3. Can they say something is offensive even without an actual person
being offended?
Removing the package from future releases will not remove it from users systems, and people who want to install it still have plenty of easy ways to do
so. I understand your point of view but maybe there are better battles to fight for.
Reguläre Dateien sind die dümmsten Teile jedes Betriebssystems, sie können nichts außer das wieder ausplappern, was man ihnen erzählt hat. Sie glauben alles und immer nur das letzte, was ihnen gesagt wurde. Völlig kritiklos nehmen sie jedenSchwachsinn willenlos entgegen.
problem, when we have the package - as other thousand packages too -
and let the admin decide wether he wants to install it?
It's problematic because Debian would be providing its huge platform to offensive/harmful content.
Removing the package from future releases will not remove it from users
systems, and people who want to install it still have plenty of easy ways to do
so. I understand your point of view but maybe there are better battles to >> fight for.
I do not think this analogy is correct.
Just the existence of the package is IMHO not a problem - you (or
better: your sysadmin) has to decide to install it. why is this a
problem, when we have the package - as other thousand packages too -
and let the admin decide wether he wants to install it?
It's problematic because Debian would be providing its huge platform to offensive/harmful content.
Hi Alex,
On Thu, 17 Jul 2025, Alex wrote:
problem, when we have the package - as other thousand packages too -
and let the admin decide wether he wants to install it?
It's problematic because Debian would be providing its huge platform to offensive/harmful content.
yes, it would. It would also not forcing anyone using this content. If
you want to have it then you have to install it by yourself.
you do not have to install this content if you do not like it. if you
want to, you can - but it is your decision. if you remove the content,
you take this decision away.
So, as long as someone wants to take care of this package, I say let
it be in the package pool.
please respect all people and respect that they may have a different
opinion or view as you.
Let me offer you a different perspective: through the past conversations around the offensive variant of the fortunes packages (in english), the project has converged towards considering that this is not a package that it wants to ship to its users. (How this convergence happened, and whether you agree with the end-result are not relevant.)
yes, it would. It would also not forcing anyone using this content. If
you want to have it then you have to install it by yourself.
Any software packaged in Debian is automatically promoted, meaning that Debian itself (as a project) is responsible for disseminating its
contents.
This has nothing to do with free speech, which is currently
the dominant narrative used by big tech companies to avoid
responsibility when their algorithms promote hatred written by others.
This isn't about silencing them; it's simply about not providing them
with our infrastructure to spread their hatred (jokes are one of the
most common form of expressed hatred).
you do not have to install this content if you do not like it. if you
want to, you can - but it is your decision. if you remove the content,
you take this decision away.
Yes. You don't even need a Debian package for that.
Also I couldn't help but notice that the DD who opened the issue maintains 0 packages. Just something I noticed.
A last point about your questions: obviously, the sudden urgency is that the project is getting really close to migrating all packages in testing
to our next stable release.
Ok, and why did they have to wait 20 years for this, until I worked on it
and then suddenly wake up now?
Where do I send the bill for my wasted time?
Let me offer you a different perspective: through the past conversations around the offensive variant of the fortunes packages (in english), the project has converged towards considering that this is not a package that it wants to ship to its users.
I asked for help to review all the thousands quotes. I am ok with removing the really offensive ones, but there's also many that are just silly jokes.
I think both Andrew and Paul reflect the project consensus (again, not unanimity) that was reached about the fortunes-off package in english
I haven't seen any vote. Am I missing it?
Now, I think you have two options:
A) (…)
B) (…)
If you tell me who to bill for my wasted time while the community and
release team took 20 years before this suddenly became of life of death importance, I'll be happy to get over it.
Normally if someone who doesn't even have a package installed reports a
grave bug that cannot be reproduced, it is completely normal to close the
bug and move on.
But if that someone belongs to the community team that is not possible.
So let's not hide the truth talking about hats and not hats. It was
done by the community team.
For the past 20 years debian has shipped offensive content in the non-offensive section.
2 years ago I started to work to rectify the situation.
Where was the community team for those 20 years?
Where are they now?
Why are they refusing to help?
Why is the reaction to waste my time instead of actually helping?
I leave you with a quote. It's not in the offensive section but it
might offend some.
I difensori della morale tradizionale sono raramente persone di cuore. Si è tentati di pensare che essi si servano della morale come di legittimo sfogo al loro desiderio di fare del male agli altri.
-- Bertrand Russell, Perché non sono cristiano. 1957
Best
Il giorno gio 17 lug 2025 alle ore 10:54 Tiago Bortoletto Vaz <tiago@debian.org> ha scritto:
Hello,
On Thu, Jul 17, 2025 at 10:38:29AM +0200, Hanno '
Let me offer you a different perspective: through the past conversations around the offensive variant of the fortunes packages (in english), the project has converged towards considering that this is not a package that it wants to ship to its users. (How this convergence happened, and whether you agree with the end-result are not relevant.).
Does that make it clearer where I am standing on this topic?
Hi Salvo,
I have nothing helpful to add to the discussion, but I'd like to say
that I value a lot the time you spend in Debian, and I'm sorry that you decided not joining DebConf this year. Here I've had some pleasant conversations with people I don't get on with via email, which really
shows how important face-to-face events are for the project. I hope
we'll meet in the future and we'll feel okay about any disagreements we
may have.
Bests,
--
Tiago Bortoletto Vaz
On Thu, Jul 17, 2025 at 11:06:11AM +0200, Salvo Tomaselli wrote:
For the past 20 years debian has shipped offensive content in the non-offensive section.
2 years ago I started to work to rectify the situation.
Where was the community team for those 20 years?
Where are they now?
Why are they refusing to help?
Why is the reaction to waste my time instead of actually helping?
I leave you with a quote. It's not in the offensive section but it
might offend some.
I difensori della morale tradizionale sono raramente persone di cuore. Si è
tentati di pensare che essi si servano della morale come di legittimo sfogo al loro desiderio di fare del male agli altri.
-- Bertrand Russell, Perché non sono cristiano. 1957
Best
Il giorno gio 17 lug 2025 alle ore 10:54 Tiago Bortoletto Vaz <tiago@debian.org> ha scritto:
Hello,
On Thu, Jul 17, 2025 at 10:38:29AM +0200, Hanno 'Rince' Wagner wrote:
Hi Alex,
On Thu, 17 Jul 2025, Alex wrote:
problem, when we have the package - as other thousand packages too -
and let the admin decide wether he wants to install it?
It's problematic because Debian would be providing its huge platform to
offensive/harmful content.
yes, it would. It would also not forcing anyone using this content. If you want to have it then you have to install it by yourself.
Any software packaged in Debian is automatically promoted, meaning that Debian itself (as a project) is responsible for disseminating its contents. This has nothing to do with free speech, which is currently
the dominant narrative used by big tech companies to avoid
responsibility when their algorithms promote hatred written by others. This isn't about silencing them; it's simply about not providing them with our infrastructure to spread their hatred (jokes are one of the
most common form of expressed hatred).
you do not have to install this content if you do not like it. if you want to, you can - but it is your decision. if you remove the content, you take this decision away.
Yes. You don't even need a Debian package for that.
So, as long as someone wants to take care of this package, I say let
it be in the package pool.
Fine, but those in charge (thanks release team) decided not to.
please respect all people and respect that they may have a different opinion or view as you.
Yes.
Bests,
--
Tiago Bortoletto Vaz
--
Salvo Tomaselli
"Io non mi sento obbligato a credere che lo stesso Dio che ci ha dotato di senso, ragione ed intelletto intendesse che noi ne facessimo a meno."
-- Galileo Galilei
https://ltworf.codeberg.page/
This has nothing to do with you.
We're all volunteers, so are the RT and the CT, please drop that line of argument.
No. The Debian project reaches consensus in lots of ways. GRs are just one of the (most formal) ways. There was no vote, but as I read it, there's consensus.
It's not of "life or death" importance, obviously not, you're being hyperbolic
here.
* a package that was shipped in Debian 20 years ago doesn't inherit a specific
privilege to continue being shipped by Debian today
* not shipping a package in Debian doesn't remove its content (or datasets) from the Internet (nor from the oldstable, snapshots, software archives, etc).
That's obviously not true. You closed the bug. It was re-opened by a Release Team member who made it a Release Team topic. You continue to make this a Community Team issue; it is not.
It was filed by Andrew, who happens to be a CT member. But for the sake of argument, let's consider it a CT decision. Fact is, it's now being enforced (for trixie) by the Release Team for reasons of their own: it occurs that they
agree with the Community Team on that topic.
We can, and should be having conversations about the role we want the Community Team to have in the project, but that bug (or thread) is not the right place.
Again, I understand the frustration of getting a package you spent muscle and sweat maintaining on your free time being kicked out of Debian. I really do.
Also I couldn't help but notice that the DD who opened the issue maintains 0 packages. Just something I noticed.
Le Wed, Jul 16, 2025 at 07:30:46PM -0400, Roberto C. Sánchez a écrit :
I have a very hard time understanding how in two adjacent paragraphs you can say both "Sexism, racism and such are not, never were, and can not
be funny." and also "making fun of cis-het white males can be offensive, and it’s OK." You sound like a hypocrite.
So, are sexism, racism and such *never* OK, or are they only OK when they're directed at whatever group or groups you happen to think it is acceptable to oppress? Society has been there before (some group decides that another group should be oppressed, marginalized, exploited, eradicated, or whatever) and the results were not good. It doesn't make sense for you to claim a commitment to non-oppression and then make allowance for it at the same time.
I get where the confusion is coming from. I am indeed saying that
sexism, racism, etc. are never OK. But that jokes targeted at the
dominant group are not racism or sexism.
There is no such thing, in our current society, as anti-white racism or anti-male sexism. Because these -ism are about enforcing an oppression,
and there is, by definition, no oppression happening against the
dominant group.
Whether there can be racism against white people is an incredibly complex question with a ton of baggage, about which many PhD dissertations have been written and I'm sure many more will be.
This particular discussion we are engaged in here is hard enough without going down this particular rabbit-hole. It's off-topic for this list, and it's unlikely that anybody's mind will be changed on this particular issue
by a discussion here. So can we please, just… not get into it any further here?
On 7/17/25 9:42 AM, Iustin Pop wrote:
On 2025-07-17 11:45:44, Antoine Le Gonidec wrote:
Le Wed, Jul 16, 2025 at 07:30:46PM -0400, Roberto C. Sánchez a écrit :
I have a very hard time understanding how in two adjacent paragraphs you
can say both "Sexism, racism and such are not, never were, and can not be funny." and also "making fun of cis-het white males can be offensive,
and it’s OK." You sound like a hypocrite.
So, are sexism, racism and such *never* OK, or are they only OK when they're directed at whatever group or groups you happen to think it is acceptable to oppress? Society has been there before (some group decidesI get where the confusion is coming from. I am indeed saying that
that another group should be oppressed, marginalized, exploited, eradicated, or whatever) and the results were not good. It doesn't make sense for you to claim a commitment to non-oppression and then make allowance for it at the same time.
sexism, racism, etc. are never OK. But that jokes targeted at the dominant group are not racism or sexism.
There is no such thing, in our current society, as anti-white racism or anti-male sexism. Because these -ism are about enforcing an oppression, and there is, by definition, no oppression happening against theThis is the most wrong stance to have on racism and sexism. There can be racism against any person, and sexism against any person. If you say
dominant group.
"there can't be racism against X", what you're actually doing is being racist against all X.
If we don't want to promote racism, then let's acknowledge that racism itself
is bad, not racism against Y. Otherwise you're just trying to switch
from racism against Y to racism against X.
very surprised,
iustin
maintaining packages; I think it's unfair and unhelpful to take
pot-shots at other DDs over how many packages they are listed as
maintainer of.
On 2025-07-17 09:50:09, Jonathan Kamens wrote:
Whether there can be racism against white people is an incredibly
complex question with a ton of baggage, about which many PhD
dissertations have been written and I'm sure many more will be.
This particular discussion we are engaged in here is hard enough
without going down this particular rabbit-hole. It's off-topic for this
list, and it's unlikely that anybody's mind will be changed on this
particular issue by a discussion here. So can we please, just… not get
into it any further here?
No, it's not off-topic, or not entirely. The post I replied to was saying "it's fine to be racist against white people".
Iustin Pop <iustin@debian.org> writes:
No, it's not off-topic, or not entirely. The post I replied to was saying "it's fine to be racist against white people".
No, it was not. It was saying that racism by definition has to involve a power gradient, and that definitionally something is only racist if aimed
at a disfavored group by a group with more social power.
You may disagree vigorously with this definition -- many people do! -- but this is a real definition of racism that is widely used in both academic
and casual contexts by many other people.
All that pursuing this definitional disagreement is going to do is make a bunch of people angry at each other without clarifying anything about what Debian will do.
racism by definition has to involve a power gradient, and that definitionally something is only racist if aimed at a disfavored[...]
group by a group with more social power.
I get where the confusion is coming from. I am indeed saying that
sexism, racism, etc. are never OK. But that jokes targeted at the
dominant group are not racism or sexism.
There is no such thing, in our current society, as anti-white racism or anti-male sexism. Because these -ism are about enforcing an oppression,
and there is, by definition, no oppression happening against the
dominant group.
On 2025-07-17 08:57:12 -0700 (-0700), Russ Allbery wrote:
[...]
racism by definition has to involve a power gradient, and that definitionally something is only racist if aimed at a disfavored group[...]
by a group with more social power.
Conversely, a problem I've had to directly struggle with in managing diversity and inclusion policy for other global/international open source software communities is that a dominant group in one part of the world can
be marginalized and disfavored in another part of the world, so more generally it's hard to make judgements about discrimination based on power dynamic when extrapolating to the entire planet. Ultimately it becomes
easier to just assume that everyone could be marginalized somewhere, even if they're not marginalized in their present locale, and adjust policies accordingly.
Removing the package from future releases will not remove it from users
systems, and people who want to install it still have plenty of easy ways to do
so. I understand your point of view but maybe there are better battles to >> fight for.
I do not think this analogy is correct.
Just the existence of the package is IMHO not a problem - you (or
better: your sysadmin) has to decide to install it. why is this a
problem, when we have the package - as other thousand packages too -
and let the admin decide wether he wants to install it?
It's problematic because Debian would be providing its huge platform to offensive/harmful content.
the apparent lack of anyone having pointed to any specific content sill remaining that is unacceptable for Debian.
ofI think both Andrew and Paul reflect the project consensus (again, not unanimity) that was reached about the fortunes-off package in english
I haven't seen any vote. Am I missing it?
No. The Debian project reaches consensus in lots of ways. GRs are just one
the (most formal) ways. There was no vote, but as I read it, there's consensus.
Iustin Pop <iustin@debian.org> writes:
On 2025-07-17 09:50:09, Jonathan Kamens wrote:
Whether there can be racism against white people is an incredibly
complex question with a ton of baggage, about which many PhD
dissertations have been written and I'm sure many more will be.
This particular discussion we are engaged in here is hard enough
without going down this particular rabbit-hole. It's off-topic for this
list, and it's unlikely that anybody's mind will be changed on this
particular issue by a discussion here. So can we please, just… not get >> into it any further here?
No, it's not off-topic, or not entirely. The post I replied to was saying "it's fine to be racist against white people".
No, it was not. It was saying that racism by definition has to involve a power gradient, and that definitionally something is only racist if aimed
at a disfavored group by a group with more social power.
You may disagree vigorously with this definition -- many people do! -- but this is a real definition of racism that is widely used in both academic
and casual contexts by many other people.
Please note that everyone I have ever encountered who holds to that definition *also* believes that racism is not the only bad thing that
someone can possibly do, that just because something is not racist doesn't mean that it's okay, and that there are many discriminatory things that people can do that are not good and that should not be socially
acceptable. The argument over the definition of the specific label
"racism" does not change that.
As Jonathan said, this is an argument over which many doctoral theses have been written, and I absolutely guarantee you that no one's mind will be changed about the definition of racism in this thread. The people who
prefer that definition have heard all these arguments before, many many times, and still believe in that definition. The people who dislike that definition dislike it intensely and are very unlikely to change their
minds about that, certainly not due to a debian-devel thread.
And again, I want to make sure it's clear what standard we hold
ourselves to, here.
On 2025-07-17 08:57:12 -0700 (-0700), Russ Allbery wrote:
[...]
racism by definition has to involve a power gradient, and that definitionally something is only racist if aimed at a disfavored group[...]
by a group with more social power.
Conversely, a problem I've had to directly struggle with in managing diversity and inclusion policy for other global/international open source software communities is that a dominant group in one part of the world can
be marginalized and disfavored in another part of the world, so more generally it's hard to make judgements about discrimination based on power dynamic when extrapolating to the entire planet. Ultimately it becomes
easier to just assume that everyone could be marginalized somewhere, even if they're not marginalized in their present locale, and adjust policies accordingly.
The package maintainer has already explained that he has the same general feeling. There are some things he has already removed from the package because he feels they are inappropriate for Debian. He has also expressed the
willingness to consider removing other things from the package if someone can
point to a specific entry that reaches the unacceptable level of offensiveness.
A careful debian-devel observer could
have listed most of the people who would respond to the thread and written
a pretty good paraphrase of what they would say the moment they saw the
first few messages in the thread.
obvious issue is being overlooked by some here. Debian will not only
lose one user of the offending package as already inaccurately argued in
this thread, but contributors and developers who simply won't have the >motivation to give their time to a project that allows and promote such >nonsense.
Am Fr, Jul 18, 2025 at 03:01:44 -0400 schrieb Tiago Bortoletto Vaz:
obvious issue is being overlooked by some here. Debian will not only
lose one user of the offending package as already inaccurately argued in this thread, but contributors and developers who simply won't have the motivation to give their time to a project that allows and promote such nonsense.
This might be.
But are you very sure that Debian will not lose contributors and developers *because* they don’t want this removing because of content bullshit? Or do consider them not worthy enough for Debian?
This will go both ways.
I'm not very sure, but I tend to believe that some offences cause more
harm than others. I believe that the suffering of women in projects that
use their own infrastructure to promote women being beaten deserve more consideration than the suffering of someone who's upset because their
package promoting violence against women isn't welcome.
As I understood it from a previous message, during his clean-up work,
the maintainer found a quote where beating women is encouraged. What did
he do then? He left it in the package!
The fact that we are wasting so much time discussing offending packages
that nobody uses (as stated by the maintainer somewhere in this long
thread) also feels a bit surreal.
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