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posted by janrinok on Sunday November 23 2014, @09:19PM   Printer-friendly
from the no-love-for-trolls dept.

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?

 
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  • (Score: 1) by forkazoo on Tuesday November 25 2014, @12:05AM

    by forkazoo (2561) on Tuesday November 25 2014, @12:05AM (#119597)

    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

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 25 2014, @12:41PM (#119760)

    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)