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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: 3, Informative) by Marand on Monday November 24 2014, @11:35PM
Easter eggs in general, or just hateful ones that the package maintainers don't know about?
I'd say that easter eggs as universally unprofessional, and that's what makes them appealing, both to the author and the users that like them. They're usually a good-natured way for a developer to put a bit of personality into a piece of software that's otherwise all business; a way for the author to leave their mark. Having a popup that appears with a small picture of your kitten and a thank-you for using the software when you input the Konami code isn't professional at all, but it's not hurting the software. A few people might complain that it increases the size of the binary slightly, but most won't care.
They become unacceptable when they start doing things like going "FUCK YOU!", "ALL MEN SHOULD DIE", "NO RIGHTS FOR WOMEN", "EAT DICKS, HIPSTER", etc. Their purpose is no longer a bit of fun and personality; they become a vehicle for the author's agenda and/or a way to piss people off. Maybe a bit of a "haha I got you to install offensive software" in there too.
One could argue that neither belongs in a distro, but the latter type definitely doesn't.
In the case of gpcslots2, there's at least two easter eggs that I've seen. One is deliberately inflammatory, and I'm not sure how to categorise the other. He decided to embed deCSS in some form, which might not preclude inclusion but might require Debian to provide some sort of disclaimer relating to it. Gven the nature of dealing with the author, it's easy to see why no Debian maintainer would want to be responsible for trying to get the easter eggs cleaned up acceptably. Even if the obvious ones are removed, the code is a gigantic mess and the author is provably unhinged. It would be a nightmare to try digging through every version to check for problems, and folly to rely on the author's goodwill based on years of bad behaviour.
Not that it matters. There's no requirement that Debian package everything, and it's just a Perl script, so anybody that wants to can download and run it with no trouble.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 25 2014, @03:05AM
Stating your opinion is bad behavior if that opinion is opposed to "social justice". Yep.
There is nothing wrong with the code. It does what it was designed to do without fault or error.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Tuesday November 25 2014, @03:24AM
Stating your opinion is bad behavior if that opinion is opposed to "social justice". Yep.
There is nothing wrong with the code. It does what it was designed to do without fault or error.
That isn't what I said at all, mikee, and you know it. Nothing I've said here has been about "social justice".
Also there's plenty wrong with the code, and no amount of defending it is going to make it less terrible. Maybe you should spend less time trying to convince us it's not shit and more time cleaning it up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 25 2014, @12:37PM
It does exactly what it was designed to do, nothing more, nothing less.
Try it out before knocking it.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday November 25 2014, @03:55PM
Except for the bigoted easter egg, sure. By definition an easter egg is "something more."
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 26 2014, @09:04AM
Nope, that was in there from the start. Part of the design.
Free Software was written by hobbyists until a few years ago.
This piece of software has its beginning in the time before the corporate take-over of
the "lets make our own software for free in our own time" movement.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 26 2014, @09:06AM
There is nothing bigoted about it.
Women should not have rights, Men should be able to marry girl children.
Read the Bible. If you disagree and you work to make the world a
"better place" where such things are not so, then well hopefully
Russia does what it's been threatening to do lately.
(You know, the resurgent Orthodox Russia)