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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) by efitton on Monday November 24 2014, @06:59PM
Janrinok, thank you for the time it must take to be an editor. Overall I am very pleased to be a reader and a sometimes commentator here at SN.
That said, I am glad I read the comments on this article but only because otherwise I would have a negative impression of Debian. I don't always read the comments; for this "article" that is a problem. If you aren't going to make edits to the submission: this one needs huge caveats as it sits on the front page. And frankly if I'd seen those caveats I would have skipped reading this article and read comments on something different. We were trolled. So no, I do not like having this particular story on Soylent News. Best case we engaged a troll; worse case people have an unfair slant on Debian.
Now I don't think there is a crisis. I don't think we're becoming slashdot. I don't think you are responsible for the end of Western Civilization. My suggestion as a reader though is next time don't feed the troll.