Re: Fortunes-off - do we need this as a package for Bookworm?
At 2022-11-21T03:10:27+0100, Roberto A. Foglietta wrote: > Please, keep in mind that in Germany the nazi propaganda is out-of-law > but in some other countires out-of-law is the use of the name of the > profet (whoever he is). So, law compliance might not be as easy as you > pretend to be unless OUR ONLY culture is considered (which by the > way?). Be aware that lèse-majesté is still a crime on the books in Thailand, and actively prosecuted with harsh penalties--long prison sentences. They really do come after people for this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A8se-majest%C3%A9_in_Thailand#Political_weaponisation Blissfully, our fortune cookies appear to be of sufficiently insular perspective that the question of Thailand's monarch doesn't come up. Regards, Branden signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: Fortunes-off - do we need this as a package for Bookworm?
At 2022-11-20T15:34:51-0800, Steve Langasek wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 20, 2022 at 12:28:59PM -0600, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> > At 2022-11-20T11:41:56+0100, Pierre-Elliott Bécue wrote:
> > > I'm personally fine to defend the "less neutral" position we take by
> > > dropping fortunes-off which is total garbage.
>
> > I'll stop here. That's 5 out of 5, none of which advocates the
> > oppression of any group based on ethnic or ideologic categories.
>
> So are you volunteering to adopt the package and do the work of fixing
> it up to remove the garbage that our users SHOULDN'T be subjected to
> through our archive?
I'm considering it, yes. Or was.
> This isn't Sodom and Gomorrah; the package shouldn't be spared from
> death because you found 5 good fortunes in it.
I think the God of Abraham's magic number was originally 50, but crafty
old Moses bargained him down to ten.
But I appreciate the analogy. You, Mr. Cater, and Mr. Dowland are
carrying out a divine genocide against the irredeemably corrupt and
sinful fortunes-off package, except that unlike Yahweh, you won't be
talked into sparing it no matter how much of worth may remain there.
Fair enough--ain't none of y'all ever appeared to me as a burning bush.
But you seem to forget that I said that the ones I quotes were the first
five that "fortune -o" returned to me. For the statistical likelihood
of that, see below.
> 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.
True.
> There are subcollections of fortunes in this package that are
> explicitly *categorized* as racist, homophobic, and misogynistic.
This I didn't notice until I wrote a pipeline to count them up. I have
no need for such sentiments (as I assess them) and no desire to
promulgate them without some sort of framing or context. (The
"fortunes" package, even without its "-off" component, has never served
as a "daily affirmation" or a source of feel-good pabulum.)
Personally, I'd like it if the package were _more_ intellectually
challenging, particularly in the presentation of surprising mathematical
facts. More items from the other Hofstadter (Douglas) and Martin
Gardner could increase its value tremendously. A broadened mind is an
improved mind. Glib aphorisms in the school of methodological
individualism from, say, Robert Heinlein, are an adolescent affectation,
and illuminate little.
> The package IS garbage.
By your metric, so is the Hebrew Bible. For all the slaughter,
xenophobia, and ethno-religious supremacism in it, there's some good
stuff as well. I find the exasperated jeremiads of some of the later
prophets relatable and applicable to modern life, though I acknowledge
that my interpretive frame would alarm many practitioners of faiths that
hold that work as sacred.
The package is a mixed bag. If you can't distinguish the worth of the
statements of William Hofstadter from Adolph Hitler or those of Emma
Goldman from Anita Bryant then in my opinion you disqualify yourself
as a cultural critic. I trust you can do better than this.
> I've looked at those files, the categorizations are not incorrect, and
> there is no redeeming value in shipping such things in Debian.
That just leaves the other 23 categories.
So let's have a quantitative look, reminding ourselves that '%' is a
separator, not a terminator (so we can't just grep and count, we need to
add one--not that this will substantially affect the result).
$ grep -Fcx % /usr/share/games/fortunes/off/{hphobia,misogyny,racism}.u8 | cut
-d: -f2 | awk '{ sum=sum+$NF+1 } END { print sum }'
107
$ grep -Fcx % /usr/share/games/fortunes/off/*.u8 | cut -d: -f2 | awk '{
sum=sum+$NF+1 } END { print sum }'
7021
(I didn't include "misandry.u8" as offensive because (1) you didn't
mention it as contravening Debian's values and (2) presumably no serious
person would forward the proposition that it does. Retaining that file
along with Raymond's firearm fetishism in the "inoffensive" fortunes
leaves one's cookie corpus with the curious ethics of the captive
society in the film _Zardoz_: "The gun is good! The penis is evil!"[1])
Anyway, 1.52%. No wonder I got nothing shocking in five draws with
replacement from that bag of stones. Admittedly, I'm hard to shock even
with the contents of the files you derogated--I grew up in the Southern
U.S.[2] and thus have heard it all before, to the point of actual
nausea, frequently drawled from the mouths of "respected members of the
community".
> If someone wants to sift through the contents of fortunes-off to
> separate the wheat from the chaff, fine, let them do it.
This was already done by the process that created "fortunes-off" from
"fortunes" in the first place. Did I not make myself clear that I found
that process deeply flawed?
> 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
Re: Fortunes-off - do we need this as a package for Bookworm?
On Sun, Nov 20, 2022 at 07:58:38PM -0600, G. Branden Robinson wrote: > At 2022-11-20T23:55:52+, Steve McIntyre wrote: > > >As it was an NMU, this should be easily rectified. > > >Don't let cancel culture win. > > > > Are you volunteering to pick up the package and review its contents, > > removing the worst stuff that is clearly *not* fit for us to publish? > > You adopt the aspect of Mephistopheles, sir. Alas, I have limited time > and a more preferred vehicle through which I would return to package > maintainership in main (if I don't try Colin Watson's patience). [...] You had a point, Branden (I had to cringe at the onslaught of the "cancel culture" jingle in the answers, though). You seem to prefer to dissipate the point you had instead of accepting a collaboration offer. In a very eloquent and even entertaining way, but alas, effectively nonetheless. I'd agree that the quotes you presented don't seem to deserve to be thrown out. But the path this is taking seems more appropriate to set off a "culture war" worthy of... twitter than to produce any result. So: propose a sketch of a curation process some people can agree on. That's the challenge. Cheers -- t signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: Fortunes-off - do we need this as a package for Bookworm?
> "Steve" == Steve Langasek writes: Steve> This isn't Sodom and Gomorrah; the package shouldn't be Steve> spared from death because you found 5 good fortunes in it. Steve> This package is a fossilized collection of fortunes that some Steve> random people on Usenet found funny or otherwise worthy of Steve> inclusion over 25 years ago. There are subcollections of Steve> fortunes in this package that are explicitly *categorized* as Steve> racist, homophobic, and misogynistic. Steve> The package IS garbage. I've looked at those files, the Steve> categorizations are not incorrect, and there is no redeeming Steve> value in shipping such things in Debian. Steve> If someone wants to sift through the contents of fortunes-off Steve> to separate the wheat from the chaff, fine, let them do it. Steve> But the presence of some good fortunes in the package doesn't Steve> compel anyone to keep it, nor does rightly pointing out the Steve> garbage that's in it incur an obligation to do the work to Steve> filter out only the stuff that conflicts with the project's Steve> Diversity Statement. Steve, I absolutely agree with you that unless someone is going to do the work of maintaining the package that it should not be in Debian. We disagree to some degree on what work is required. I have said I won't get involved in fortunes-off unless asked to do so. But to the extent that your message talks about the broader issues, and what our project consensus might be, I will respond. I disagree with you that we have a project consensus that the diversity statement should apply to software in Debian. I would not support such a consensus. I disagree that racist, homophobic or misogynistic content in the creative areas of Debian is inherently something we should not distribute simply because it is racist, homophobic, or misogynistic. I think it depends on context. I speak up only that my silence not be counted as supporting a consensus that I do not think exists. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: Fortunes-off - do we need this as a package for Bookworm?
On Mon, 21 Nov 2022 at 00:59, Steve McIntyre wrote: > > On Mon, Nov 21, 2022 at 12:07:53AM +0100, Michael Neuffer wrote: > >Am 20. November 2022 23:04:05 MEZ schrieb Mattia Rizzolo : > >>On Sun, Nov 20, 2022 at 10:45:15PM +0100, Michael Neuffer wrote: > >>> On 11/20/22 22:14, Roberto A. Foglietta wrote: > >>> > On Sun, 20 Nov 2022 at 21:42, G. Branden Robinson > >>> > wrote: > >>> > > >>> > > Thank you for, perhaps inadvertently, compelling me to review some of > >>> > > the content of the package. I can now say that I am certain there is > >>> > > material of worth in the fortunes-off package and support its > >>> > > retention > >>> > > in the Debian distribution. A review process for individual entries > >>> > > that are incompatible with the project's values is manifest in the > >>> > > BTS. > >>> > > > >>> > rational approach vs cancel culture: 1 vs 0 > >>> > <3 > >>> > >>> I can only very much agree to this. > >> > >>I also wholly agree, alas it seems we already lost before this even > >>started :( > >> > >>https://tracker.debian.org/news/1385116/accepted-fortune-mod-11991-72-source-amd64-all-into-unstable/ > >> > > > >As it was an NMU, this should be easily rectified. > >Don't let cancel culture win. > > Are you volunteering to pick up the package and review its contents, > removing the worst stuff that is clearly *not* fit for us to publish? > In its previous state it included: > > * content that is downright illegal in many jurisdictions Obviously illegal material should not be distributed. How many of these quotes do you find that violate the law in some countries? Please, keep in mind that in Germany the nazi propaganda is out-of-law but in some other countires out-of-law is the use of the name of the profet (whoever he is). So, law compliance might not be as easy as you pretend to be unless OUR ONLY culture is considered (which by the way?). > * content that is impossible to justify against Debian's stated values Nice, so we are going to burn "Mein Kampf" in such a way nobody will be able to read it? Every library should do that, conforming to their values. Burning books, uhm where we saw these before? So, the great difference here is to explicitly tell the reader that the content can be offensive in some culture or under some PoV. This is exactly what the -o option does -o Choose only from potentially offensive aphorisms. Please, elaborate your opposition because it is quite generic, everything above considered. Best regards, R-
Re: Fortunes-off - do we need this as a package for Bookworm?
At 2022-11-20T23:55:52+, Steve McIntyre wrote: > >As it was an NMU, this should be easily rectified. > >Don't let cancel culture win. > > Are you volunteering to pick up the package and review its contents, > removing the worst stuff that is clearly *not* fit for us to publish? You adopt the aspect of Mephistopheles, sir. Alas, I have limited time and a more preferred vehicle through which I would return to package maintainership in main (if I don't try Colin Watson's patience). > In its previous state it included: > > * content that is downright illegal in many jurisdictions You should know better than to voluntarily self-incriminate. Have we received official communication to this effect from any jurisdiction in the world? My understanding is that even the dreaded _Mein Kampf_ is not categorically banned where it is contextualized. This could easily be done with counterpoints in the same entries from, say, Hannah Arendt, Emma Goldman, or George Orwell. (Admittedly, were I the curator, I'd indeed be tempted to throw out a lot of the AH crap. Much more instructive would be to cite similar sentiments by figures who enjoy more apologists, like Marine Le Pen or Viktor Orbán, or greater efforts at rehabilitation, like Miklós Horthy or Marshal Pétain. Or maybe juxtaposing their quotations with Hitler's would rebut them more effectively than any critic could do. Convinced neo-Nazis can't be reached by any means. We've had some over the years. One went by the nom de guerre "krooger". Worst. Grocery. Ever.) > * content that is impossible to justify against Debian's stated >values Has anyone cited any specific instances of these? I wouldn't be surprised if there are some crappy jokes in fortunes-off given its age and origins in a field with narrow demographics that were more cramped still in the 1990s. I observe this obnoxious gem that the NMU did nothing to remove because it's not categorized as "offensive". Personally, I don't often talk about social good because when I hear other people talk about social good, that's when I reach for my revolver. -- Eric Raymond This is a person's way of cautioning you that if you play iterated prisoner's dilemma with them, they'll defect--every single time.[1] Recalling that fortunes-off as a separate package owes its existence to Bruce Perens, who was thick as thieves with Raymond at various times and complained to LWN of death threats from him at others, it appears that the notion of "offensiveness" applied was a snapshot of Bruce's personal perspective. With the removal of fortunes-off, we've lost the following riposte to Raymond's posturing conservo-glibertarianism. America ... just a nation of two hundred million used car salesman with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable. -- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail"[7] Perhaps some of our European friends would be surprised both at the sentiment above and its categorization as offensive, given the usual tenor of global public reaction to the U.S.'s frequent mass shootings. > so simply undoing the NMU here is clearly not an acceptable route > forward. Clear according to whom? I feel sure of one thing: unless things have changed significantly since I was in leadership,[2] any attempt to restore anything like fortunes-off to the archive can be vetoed by the archive administration team without procedural recourse short of a GR, because the overrides file will have to be edited to let it (back) in, that's a function of said team, and said team is delegated by the DPL.[3][4] Since Jon Dowland did the upload in question,[6] perhaps someone could compose a galliard to commemorate the occasion. Whether a dirge or a jig is up to them. I suggest only a title: "Fait Accompli". Regards, Branden [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOvAbjfJ0x0 [2] I recall that one thing did change, Steve--though I did not learn of it until years later--and you and your predecessor made it happen. You have my deepest thanks for that. [3] Still called "FTP masters"[4]. Even long after FTP is deprecated and Git repositories the world over have gotten their main branches renamed to avoid terminology redolent of unjust power inequities, we'll cling to our antiquated terms to the bitter end, won't we? [4] Dare I hope that at least the _technological_ aspect of incoming processing has changed to exhibit less allergy to changes in the list of binary package names generated from a source? [5] https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/FTPMaster [6] https://tracker.debian.org/news/1385116/accepted-fortune-mod-11991-72-source-amd64-all-into-unstable/ Thanks to Mattia Rizzolo for pointing that out. [7] It seems a damn shame to throw out so much H. S. Thompson. His obituary for Richard Nixon has several of my
Re: Fortunes-off - do we need this as a package for Bookworm?
On Sunday, 20 November 2022 23:04:05 CET Mattia Rizzolo wrote: > > > rational approach vs cancel culture: 1 vs 0 > > > <3 > > > > I can only very much agree to this. > > I also wholly agree, alas it seems we already lost before this even > started :( > > https://tracker.debian.org/news/1385116/accepted-fortune-mod-11991-72-source > -amd64-all-into-unstable/ This makes me incredibly sad :'( signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: Removing software because we disagree with its values
On Sunday, 20 November 2022 21:54:14 CET Andrew M.A. Cater wrote: > If we're going to get Bookworm out, now is a good time to be thinking of > things that could usefully be removed to lower a maintenance burden Sorry, but I find this a non-argument. https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/fortune-mod doesn't indicate it was a maintenance burden at all and the removal of the binary package solved* a non-Release Critical (severity=normal : https://bugs.debian.org/904882) bug. This discussion and all the people looking up this package and the time and (mental) energy spend on this issue**, is also NOT spend on actual RC bugs. > I suspect there is also a slight difference of understanding of the merits > of free speech on either side of the Atlantic: it's a cultural thing and I > suspect I tend to the European side here :) I'm European and I'm very much on the Free Speech side. *) Incorrectly, IMO. The request was for a clearer name of the package. **) I've rewritten this reply several times and in the end removed large parts of it. And it's costing me quite some time and energy NOT to respond to several posts in this thread. Time and energy which could have been spend on more useful/productive things. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: Fortunes-off - do we need this as a package for Bookworm?
On Sun, Nov 20, 2022 at 11:04:05PM +0100, Mattia Rizzolo wrote: > On Sun, Nov 20, 2022 at 10:45:15PM +0100, Michael Neuffer wrote: > > On 11/20/22 22:14, Roberto A. Foglietta wrote: > > > On Sun, 20 Nov 2022 at 21:42, G. Branden Robinson > > > wrote: > > > > > > > Thank you for, perhaps inadvertently, compelling me to review some of > > > > the content of the package. I can now say that I am certain there is > > > > material of worth in the fortunes-off package and support its retention > > > > in the Debian distribution. A review process for individual entries > > > > that are incompatible with the project's values is manifest in the BTS. > > > > > > > rational approach vs cancel culture: 1 vs 0 > > > <3 > > > > I can only very much agree to this. > > I also wholly agree, alas it seems we already lost before this even > started :( > > https://tracker.debian.org/news/1385116/accepted-fortune-mod-11991-72-source-amd64-all-into-unstable/ Thanks $maintainer for not engaging in such an intellectual entertainment, and for quietly doing the right thing here. -- Tiago
Re: Fortunes-off - do we need this as a package for Bookworm?
On Mon, Nov 21, 2022 at 12:07:53AM +0100, Michael Neuffer wrote: >Am 20. November 2022 23:04:05 MEZ schrieb Mattia Rizzolo : >>On Sun, Nov 20, 2022 at 10:45:15PM +0100, Michael Neuffer wrote: >>> On 11/20/22 22:14, Roberto A. Foglietta wrote: >>> > On Sun, 20 Nov 2022 at 21:42, G. Branden Robinson >>> > wrote: >>> > >>> > > Thank you for, perhaps inadvertently, compelling me to review some of >>> > > the content of the package. I can now say that I am certain there is >>> > > material of worth in the fortunes-off package and support its retention >>> > > in the Debian distribution. A review process for individual entries >>> > > that are incompatible with the project's values is manifest in the BTS. >>> > > >>> > rational approach vs cancel culture: 1 vs 0 >>> > <3 >>> >>> I can only very much agree to this. >> >>I also wholly agree, alas it seems we already lost before this even >>started :( >> >>https://tracker.debian.org/news/1385116/accepted-fortune-mod-11991-72-source-amd64-all-into-unstable/ >> > >As it was an NMU, this should be easily rectified. >Don't let cancel culture win. Are you volunteering to pick up the package and review its contents, removing the worst stuff that is clearly *not* fit for us to publish? In its previous state it included: * content that is downright illegal in many jurisdictions * content that is impossible to justify against Debian's stated values so simply undoing the NMU here is clearly not an acceptable route forward. -- Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.st...@einval.com < Aardvark> I dislike C++ to start with. C++11 just seems to be handing rope-creating factories for users to hang multiple instances of themselves.
Re: Fortunes-off - do we need this as a package for Bookworm?
Am 20. November 2022 23:04:05 MEZ schrieb Mattia Rizzolo : >On Sun, Nov 20, 2022 at 10:45:15PM +0100, Michael Neuffer wrote: >> On 11/20/22 22:14, Roberto A. Foglietta wrote: >> > On Sun, 20 Nov 2022 at 21:42, G. Branden Robinson >> > wrote: >> > >> > > Thank you for, perhaps inadvertently, compelling me to review some of >> > > the content of the package. I can now say that I am certain there is >> > > material of worth in the fortunes-off package and support its retention >> > > in the Debian distribution. A review process for individual entries >> > > that are incompatible with the project's values is manifest in the BTS. >> > > >> > rational approach vs cancel culture: 1 vs 0 >> > <3 >> >> I can only very much agree to this. > >I also wholly agree, alas it seems we already lost before this even >started :( > >https://tracker.debian.org/news/1385116/accepted-fortune-mod-11991-72-source-amd64-all-into-unstable/ > As it was an NMU, this should be easily rectified. Don't let cancel culture win. Cheers Mike -- Diese Nachricht wurde von meinem Android-Gerät mit K-9 Mail gesendet.
Re: Fortunes-off - do we need this as a package for Bookworm?
On Sun, Nov 20, 2022 at 12:28:59PM -0600, G. Branden Robinson wrote: > At 2022-11-20T11:41:56+0100, Pierre-Elliott Bécue wrote: > > I'm personally fine to defend the "less neutral" position we take by > > dropping fortunes-off which is total garbage. > I'll stop here. That's 5 out of 5, none of which advocates the > oppression of any group based on ethnic or ideologic categories. So are you volunteering to adopt the package and do the work of fixing it up to remove the garbage that our users SHOULDN'T be subjected to through our archive? This isn't Sodom and Gomorrah; the package shouldn't be spared from death because you found 5 good fortunes in it. 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. The package IS garbage. I've looked at those files, the categorizations are not incorrect, and there is no redeeming value in shipping such things in Debian. 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. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developer https://www.debian.org/ slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: Removing software because we disagree with its values
On Sun, Nov 20, 2022 at 08:54:14PM +, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote: > > I suspect there is also a slight difference of understanding of the merits of > free speech on either > side of the Atlantic: it's a cultural thing and I suspect I tend to the > European side here :) > Thank you for acknowledging this. One of the things that frustrates me tremendously is when we pretend to be neutral and unbiased (both things which are mere illusions, and often strong self-delusions at that) and then go around forcing some view, belief, or idea on others without any regard for validity of the views, beliefs, or ideas that must necessarily be displaced for those upon whom the new views, ideas, or beliefs are being imposed. If we could simply drop the pretense and honestly state "I am/we are advocating for such and such and I/we fully acknowledge that such and such is superior to whatever it must displace in your own worldview because (insert reasons)", then I would find that much more forthright than what we go around doing now. Regards, -Roberto -- Roberto C. Sánchez
Re: Removing software because we disagree with its values
Hi Sam, Thanks very much for taking the time to thoughfully articulate your thoughts. I find myself agreeing with a great deal of what you wrote. On Sun, Nov 20, 2022 at 01:05:15PM -0700, Sam Hartman wrote: > > 2) I will try and build a consensus that we want the bar to be high for > rejecting software from Debian based on the ideas it expresses. > I wholeheartedly agree with this and I would like to express my support for it. Regards, -Roberto -- Roberto C. Sánchez
Re: Fortunes-off - do we need this as a package for Bookworm?
On Sun, Nov 20, 2022 at 10:45:15PM +0100, Michael Neuffer wrote: > On 11/20/22 22:14, Roberto A. Foglietta wrote: > > On Sun, 20 Nov 2022 at 21:42, G. Branden Robinson > > wrote: > > > > > Thank you for, perhaps inadvertently, compelling me to review some of > > > the content of the package. I can now say that I am certain there is > > > material of worth in the fortunes-off package and support its retention > > > in the Debian distribution. A review process for individual entries > > > that are incompatible with the project's values is manifest in the BTS. > > > > > rational approach vs cancel culture: 1 vs 0 > > <3 > > I can only very much agree to this. I also wholly agree, alas it seems we already lost before this even started :( https://tracker.debian.org/news/1385116/accepted-fortune-mod-11991-72-source-amd64-all-into-unstable/ -- regards, Mattia Rizzolo GPG Key: 66AE 2B4A FCCF 3F52 DA18 4D18 4B04 3FCD B944 4540 .''`. More about me: https://mapreri.org : :' : Launchpad user: https://launchpad.net/~mapreri `. `'` Debian QA page: https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=mattia `- signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: Fortunes-off - do we need this as a package for Bookworm?
On 11/20/22 22:14, Roberto A. Foglietta wrote: On Sun, 20 Nov 2022 at 21:42, G. Branden Robinson wrote: Thank you for, perhaps inadvertently, compelling me to review some of the content of the package. I can now say that I am certain there is material of worth in the fortunes-off package and support its retention in the Debian distribution. A review process for individual entries that are incompatible with the project's values is manifest in the BTS. rational approach vs cancel culture: 1 vs 0 <3 I can only very much agree to this. Cheers Mike
Re: Removing software because we disagree with its values
> "Andrew" == Andrew M A Cater writes: Andrew> I'm not going to die in a ditch over this but I raised it as Andrew> a genuine query to the project in good faith and without any Andrew> agenda. I appreciate that. I hope my message was received in the spirit of an answer to the general query. I personally am not going to get involved in fortune-off/the data file unless someone asks me personally to get involved. I am very interested in the general issue, and I hope that my message made my personal position clear. I fully acknowledge that this is a cultural issue and I am embedded in my culture. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: Fortunes-off - do we need this as a package for Bookworm?
On Sun, 20 Nov 2022 at 21:42, G. Branden Robinson wrote: > Thank you for, perhaps inadvertently, compelling me to review some of > the content of the package. I can now say that I am certain there is > material of worth in the fortunes-off package and support its retention > in the Debian distribution. A review process for individual entries > that are incompatible with the project's values is manifest in the BTS. > rational approach vs cancel culture: 1 vs 0 <3
Re: Removing software because we disagree with its values
Hi Sam, I respect absolutely what you say. I'm not sure that fortunes-offensive has any particular literary merit, I'm not sure myself that, now that the separate binary for fortunes-off has been removed, that the dat file merits inclusion. It was a leaf package on a small games package that is optional and not with a high popcon value. If we're going to get Bookworm out, now is a good time to be thinking of things that could usefully be removed to lower a maintenance burden I didn't raise this as censorship. You may have noticed that I explicitly *didn't* raise this as a member of Community Team but as myself, though I did mention that a query had come to CT about the Mein Kampf quotes and I wondered if the simpler solution was just to remove them / the package. [Thanks to Dominik George for grepping them out for me in his reply] I suspect there is also a slight difference of understanding of the merits of free speech on either side of the Atlantic: it's a cultural thing and I suspect I tend to the European side here :) I'm not going to die in a ditch over this but I raised it as a genuine query to the project in good faith and without any agenda. All best, as ever, Andy Cater
Re: Removing software because we disagree with its values
TL;DR: I think that we need to be significantly more permissive of ideas expressed in software in our archive, especially for software that exhibits creative speech, than we do conduct in our community. I do not think that the Code of Conduct is an appropriate tool for judging software in Debian. For that and related reasons, I do not think the Community Team is a good team to make such judgments. For the long version: We've talked about how not all conduct is welcome in our community. There are different reasons people have supported the CoC, Diversity Statement, and related decisions. For me, two factors are most important. First, I believe that by being welcoming to a large community, we can build a better free software operating system. We must reject intolerance and promote respect to be welcoming to the largest community. Second, I enjoy working in respectful, welcoming communities, and for selfish reasons I'd like to encourage Debian to be welcoming to me. People have argued that Debian does not need to promote free speech within our community--that there are ideas, topics, and styles of discourse that make the community less welcoming, and they don't belong here. We've argued that in many cases, that is not a huge restriction because those same topics are not related to free software or the work we've gathered here to do. People have made analogies to the conduct we approach in professional settings/while at work. And yes, we've had disagreements about all that. EVEN IF YOU BUY INTO THAT, SOFTWARE WE PACKAGE IS DIFFERENT. First, Debian has significant power as a distribution. If your software is in Debian, it is more available than if it is not. If I can type `apt install your_software_name` and get the software on my system, your software is easy to get to. No, Debian is not the only influential software distribution channel, but it is a powerful one. Removing software from Debian because of its values does have a chilling effect;it works to curve and suppress those values. No, it's not as big of a chilling effect as people breaking into your house in the middle of the night. But it is restricting the flow of ideas—restricting speech in a way that limiting conduct in our community is not. We do not have as much power as a government, but when we remove software from our archives because of the ideas it expresses, we are using that significant power we have to force our views about what values are appropriate on the world. We, in a position of power, are exercising that power to restrict speech. I understand people will disagree with me, but in my mind, that’s censorship. Censorship is not always bad. I think the c-word is appropriate because it reminds us of the responsibility that comes with choosing to use our power in that way and the consequences of abusing that power. Again, Debian censoring its archive is no where near as consequential as government censorship. I respect others may use different words like moderation rather than censorship. I trust you will respect my choice here, just as I respect the reasons why others might choose differently. There are times when we will need to reject software because of its ideas. As an example, some content is not content we can legally distribute. We have chosen generally not to distribute sexually explicit content because of legal and other complexities. We also reject software for many other reasons unrelated to the ideas it expresses. It might not meet our quality standards. We might not have someone who wants to maintain it. We might not be able to keep up with dependencies. I’m explicitly not talking about any of that. Also, individual maintainers make content decisions all the time. They might rephrase something that people find objectionable. I support maintainers having wide latitude to do this. But I think the bar for rejecting software from our archive because of its ideas should be really high. Not insurmountable, but really high. 1) Freedom of speech is something I value.Having a wide variety of ideas expressed—even ideas I strongly reject—is part of what makes a good free software distribution in my mind. I don’t know that the project has taken a position on this, but for myself, that kind of freedom and inclusivity is something I value. I do think that sections of the DFSG that ban discrimination against fields of endeavor suggest that we may be leaning in the pro-freedom direction. Similarly, the Dissident Test suggests we at least value users who have unpopular ideas. Again, that’s not the same as arguing we should permit the software with those unpopular ideas, but it suggests to me that we may be leaning that way. Regardless of how far we have made such a decision in the past, I hope we will generally choose to value free speech in this direction. 2) If we censor software, we need to decide what form of censorship is appropriate. If the bar isn’t really high, Debian is going to be a
Re: Fortunes-off - do we need this as a package for Bookworm?
At 2022-11-20T11:41:56+0100, Pierre-Elliott Bécue wrote: > I'm personally fine to defend the "less neutral" position we take by > dropping fortunes-off which is total garbage. "Total garbage." Have you _read_ it? Running "fortune -o" myself a few times, I get the following results. These are in the order they came back from my shell prompt. "... mid-eighteenth century America had a smaller proportion of church members than any other nation in Christendom"in 1800 [only] one of every fifteen Americans was a church member" [Richard Hofstadter, _Anti-Intellectualism in American Life_, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974, p. 89] This quote is from a well-known book from a widely (if not universally) respected author. It is surely in the "offensive" category because it merely _mentions_ religion, not because it lays out an authoritarian or anti-Semitic political program. Several of the messages in this thread, including the one to which I replied (and of course my own), are equally offensive by a metric of _mentioning_ religion, and include parties on both sides of the "rip out the package" debate. Granted, about 20 years ago, political conservatives in the U.S. occasionally expressed offense at mere mention of Hofstadter (but not a lot, as most of their audience had no idea who the guy was), as the Rupert Murdoch/Roger Ailes program of _cultivating_ anti-intellectualism as aggressively as possible was just taking root in the G. W. Bush administration amid the exciting adventures of the Iraq War and the jailing of a _New York Times_ journalist. "The most winning woman I ever knew was hanged for poisoning three little children for their insurance money." -- Sherlock Holmes I've read the entire corpus of A. C. Doyle's Holmes stories more than once and don't recall this line, but again, the foregoing sentiment is neither garbage nor does it promote fascism. I suppose it is in there because it mentions a reprehensible crime. "FORTUNE PRESENTS FAMOUS LAST WORDS: #4 Socrates: I DRANK WHAT!?!? Tarzan: Who greased the grape veee Al Capone: There's a violin in my violin case! Pilot, TWA Fl. #343:What's a mountain goat doing 'way up here?" These are old jokes. Again, there are references to death. (A web search reveals that TWA Flight 343 does not appear to be a reference to a real-life air disaster. TWA _was_ a functioning commercial airline back before some Debian developers were born. CFITs are a regrettably common class of air accident.[7]) The next one is lengthy. "Well, it's a little rough... it might not be necessary to drag him 40 blocks. Maybe just four. You could put him in the trunk for the first 36 blocks, then haul him out and drag him the last four; that would certainly scare the piss out of him, bumping alone the street, feeling all his skin being ripped off..." "He'd be a bloody mess. They might think he was just some drunk and let him lie there all night." "Don't worry about that. They have a guard station in front of the White House that's open 24 hours a day. The guards would recognize Colson... and by that time of course his wife would have called the cops and reported that a bunch of thugs had kidnapped him." "Wouldn't it be a little kinder if you drove about four more blocks and stopped at a phone box to ring the hospital and say, 'Would you mind going around to the front of the White House? There's a naked man lying outside in the street, bleeding to death...'" "... and we think it's Mr. Colson." "It would be quite a story for the newspapers, wouldn't it?" "Yeah, I think it's safe to say we'd see some headlines on that one." -- Hunter Thompson, talking to R. Steadman on C. Colson, ex-Marine captain, now born again, of Watergate fame. This is a discussion of violence, so maybe that's what makes it offensive. Hunter S. Thompson is immensely enjoyable to read, and Chuck Colson was a snake of a man complicit in crimes in high office. Once imprisoned, he found God, and was instantly and thoroughly forgiven his transgressions by conservative Americans who would never extend such grace to a young person of color who stole goods from a convenience store. Colson outlived Thompson by 7 years. "Science was tearing through the 'fine-spun ecclesiastical cobwebs' to behold a new cosmos, in which our Earth is merely an 'eccentric speck'-- a world of evolution 'and unchanging causation'. It invited new ways of thinking. It demanded a new rationale for belief. With science's truths the only accessible ones, 'blind faith' was no longer admirable but 'the one unpardonable sin'." [Adrian Desmond, "Huxley", p. 345]" This one is yet another example of something being categorized as offensive because it challenges a dominant belief system, namely the Calvinist, vaguely
Re: Fortunes-off - do we need this as a package for Bookworm?
Le 20/11/2022 à 12:10, Ansgar a écrit : On Sun, 2022-11-20 at 16:44 +0600, Judit Foglszinger wrote: fortune-mod has no bugs that prevent testing migration, it just needs a source-only upload. Hah, an easy bug to fix :-) I did that just now (1:1.99.1-7.3). Thank you. taffit OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: Fortunes-off - do we need this as a package for Bookworm?
I got curious at the offensive fortunes so I looked at English and Italian ones. I wrote a couple of comments in this email, that I then deleted... I think that in the XXIth century an ambitious replacement would be to train a "Deep Learning" model with social network trolls to generate offensive statements on the fly. Somtimes, the mismatch between the output and the expectation, while deeply offensive, could be funny or even reveal some neglected traits of our societies. But maybe the model would be too large for our archive, not to mention that the source to train it would be huge. In the absence of such a first-class modernisation, and given the abundance of internet connectivity our current slice of the XXIth century, a good fortune packages could focus on delivering tips on how to find and download the cookie package that fits each users taste. Have a nice day, Charles -- Charles Plessy Nagahama, Yomitan, Okinawa, Japan
Re: Fortunes-off - do we need this as a package for Bookworm?
On Sun, 2022-11-20 at 16:44 +0600, Judit Foglszinger wrote: > fortune-mod has no bugs that prevent testing migration, > it just needs a source-only upload. Hah, an easy bug to fix :-) I did that just now (1:1.99.1-7.3). Ansgar
Re: Fortunes-off - do we need this as a package for Bookworm?
Hi, > 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. fortune-mod has no bugs that prevent testing migration, it just needs a source-only upload. Also the NMUs it had where 1. the no changes source NMU from holger, that happened to a big number of packages 2. a recent NMU to remove the fortunes-off binary package
Re: Fortunes-off - do we need this as a package for Bookworm?
"G. Branden Robinson" wrote on 20/11/2022 at 00:22:29+0100: > [[PGP Signed Part:No public key for D19E9C7D71266DCE created at > 2022-11-20T00:22:22+0100 using RSA]] > At 2022-11-19T23:07:50+0100, Dominik George wrote: >> > Right, and has has been discussed before (more times than can be >> > counted, most likely) having some sort of content does not imply that >> > the ideology itself is promoted. The presence of the texts of the >> > Torah, the Christian Bible, the Quran, and other holy books in Debian >> > does not mean that Debian as an organization supports all of the various >> > ideologies entailed therein. >> >> You should probably take a history book and look up again what the >> author of Mein Kampf did, and compare that to what the authors of the >> other texts you mention did. > > You should probably read Numbers, Joshua, and Judges (attend > particularly to the fate of the Midianites), as well as the centuries of > history of Christian and Muslim expansion and global colonization. > >> Then, should you still find that murdering 6 million Jews in what is >> known as the Holocaust can be compared to ideas of anarchism, >> Christianity or the Islam, I fail to assume good faith. > > It's a good thing we take so little time to remember the non-Jewish > victims of the Holocaust, isn't it (non-heterosexuals, Roma, Slavs, > the mentally ill or disabled, communists, labor organizers, and > non-conformists of many sorts). Let's pay particularly little attention > to those that might be going on today. > > I concede that anarchists have made a poor showing in the slaughter > sweepstakes of global history. As in Spain from 1936-1939, we usually > find that liberal capitalists, authoritarian communists, royalist > revanchists, and the Roman Catholic Church, all frequently in conflict > with each other, can come rapidly to an ecumenical consensus, even under > circumstances of war, that democratic socialists and everyone to the > left of them need to be expediently liquidated and utterly forgotten. > > On that note, to indulge in recollection of institutional memory here, I > believe it was our second DPL Bruce Perens who first decreed that > "fortunes-off" needed to be excised from the formerly monolithic cookie > collection for the fortune(1) program; it was not thus segregated by our > upstream. His rationale was that the Debian distribution badly needed > to be made more palatable to the tender sensibilities of corporations > that might otherwise find no excuse to make a deal with Red Hat Software > instead. Debian's "apt", now widely recognized as a terrific innovation > in package management due to its automatic dependency resolution with > cycle-breaking, was forcibly renamed at Bruce's direction from "deity", > which he also thought might unduly alarm the tender-hearted > philanthropic sensibilities in C suites throughout Silicon Valley. > > By autocratic pronouncements such as these, many years ago the Debian > distribution was molded and reshaped to make itself more congruent with > the demands of U.S. tech sector capitalism. The problem with this is > less that it situates Debian more comfortably within what we might term > a militantly centrist Anglo-American politics (with Schumpeterian > "creative destruction" for tech entrepreneurs and venture capitalists > followed by pervasive rent-seeking and financialization as a firm > matures), than that people don't critically examine these processes and > acknowledge them as themselves inherently political. This very > paragraph, if uttered aloud in a Fortune 50 workplace in front of the > right (or wrong) ears, might mark one as "not a team player" and unfit > for professional advancement. (At the same time, if you share your > ideas for market disruption or rent extraction discreetly to the right > management consultants who can then vouch for you, the sky's the limit, > if you have a way to cash out your options/cryptos before the people > higher than you on the pyramid do.) > > Debian can discard fortunes-off if it wants to; I'm not sure I could > motivate myself to vote in a GR regarding that question if it came to > pass. But if any Debian contributor thinks that by doing so we make > Debian somehow more "ideologically neutral", or less encumbered by > political doctrine, that person is as self-deluded as anyone who finds a > Rosetta stone in _The Protocols of the Elders of Zion_. > > Regards, I'm personally fine to defend the "less neutral" position we take by dropping fortunes-off which is total garbage. -- PEB signature.asc Description: PGP signature
