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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: 1) by seandiggity on Monday November 24 2014, @12:08AM
I'm really starting to question the quality of both SN and Pipedot lately. This is practically copied from http://pipedot.org/story/2014-11-21/opensource-game-rejected-from-debian-for-authors-social-beliefs [pipedot.org] and is a completely trivial issue, not a big controversy that calls Debian's integrity into question and/or is a display of Debian's political bias.
The notable addition to the summary at SN is the question involving the Debian Code of Conduct. Before you ask who falls afoul of the the Code of Conduct, how about you do your homework? The creator of the rejected package (a slot machine game also authored by him) says things like this on Debian mailing lists:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-women/2005/06/msg00235.html [debian.org]
If the title of that message isn't enough, read the whole thing. To compound the situation, the game has easter eggs in it which include anti-woman rants and inflammatory ASCII art. Is that "be respectful"? The game itself is disrespectful of women, if the author's actions weren't enough.
A few questions worth considering for SN and Pipedot members/fans:
1. is this newsworthy?
2. do either of these stories have accurate summaries?
3. does this have anything to do with systemd or "Debian culture", as is implied?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 24 2014, @06:55AM
1. Yes.
2. Yes.
3. Yes. (Debian Culture)
Looks like you matched up all 3 symbols. Good job!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 24 2014, @07:37AM
It's almost 10 years since that message to debian-women.
What have the debian-women produced in those 9 years?