Re: Questionable Package Present in Debian: fortune-mod
* Dominik George <natureshadow@debian.org> [230818 17:52]:
> Debian is not ..., it is an operating system.
This is simply and blatantly incorrect. Debian is a distribution.
It includes an operating system and many, many application packages that
different people find useful or interesting. The vast majority of
packages are not part of the OS. The vast majority of users will only
be interested in a small portion of the applications.
I would go as far as saying that the applications are the most important
part of the distribution, and that the OS is included as a necessity so
that the applications can be run. I will certainly agree that the OS
can, itself, be considered an application, useful for doing things
independently of other packaged applications.
As others have said, the CoC is specifically intended to be applied to
communications and interactions within the Debian community, not the
content of the distribution.
The only document that I can think of that describes what is appropriate
content for the distribution is the DFSG. Other than paragraph 2, which
states that the program must include its source code, the DFSG talks
entirely about the license.
However, if we extrapolate paragraphs 5 and 6 of the DFSG, which talk about
discrimination against persons, groups, and fields of endeavor, along with
the Diversity Statement, to how we decide what packages are allowed, I
think it is clear that we should be very accepting of packages with
content that we don't agree with, as long as someone finds it useful or
interesting enough to go to the effort of packaging it.
Not doing so is equivalent to saying, "We accept you but not your
contribution."
The whole point of the Diversity Statement is that we accept people into
the Debian community who have ideas and values that are different than,
and even contradictory to, our own. How can we not accept the packages
that they would like to include?
The point is to make them available to those who want to use them; we
are not forcing anyone who does not want to use them to do so.
...Marvin
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