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The Debian project has suffered from a long string of negative events recently, ranging from severe discontent over the inclusion of systemd, to talk of forking the project, to a grave bug affecting the important 'wine' package, to the resignation and reduced involvement of long time contributors.
The latest strife affecting Debian revolves around a request for a Debian package of the GPC-Slots 2 software. This request has been rejected with little more than an ad hominem attack against the software's author.
In response to the request, Stephen Gran wrote,
This is code by someone who routinely trolls Debian. I doubt we want any more poisonous upstreams in Debian, so I at least would prefer this never get packaged.
Jonathan Wiltshire proceeded to mark the request as 'wontfix', and closed it.
While Debian does strive to maintain high standards regarding the software it packages, the negative and personal nature of this rejection, without any apparent technical or licensing concerns, appears to conflict with Debian's own Code of Conduct. Such a personal attack could be seen as contradictory to the Code of Conduct's mandate that Debian participants "Be respectful", "Be collaborative", and most importantly, "Assume good faith".
Given its recent troubles as of late, many of them concerning the poor treatment of Debian developers and users alike, can Debian really afford to get embroiled in yet another negative incident?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Bill Evans on Sunday November 23 2014, @11:01PM
This program is a single, very poorly written Perl script. (Go ahead, download it and gag with me.)
More importantly, when you run it, it invites you to enter a number between 1 and 12; almost all of those numbers correspond to a game you might wish to play. If, however, you enter "women", you get 27 lines of "Just Say No To Women's Rights" on your screen, cascading merrily to the right and then to the left.
Let's say you're running this at home, and Thanksgiving company is over, and a young teenager playfully types "women" instead of a number, and your father-in-law sees that output on the screen. You don't want to trust any code from someone where you have to peruse the source before welcoming the code into your home, do you?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 23 2014, @11:20PM
No, I obviously don't want to have to check the source to all of the software that I run.
That's why I use Debian!
I expect the Debian maintainers to at least do a cursory check of the software, and alert me to any problems.
The Debian maintainer should have at least mentioned those details in the bug report, rather than just calling the author a "troll" and leaving it at that.
And I'm not convinced that the "this software might offend somebody" argument of yours holds any water.
If that's being used as the standard for whether or not a Debian package is suitable, then the packages for all web browsers should be removed.
A young teenager could playfully type "women" into Chromium's URL bar, or into Iceweasel's search bar, and get presented with material that could get the father-in-law riled up.
I still haven't seen a good technical argument presented as to why this software is unsuitable for inclusion in Debian.
The arbitrary standards you and that other person have suggested so far would mean that hundreds, if not thousands, of other existing Debian packages would be in violation of these arbitrary standards, and thus should be removed immediately.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jimshatt on Monday November 24 2014, @12:56AM
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Monday November 24 2014, @01:09AM
I think the point is that whoever is responsible for the decision at Debian should NOT have said "author is a jerk and so we won't package it" -- which sounds petty and and subjective. Instead, it should have been rejected on merits alone and THAT reason posted for the rejection. Sometimes, even if you get to the same result, the way you get there is important. That's the issue here.
(Score: 2) by jimshatt on Monday November 24 2014, @01:32AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 24 2014, @03:15AM
But like the summary says early on, it has been one incident after another with Debian lately. It was never this bad before. Things have really gone to hell with the entire project after the systemd debacle.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 24 2014, @03:49AM
No, even the systemd "debacle" itself. And gamergate. There is new hatred in tech culture that did not exist before. As an old-timer, the range used to be from professional to juvenile. There was not this hate. Open hatred and personal attacks were not acceptable in the past. When I was young, we not only rode both ways uphill in the snow, we actually called out our peers in our online forums if they used personal attacks over a technical disagreement. People with very different technical preferences managed to have discussions together, even have their software included in the same OS distributions, without having to try to burn each other down and get each other excluded from the industry.
It is really disgusting. People want to end other people's freakin' careers over technical complaints that aren't even real, that they heard about on the internet and heard repeated by some Grand Poobah and so they know it is Gospel and successful software engineers you disagree with are the Devil.
For example, Lennart Poettering is one of the more successful software engineers of our age. His software is used by large numbers of people. The big distros with the highest profile rockstar engineers are choosing to use his software. For real reasons. But if you listen to the peanut gallery, you'd think Poettering is some sort of retarded outlaw in the wilderness who is hated by all. He's not hated by educated people who make a difference in the world. But there is certainly a culture of hate online is communities that purport to be filled with technical professionals. Apparently though, professionals who aren't very professional, or regarded.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 24 2014, @05:09AM
If Poettering is so great, why do so many people have so many problems with the software he's written? PulseAudio was a complete disaster for so many people, just like systemd has been. I can't think of any other open source developer whose software has caused so many people so much trouble.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 24 2014, @06:44AM
Your day must have started in the mid 2000s.
There has always been profound dislike to be found displayed in a textual form on mailing lists and usenet.
It is the leftists that wish to imprison those with whom they disagree. In most European countries they
are given this power.
There's another thing at work here, with gamer gate et al; there are no anti-feminist countries in existance
any longer. Virtually no place for men to marry females under the age of western consent. There's no valve or outlet.
There's only what women want. Everywhere.
(Score: 1, Redundant) by Hairyfeet on Monday November 24 2014, @04:23PM
Sorry but no, don't try to lump in what corrupt tech reviewers have tried to label as "gamergate" [youtube.com] which just FYI was a snarky post by Alec Baldwin because his former boss Joss Whedon posted that anybody that points out obvious conflicts of interest like Zoe Quinn doxxing a pro female game design group while at the same time raising funds for a "female game jam" with the funds going into her personal account was "anti feminist", because they really aren't the same AT ALL.
Several supposedly independent "game journalists" got caught red handed with their hands in the cookie jar, not only pushing developers they had personal and financial relationships with but actually getting together in a secret private Google group to decide what got pushed, what got buried, and what agenda they should push. Then when this came out suddenly "its about feminism" with over a dozen sites coming out with the exact same article at the same time labeling gamers as "dead" and trying to make it all about Anita Sarkeesian, a known con artist [youtube.com] who has been caught in so many outright lies about the games she is supposedly "exposing" that she should by all rights have the same amount of credibility as Jack Thompson.
At the end of the day the reason the press latched onto the "gamergate" tag is because its exactly that...a tag. Something that they can use to discredit the legitimate criticism of their shady dealings because anybody can use that, all it takes is any random jackass (even a member of the gaming press themselves) typing " I hate (insert race or sex) #gamergate" and they can say "See? Its not about us, its about gamers hating (insert group)!" when in reality they were caught red handed [youtube.com] colluding and stuffing their pockets.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Monday November 24 2014, @04:49PM
sorry to reply to myself but we REALLY need the ability to do minor edits, its ADAM not Alec, too damned many Baldwins to keep up with LOL.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 1) by linuxrocks123 on Monday November 24 2014, @05:33PM
I agree some people on the Internet are very nasty, though maybe I'm not old enough to see the "recency" you speak of. I think the Greater Internet F*wad Theory has been true for quite some time.
Regarding Lennart Poettering: he's just an ass. Regardless of the technical merits of his software, he's such an ass that he is, in fact, a "poisonous upstream" the same way Schilling was. Like Schilling, he won't listen to bug reports, and he thinks he's a god. He co-opted someone else's talk on audio systems after heckling the presenter with "questions" that were more comments, including calling Phonon "kind of dead" (which it's not). His whole team is like that, too; remember the "debug on the kernel command line" crap?
People who come up with crap ideas to solve nonproblems are usually just ignored. Debian users who would like to ignore Lennart are not able to. That makes him disliked. And the guy's an ass, which makes him more disliked.
And, this isn't something that happens to most OSS developers. You don't have entire threads hating Andrew Morton, or Greg Kroah-Hartman, or even Theo de Raadt, who is extremely unpersonable. Hans Reiser (before he became a murderer) you had a few, because he had the same sort of arrogance Lennart has, but even then people respected the quality of his work, and, well, you didn't HAVE to use ReiserFS.
By contrast, Lennart does work anyone could do (but doesn't, because it's not useful work), thinks he's the best thing since sliced bread because he solved 5 nonproblems while creating 6 real ones, and is in a position where many people can't just roll their eyes and ignore him if they want to. That is a recipe for pissing people off. And they are.
It's not the community. It's the software, and the toxic personality behind it.
(Score: 1) by forkazoo on Tuesday November 25 2014, @12:05AM
Beyond a certain point, ignoring the author becomes legitimate. When the abuse is constant, repeated, pointless, and persistent then spending time justify each time you ignore him is just wasting time playing his game. Minimal engagement is the correct path because it gives him the least return on his trolling, which helps avoid discouraging similar trolls. Look at how toxic Bill Cosby has become lately. It's not because the Cosby Show itself is offensive in a rational context-free vacuum. But context matters. The man himself has just become too big of an issue to deal with. If Debian were to include this troll's software (even if he had written something worthwhile) it would have been a legitimate cause for an uproar. Many people would be upset at legitimizing such an absurdly offensive misogynist by distributing his software, and giving him a platform and means of styling himself as a programmer rather than a shit stain.
Given that his work includes nonsense like this:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-women/2005/06/msg00235.html [debian.org]
I'm fine with rejecting him out of hand on all future occasions as well. I'd do much the same.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 25 2014, @12:41PM
Hopefully someday the world will reverse and people like you will be seen as the shitstains again.
Perhaps Putin's Russia is working on that? (God speed to them if so)
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Monday November 24 2014, @05:43AM
Are we discussing systemd or #gamergate?
1702845791×2
(Score: 2) by jimshatt on Monday November 24 2014, @09:57AM
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Monday November 24 2014, @05:49PM
I was being facetious but there seems to be no shortage of people who write low quality software, engage in dubious antics and have their work distributed to the exclusion of others. In this case, Debian rejected functional software in an unprofessional manner, contrary to the Debian Code Of Conduct, possibly due to an Easter Egg which propagates the author's beliefs. And these beliefs have already been disseminated on a Debian mailing list which appears to have been created for the purpose of positive discrimination.
1702845791×2
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday November 23 2014, @11:21PM
Maybe the summary should have included this bit of information, since it seems quite relevant.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 23 2014, @11:26PM
The submitter probably wasn't aware of this, because the Debian bug report completely failed to mention it.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Marand on Monday November 24 2014, @04:23AM
Summary also left out that the request to add the software to Debian is from a domain that's handled by mailinator (an anonymous mailer), so even the attempt to get it added was probably a troll. (It's even listed in their blog post [blogspot.com] about alternate domains.) I doubt the summary would have included any of this info, though, because it wouldn't fit the Debian-hostile narrative. Searching online shows that an AC attempted to submit the same thing to Slashdot, too. It's just someone with an agenda, possibly even the same guy that made the software and attempted to get it added to Debian.
Something else I've noticed: every time one of these AC-submitted Debian-hostile posts comes up there's a slew of similarly-toned AC comments defending the submission and arguing with everybody that comments. I think this guy's got a hell of an axe to grind, is insanely bored, or is just insane. Maybe some combination of the three.
A better discussion would be about how terrible the code is. I listed a few things in another comment [soylentnews.org], but there's probably stuff I missed because I was just jumping to random points and looking at the horribleness.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 24 2014, @12:53PM
Debian has screwed up a lot lately, and it has been reported here and on other sites, so somehow this means there's some huge conspiracy? Huh?
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Monday November 24 2014, @03:48PM
for some strange reason your post made me laugh!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 24 2014, @10:45PM
It made me laugh, too. Marand's conspiracy theories are silly.
(Score: 2) by moondrake on Sunday November 23 2014, @11:39PM
oh dear...you fell right into his trap by replying. He's probably the author if you had not figured...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 23 2014, @11:46PM
I'm seeing a lot of interesting discussion in this thread. It's a good back-and-forth exchange of ideas. And then you come along with your absurd conspiracy theories. Maybe you should just let people discuss this as they see fit. Nobody has fallen into a "trap" by discussing the incident the submission is about.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 24 2014, @07:00AM
And the trap is sprung!
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Monday November 24 2014, @03:16AM
Most of Fire Marshal Bill's fire safety scenarios are more plausible than this.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Monday November 24 2014, @04:01PM
Uhhhhh....sorry, flag on the field, 10 yard penalty for bullshit. I mean seriously nobody would EVAR think to type "women" into a box that is clearly labeled "input a number between 1 and 12" so at best one can consider that to be some sort of "Easter Egg" type thing where the ONLY people who would possibly ever see it would be the ones that already know its there, like the old Atari Adventure Easter Egg which I bet not a single one of you who were old enough to have played Adventure when you was a kid ever "accidently" tripped over!
At the end of the day either you are biased or you are not, really not any middle ground here. If they are deciding what programs to take based on politics then they are biased, blocking his software because you don't like his politics and not on the technical merits IS being biased and NO different than blocking someone's software because they support LGBT people having equal rights. Bias is bias, be it left or right, and you either are or you are not, really not any debate on this.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 1) by Bill Evans on Monday November 24 2014, @08:24PM
Clearly you've never raised a teenage boy.