86 package maintainer's heart good.[9][10]
>
> Anyone who helps has my thanks in advance.
>
> Regards,
> Branden
>
> [1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2022/11/msg00062.html
>
> [2] And do I ever have one in mind I'd like to tell people about! It
> would please me much more than fighting over elementary principles
> of open society.
>
> [3] https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=fortunes
>
> [4] https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/24/michigan-library-defunded-gender-queer/
> [5] https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/89038-over-the-past-25-years-the-big-publishers-got-bigger-and-fewer.html
>
> [6] As usual, it was our conservo-glibertarian friends who were behind
> this (q.v. "Free State Project").
>
> "...At issue was the local school budget, which funds a school for
> children through fourth grade in town and covers tuition for older
> students to attend private and public schools in neighboring towns.
> At a poorly attended annual meeting in March, voters approved a
> measure to cut the school budget by more than half, from $1.7
> million to $800,000.
>
> The cut would have transformed the education system in Croydon,
> replacing the public school system with one run by cheaper, private
> companies that offer individualized programs, largely online.
> Croydon would have become the first community in New Hampshire where
> two companies, Prenda and Kaipod, would have become the default
> education providers.
>
> Both companies have been championed by New Hampshire Education
> Commissioner Frank Edelblut, who helped them secure contracts with
> the state of New Hampshire. ..."
>
> https://www.nhpr.org/nh-news/2022-05-08/croydon-voters-overturn-school-budget-cut
>
> [7] https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/fortune-mod
> [8] https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/groff/
> [9] https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/groff.git/tree/ANNOUNCE
> [10] https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/groff.git/tree/NEWS
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