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Debian grapples with offensive packages, again

By Joe Brockmeier
August 4, 2025

A pair of packages containing fortune "cookies" that were deemed offensive have been removed from the upcoming Debian 13 ("trixie") release. This has, of course, led to a lengthy discussion and debate about what does, or does not, belong in the distribution. It may also lead to a general resolution (GR) to decide whether Debian's code of conduct (CoC) applies to the contents of packages.

The fortune program prints out a random quote or other piece of text from one or more topic databases. On Debian, for example, the topic categories shipped with the fortunes package include art, ascii-art, food, love, Linux, pets, Star Trek, and more. Those are installed by default when one installs fortune-mod, the package that contains the fortune program.

The packages that are being removed from trixie—fortunes-it-off and fortunes-scn-off—contain the Italian and Sicilian (respectively) offensive fortunes. "Offensive" here is not an editorial judgment call—the packages are officially designated as offensive in the package names and are maintained separately to ensure that users do not install them accidentally. These packages are not pulled in by default when a user installs fortune-mod; a person would have to install them separately. Even if the -off packages are installed, fortune only chooses from the database of offensive fortunes if one uses the -o option. Debian's man page for fortune includes this guidance for that option:

Please, please, please request a potentially offensive fortune if and only if you believe, deep in your heart, that you are willing to be offended. (And that you'll just quit using -o rather than give us grief about it, okay?)

Debian split the offensive fortunes in English off into a separate fortunes-off package in 1997. That package was dropped entirely ahead of the Debian 12 ("bookworm") release, following a a lengthy discussion on the debian-project mailing list. That discussion was started by Debian community team member Andrew M.A. Cater after the team had received a query about the fortunes-off package. Someone had asked if the package contained any Nazi quotes, which "might make it illegal to host the content on mirrors in at least Germany or Austria". He said that he thought any such quotes had been purged from the original BSD package that served as a basis for Debian's fortune packages.

However, he raised the question of whether Debian should remove fortunes-off since it contains quotes that "probably don't fit in with our Debian values or general societal values 25 years on". Ultimately, after much debate, it was removed.

But that was only the English version of the package. The fortunes-it-off package was still included in bookworm when it shipped in June, 2023. Salvo Tomaselli took over as maintainer of fortunes-it and fortunes-it-off in November 2023, and introduced the fortunes-scn and fortunes-scn-off packages that month as well. Note that the scn binary packages are built from the same source package (fortunes-it). The scn binary package was added on November 30, 2023.

"No place in Debian"

On July 12, Cater filed bugs against fortunes-scn-off and fortunes-it-off. Cater's bug reports simply said that the English fortunes had been removed, and the subjects for the bugs stated that the packages had "no place in Debian". He did not elaborate on any specific text in either package that he found offensive or explain why he chose to file the bugs when he did. Debian is currently in freeze and preparing for the trixie release, so a removal would have the effect of dropping the packages from the upcoming release entirely, though they would continue to be available in bookworm.

Tomaselli responded a day later; he said that the packages in question are not installed automatically and that no one had actually complained that they were offended by them. "I think it's fine." He added he was happy to accept pull requests, and had been doing maintenance on the packages after it had been abandoned for many years: "and actually removed a number of fascist, racist and sexist quotes that were not in the offensive section". With that, he closed the bugs. On July 16, Paul Gevers of the release team reopened the bugs and said that he was "reinforcing the decision of the community team"; he asked Tomaselli to please drop the offensive packages.

Cater is still a member of Debian's community team, but in a conversation at DebConf25 he said that he had filed the bugs as an individual, not as a member of the community team. While Cater did not identify himself as a member of the community team, it's not difficult to understand why someone might assume he was acting in that capacity given the history. It's possible, if Cater had provided a longer bug report with examples, and if he had stated that the report was not an official community team action, that the ensuing debate could have been avoided—or shortened. He did allow, in retrospect, that he was not good at filing bugs and that the bug report could have been better.

Can they do that?

Tomaselli sent a message to debian-devel on July 16 about the removal, and asked whether he could be forced to remove a package by the community team "even though I did not violate the COC and they did not receive any complaints?" The packages have existed since 2003, he said, "and there have been 0 complaints from offended people in these 22 years". He was annoyed that, after working on the package for two years, he was suddenly being asked to remove it while in freeze for the trixie release. "I do not appreciate wasting my time, I do not appreciate having to write this email and I do not appreciate the collective time wasted on this."

Debian does not need to ship offensive fortunes, Charles Plessy argued, "people who want to install [them] still have plenty of easy ways to do so". Maybe, he suggested, there are better battles to fight. Hanno "Rince" Wagner disagreed; as long as someone wants to spend their time curating a package, he did not think that Debian should remove it.

Didier "OdyX" Raboud observed that if the project had reached consensus that the fortunes-off package in English should be removed, "it also follows that they ought to be removed in other languages".

Debian contributor "NoisyCoil" said that they had wanted to argue in favor of keeping the packages, but after looking at the content they had decided against it:

I went peeking at the package and, unless I'm completely missing something, the second offensive Italian fortune says that women's "no"s should be interpreted as "yes", while the third one explicitly calls for violence on women [1]. Like, it literally says women should be beaten on a regular basis. I'm afraid I can't help you here, sorry.

Tomaselli said that the reason that offensive file contains calls to beat women is because he had moved it out of the "normal" fortunes. "Without me it could have remained in the normal section another 200 years for what anyone here cares about."

The debate featured many other responses both for and against removing the package, though the bulk of responses seem to favor removal. Contributors shared opinions on what is or isn't offensive and questions about other content—such as the Bible—that might offend others. If this seems familiar, it may be because similar points had been raised during the prior discussion about removing the English-language package. Long-time Debian users may recall the project grappling with the same issues more than 20 years ago when Thibaut Varene proposed packaging "hot-babe", a graphical utility that promised to display "system activity in a very special way"; specifically, it would display a graphic of a woman undressing as system temperature increased.

Getting consensus

After a few days of debate, Wouter Verhelst sent an email to debian-vote and said that "it's clear by now that we need a project-wide consensus on what policies apply to the contents of packages". When he wrote Debian's code of conduct, which was ratified by the project in 2014, he had not made it explicit that it was not meant to apply to the content of packages, though that was his intent. (Updated to add not in the previous sentence.)

Since the discussion keeps coming up, he said, the project should probably vote on a GR about the subject. There were four options he thought would be appropriate: the first two were that the CoC applies unmodified to all source code in a package or that it does not apply to the contents of packages, and that no alternative CoC is needed for packages. A third option, he said, would be that the CoC applies to "all program messages or documentation" that could be seen by a user, with exceptions for "historic texts that are widely disseminated outside of Debian". If that option had been Debian policy, the guidance would have clearly applied to this situation and made it an easy call to remove the packages.

The fourth option he thought likely was that the current code of conduct does not apply to packages, but a "code of contents" should be written that would apply to packages. Creating such a thing, however, would be a lot of work that he was unwilling to do. Anyone who wanted to propose such an option should have the text ready, "otherwise we're discussing hypotheticals rather than solutions". He said that he would make a formal GR proposal with the third option "a few weeks from now", unless the thread was still ongoing and productive.

Tomaselli said that he had also been thinking of starting a thread about a GR, but Verhelst had been quicker. Tomaselli thought there should be an "entirely new and different policy" about what to accept and not accept, because "there will inevitably be a lot of mismatches if we just apply the code of conduct to all the code we have". Verhelst replied that sounded like his option four and reminded Tomaselli that he had plenty of time to draft an option like that.

Is it really a problem?

Iustin Pop thought that package content had generally not been a significant problem in Debian, with the exception of the fortune packages. He wondered whether Debian really wanted to have a CoC for enforcing morality standards "which can change over time", or if the project wanted to be neutral and ship software as-is. Verhelst replied that he wanted an answer to the question of whether the CoC applies to Debian packages. He pointed to other discussions, such as hot-babe and the sudo insults feature, "which used to be enabled by default, but was disabled after a bug report with complaints". He said it was not absolutely necessary to have a CoC for packages, but he thought it was a good idea.

Former Debian Project Leader Bdale Garbee thought a code for acceptable content was "an exceptionally bad idea". He said that the only policy that should govern package content should be compliance with the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG):

If external forces, like laws, force us to elide some content or come up with additional complications in our distribution mechanisms as US law on crypto export once did, then fine, we'll deal with those when we must. But trying to apply some sort of moral code to package content, or offering to avoid offending individuals or groups with the software we distribute, feels likely to be directly in conflict with DFSG 5, "No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups", and/or DFSG 6, "No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor".

At best, Garbee said, it would be a slippery slope given the differences of opinion that exist within the Debian project. Tiago Bortoletto Vaz felt that a GR was unnecessary. He said it was not a recurrent problem for the project, "so perhaps it doesn't really need new rules":

Honest question: in ~30 years, how many packages have been removed from our archive due to offensive content? 4? 5? How many of the removal requests turned into big drama?

"AFAIK, all of them", replied Tomaselli. This was the first time he had encountered package removal as a Debian developer, but not his first time "having packages disappear because someone else decided they were immoral". Having a firm rule would be less controversial, he said.

Russ Allbery noted that, since there is no content policy for packages, every time there's a question about content it gets argued "to death" on the mailing lists:

A careful debian-devel observer could have listed most of the people who would respond to the thread and written a pretty good paraphrase of what they would say the moment they saw the first few messages in the thread.

Verhelst said, that it would also make life easier for Debian's release team to have a concrete policy. The team had decided that the package should be removed, based on Debian's code of conduct, but Verhelst said it was unclear whether the CoC even applies to packages. He also questioned whether the release team is even the right team to make the decision, though he was quick to add that was not meant as a criticism: "They do a hard job under difficult circumstances, and that is appreciated".

Clearly, he said, some people in the project believe that Debian should have a content policy that should be imposed. That being the case, the project should make a decision:

And honestly, if we think about this and decide as a project that "anything is allowed except things that are obviously illegal", then that's fine with me too. I just want us to think about this and make the call, rather than leaving this to a team that really have a different responsibility and will take the flak for doing something that shouldn't even be their job but nobody else is doing it.

Later he added that a policy is already being imposed with the removal of the offensive fortune packages:

This means that we already do have an effective code of acceptable conduct, decided by the release team and not the project at large, and I think that is wrong.

For now, the conversation has largely died down; many of the participants are no doubt busy getting trixie ready for its release on August 9 without the offensive fortune files. Sometime after the release, Debian may finally come to a firm decision on whether it wants to moderate the content of packages, and where it draws the line if it chooses to impose one.


to post comments

Once again, religon gets a double standard?

Posted Aug 4, 2025 15:00 UTC (Mon) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (28 responses)

> A third option, he said, would be that the CoC applies to ""all program messages or documentation"" that could be seen by a user, with exceptions for ""historic texts that are widely disseminated outside of Debian"".

> Contributors shared opinions on what is or isn't offensive and questions about other content—such as the Bible—that might offend others.

More poignantly, one of the "offensive fortunes" held up as an example of being a completely unacceptable content/CoC violation is a direct quote [1] of the King James version of the (Christian) Bible... which is also packaged/distributed in its entirety by Debian.

(This "problem" has come up a lot in the US lately; in the guise of banning "sexual content" from school libraries, lawmakers accidently banned their "sacred" [2] religious text until they managed to come up with convoluted exceptions that someone only applied to that one text)

[1] https://lwn.net/ml/all/2124769.gORTcIGjah@soren-desktop/
[2] in quotes because they routinely ignore most of it.

Once again, religon gets a double standard?

Posted Aug 4, 2025 15:17 UTC (Mon) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (16 responses)

This is one of the things that I get incensed by. Religion is ultimately just someone's opinion, and it should never be allowed to override other non-discrimination protections.

Stopping here as this thread is likely to veer way off course... :)

Once again, religon gets a double standard?

Posted Aug 4, 2025 15:28 UTC (Mon) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (15 responses)

Religion, Politics, what's the difference?

"Theology, the logical study of $DEITY". The problem with logic is that at the end of the day it is just another belief system.

EVERYTHING, at its root, is built on axioms, the definition of which is "I believe this is true, because I cannot prove it".

At the end of the day, all you can do is accept that other peoples' belief systems are different from yours, and you have to respect that. ALL belief systems are flawed, and unfortunately the biggest problem is those people who are so busy trying to remove the mote from your eye, that they cannot see the log in their own ...

Cheers,
Wol

Once again, religon gets a double standard?

Posted Aug 4, 2025 15:42 UTC (Mon) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (14 responses)

At the end of the day, all you can do is accept that other peoples' belief systems are different from yours, and you have to respect that.

You have to respect the right of people to hold belief systems that are different from yours, but you don't have to respect the particular beliefs that they hold. For example, I respect the right of people to be racist, but I don't respect racism. I respect the right of people to hold religious beliefs, but I do not respect most religious beliefs.

Barriers

Posted Aug 4, 2025 19:58 UTC (Mon) by tux3 (subscriber, #101245) [Link] (13 responses)

I want to agree, but... doesn't something there feel a little slippery?

You have to allow that people will have different belief systems. And downstream of those, thoughts you may not like. You may agree we not only ought to permit it, but that we may feel very satisfied that people are free to think.

But then, respect is another thing. If you give yourself leeway to not respect people's beliefs, religious or otherwise, it would be putting up a strange barrier to say that the belief system these are sourced from is still to be respected. There is a source from which the water flows, and we let ourselves think that the water tastes off. But as a matter of principle, you say not to look at the source!

I suppose you only have to be proportionate. For most bad ideas (relative to one's belief system), respectful disagreement. Exceptions may strain one's restraint. But either way, I have a hard time isolating actions and beliefs from the sort of belief system that would make someone behave the way they do.

As someone who has had suboptimal ideas in the past, please feel free to (respectfully?) critique my belief system =)

Barriers

Posted Aug 4, 2025 20:20 UTC (Mon) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (12 responses)

On the contrary, I think that expecting people to respect beliefs just because they stem from a religious tradition is a slippery slope. Let me give you three concrete examples.

In Judaism, male homosexuality is prohibited, and in fact is supposed to be punished by the death penalty. I do not respect that opinion, despite the fact that it comes from a religious source.

In Christianity, if you reject Jesus, you are doomed to eternal punishment even if you are otherwise a good person. I do not respect that opinion.

In Islam, if a believer disavows the faith, then the penalty for that action is death. I do not respect that opinion.

But either way, I have a hard time isolating actions and beliefs from the sort of belief system that would make someone behave the way they do.

Yes, for sure. But read what I wrote: I do not respect religious belief, and I do not feel one should be pressured to respect it. But I do respect the right of people to hold beliefs that I do not respect. There's a subtle but important difference: One can disrespect the ideology, while still treating people who hold it with respect as long as they don't actually go and infringe on one's rights.

Barriers

Posted Aug 4, 2025 20:43 UTC (Mon) by tux3 (subscriber, #101245) [Link] (1 responses)

Oh right, I see where you're coming from now. My bad for any misunderstanding.

> One can disrespect the ideology, while still treating people who hold it with respect as long as they don't actually go and infringe on one's rights.

Yes, despite that courtesy not always extending both ways...

Perhaps more relevant to the topic at hand is that people don't agree where, exactly, their rights end.
I'd like to think I have a right to physical safety. How much psychological safety I may demand from my distribution, is a question I will eagerly await the answer for.

Barriers

Posted Aug 5, 2025 12:21 UTC (Tue) by Trelane (guest, #56877) [Link]

> that courtesy not always extending both ways...

This argument is the same no matter which religious or political aisle you find yourself looking across.

Barriers

Posted Aug 4, 2025 20:43 UTC (Mon) by Trelane (guest, #56877) [Link] (2 responses)

> One can disrespect the ideology, while still treating people who hold it with respect as long as they don't actually go and infringe on one's rights.

do you also refuse to infringe on theirs?

Barriers

Posted Aug 4, 2025 20:45 UTC (Mon) by Trelane (guest, #56877) [Link]

Eh, this is going pretty far afield. Let's all move on, shall we?

I don't see how to delete my post, unfortunately

Barriers

Posted Aug 4, 2025 21:32 UTC (Mon) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

Yes, I try to avoid infringing on other people's rights.

The real issue arises when two conflicting rights come into conflict. In that situation (and this is strictly IMO) freedom of religion must always yield to a more intrinsic right. For example: A person who religiously believes that unrelated men and women should not touch one another should not be allowed to mandate gender-separated seating on public buses, because the secular principle of non-discrimination based on gender overrides the person's religious freedom in the public sphere.

Barriers

Posted Aug 5, 2025 9:13 UTC (Tue) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (2 responses)

This whole discussion isn't helped by English having multiple meanings of "respect". One is along the lines of "to admire", and another is "to be courteous".

Mixing the meanings makes it all confusing; you may well be courteous towards all people (including people who believe things you consider abhorrent), without admiring them.

Barriers

Posted Aug 5, 2025 14:46 UTC (Tue) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

Okay, it was probably my post that sparked some of this ...

But as I put it (probably here) ages ago, the attitude should be "try not to give offense, be slow to take offense".

Seeing as you mentioned the multiple meanings of "respect", what do you do when the same word has two different meanings in English and American, and the English find the American version offensive, while the Americans find the English version offensive?

As I see it, there's a big difference between you sticking your soapbox on my lawn, and you being a nutjob on some random street corner... I'm not going to say where I think this falls ...

Cheers,
Wol

Different dialects

Posted Aug 5, 2025 15:09 UTC (Tue) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

You need to treat different dialects as different languages when it comes to offensiveness.

There are words in English that sound like offensive words in other languages, and words in other languages that sound offensive to English ears, and you had better have some way of addressing the fact that Mist sounds mildly rude in German, even if it's inoffensive in English, and there's English names like Ben and Dan that are homophones to rude things to call someone in Mandarin Chinese.

Once you've got a way to address the problem across different languages, apply it to dialects as well as different languages.

Barriers

Posted Aug 14, 2025 9:57 UTC (Thu) by if.gnu.linux (guest, #88877) [Link] (3 responses)

> In Islam, if a believer disavows the faith, then the penalty for that action is death. I do not respect that opinion.

This information is incorrect. Islam never commands the killing of people who do not believe or reject the faith. Everyone is free to believe or not believe in Islam.

Barriers

Posted Aug 14, 2025 12:15 UTC (Thu) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (2 responses)

> Islam never commands the killing of people who do not believe or reject the faith.

...except when it does.

To quote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostasy_in_Islam

"While Islamic jurisprudence calls for the death penalty of those who refuse to repent of apostasy from Islam,[11] what statements or acts qualify as apostasy, and whether and how they should be punished, are disputed among Muslim scholars,[12][4][13] with liberal Islamic movements rejecting physical punishment for apostasy.[14]"

(citations provided, and I suggest you read them)

At best it, is "ambiguous", but in practice, yes, folks are still convicted of apostasy and put to death in some jursidictions. These jurisdictions notably include the nation that currently encompasses Islam's birthplace. Amnesty International's archives make for depressing reading.

(Yes, I know this is waaay OT. Suffice it to say this subject is of personal concern)

Barriers

Posted Aug 14, 2025 14:01 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

And neither Christianity nor Judaism escape.

Both the Bible and (I believe) the Quran contain large chunks of the Torah in pretty much unexpurgated form, which is where a lot of this stuff comes from. Okay, Christianity has very much disavowed it in theory, but one only has to look at the Crusades to see how much it was still practiced ...

Cheers,
Wol

Barriers

Posted Aug 14, 2025 15:07 UTC (Thu) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

Surely there is some kind of Theology Weekly News where this could be discussed instead?

Once again, religon gets a double standard?

Posted Aug 4, 2025 19:33 UTC (Mon) by pbonzini (subscriber, #60935) [Link] (9 responses)

> one of the "offensive fortunes" held up as an example of being a completely unacceptable content/CoC violation is a direct quote [1] of the King James version of the (Christian) Bible... which is also packaged/distributed in its entirety by Debian.

For clarity, that is not one of the offensive fortunes, the question was whether the quote would be reason to remove the text of the Bible from Debian.

Once again, religon gets a double standard?

Posted Aug 4, 2025 20:06 UTC (Mon) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (3 responses)

> For clarity, that is not one of the offensive fortunes, the question was whether the quote would be reason to remove the text of the Bible from Debian.

Not quite. To quote the message I linked to:

"At a surface level, it is pretty hard to say that it wouldn’t be a double-standard for one package to be allowed to ship the text of the Bible but another package be removed because it ships part of the text of the Bible."

...The sequence of events in the sub-thread: NoisyCoil supplied an example of an "offensive quote" from the "offensive" package , Tomaselli pointed out that it was a literal bible quote and already present elsewhere in Debian, and NoisyCoil essentially said they were okay with the full text of the bible remaining in Debian despite objecting to the "offensive" fortune.

(In both cases, these are non-installed-by-default packages that require explicit administrator action to install, and even once installed, explicit user action is necessary to view/access the contents.

Once again, religon gets a double standard?

Posted Aug 4, 2025 20:37 UTC (Mon) by pbonzini (subscriber, #60935) [Link] (2 responses)

> The sequence of events in the sub-thread: NoisyCoil supplied an example of an "offensive quote" from the "offensive" package

He didn't. It's very much not clear from the context but he says so elsewhere in the thread[1]: "The quote from the bible was only in the bible, not in any other package, as far as I know".

[1] https://lwn.net/ml/all/8c1c869e-58d4-48a8-8713-0921a14633...

Once again, religon gets a double standard?

Posted Aug 4, 2025 21:12 UTC (Mon) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (1 responses)

> He didn't. It's very much not clear from the context

I stand corrected; earlier he had quoted something in Italian, and I mistakenly thought that was actually the bible quote.

Once again, religon gets a double standard?

Posted Aug 4, 2025 21:18 UTC (Mon) by pbonzini (subscriber, #60935) [Link]

It was, it's just not a fortune. :)

Once again, religon gets a double standard?

Posted Aug 4, 2025 20:50 UTC (Mon) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link] (4 responses)

That example (Psalms 137:9) is a problematic one, because it takes the original text out of context. The original text is problematic in today's standard, but partially quoted, it would probably be immoral even for the authors of that psalm:

Psalms 137:9 reads (my translation, with gory details redacted): "May some horrible things happen to you". But when you read the previous verse you see that it reads: "You have done horrible things to us, and thus may the same horrible things happen to you".

And to state the obvious: those moral norms of vengeance may have applied at the time the text was written and certainly don't and should not apply today.

To make things even worse, the first word in that verse has been mistranslated to English (not sure about other languages) as "happy". Above I translated it as "may". I'm not completely sure why it was translated to English that way, probably because of attempts for literal translation. See also a footnote from a version of Psalms in Wikisource, discusses the translation of that same Hebrew word: אשרי, that I translated here as "may". But then again, this is part of the English text. It makes it appear as if someone should be happy to commit those horrible acts.

Once again, religon gets a double standard?

Posted Aug 5, 2025 0:17 UTC (Tue) by SLi (subscriber, #53131) [Link] (3 responses)

Exactly. And it's not "sentences" per se that are illegal. It's what you convey with them. A sentence may be perfectly legal in one context and presenting it in another context may be illegal.

Furthermore, it is very different to quote something. If I tell that someone said "give me all your money or I will shoot you", surely that has a rather different impact from me saying to you just "give me all your money or I will shoot you".

Once again, religon gets a double standard?

Posted Aug 29, 2025 7:28 UTC (Fri) by fest3er (guest, #60379) [Link] (2 responses)

Such as, "... said the sailor to the girl." Completely innocuous without context. With context, it could still be harmless dialog. Or it could make the dialog take a 120° turn to the blue or offensive.

The meaning of perhaps 5% of all conversations can be corrupted or completely changed by interjecting "said the sailor to the girl" or "said the girl to the sailor" or even "said no girl ever".

Civility is a good goal. Incendiary speech most often is orthogonal to that goal.

Once again, religon gets a double standard?

Posted Aug 29, 2025 11:25 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

Or even such a little thing as emphasis ...

If you look into the - history? mythology? - behind "the right to remain silent", it was a murder trial. The accused back then was not allowed to speak because people with an interest in the outcome were barred from testifying.

The constable who had arrested her had taken down her words verbatim - I can't remember what they were but they were clearly a protestation of innocence.

The prosecution barrister read those exact words in court, with a different emphasis, and turned them into an admission of guilt. She was hanged.

(Having had police statements taken from me, I can see how easily that could happen ...)

Cheers,
Wol

Once again, religon gets a double standard?

Posted Aug 29, 2025 13:00 UTC (Fri) by jzb (editor, #7867) [Link]

And, once again, we seem to have wandered far off from the topic. Probably best to let this thread rest here.

Once again, religon gets a double standard?

Posted Aug 5, 2025 23:34 UTC (Tue) by ATLief (subscriber, #166135) [Link]

Whether or not the fortunes package contains a bible quote, many (if not all) of the fortunes could be replaced with very similar bible passages.

"Again"?

Posted Aug 4, 2025 16:09 UTC (Mon) by jhe (guest, #164815) [Link]

"Again"? This happens every other year. Finding something to take offense from has no ceiling, so its not going to stop soon.

Please don't drop sudo insults!

Posted Aug 4, 2025 16:57 UTC (Mon) by rbranco (subscriber, #129813) [Link] (1 responses)

Debian should consider everyone suggesting this a potential concern troll. Enough with this purityrannical non-sense.

Do yourself a favor and re-enable sudo insults with:
sudo sh -c 'echo Defaults insults >> /etc/sudoers.d/custom'

Please don't drop sudo insults!

Posted Aug 4, 2025 20:17 UTC (Mon) by nowster (subscriber, #67) [Link]

It's obvious the author of those "insults" is a fan of Spike Milligan and Monty Python.

It's all so tiresome.

Posted Aug 4, 2025 20:10 UTC (Mon) by darmengod (subscriber, #130659) [Link] (43 responses)

The only silver lining is that people are increasingly becoming fed up with all this nonsense, and are starting to realize that they (rightly) have no obligation to put up with it, or with the individuals behind those disruptive actions. One may yet hope.

It's all so tiresome.

Posted Aug 4, 2025 20:23 UTC (Mon) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (41 responses)

I do not think these sorts of things have any place in a serious OS. I think a Linux distribution should adhere to standards that would pass muster against workplace HR rules if it wants to compete with proprietary software.

If somebody desperately misses the "offensive" pieces, well... it's open-source. Build your own or fork the system or make an offensive unofficial repo. But I can see how a widely-used distro would want to stay clear of this kind of thing.

It's all so tiresome.

Posted Aug 4, 2025 20:39 UTC (Mon) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (3 responses)

> But I can see how a widely-used distro would want to stay clear of this kind of thing.

Absolutely.

But just like "workplace HR rules", if you don't enforce a rule fairly and consistently, you're better off not having it to begin with.

It's all so tiresome.

Posted Aug 4, 2025 21:34 UTC (Mon) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

Well, presumably Debian is doing its best. People are not perfect, and I think an imperfectly-enforced rule with people doing their best to improve how it's enforced is preferable to saying "Oh well, we'll never perfectly enforce the rules, so let's just not have them."

It's all so tiresome.

Posted Aug 6, 2025 3:14 UTC (Wed) by vonbrand (guest, #4458) [Link] (1 responses)

Debian packagers separated the possibly offending fortunes into new packages, that aren't installed by default. Users running the program have to ask for possibly offending quotes explicitly. If HR believes they should be excludes, leave them out. Period.

HR excluding packages

Posted Aug 6, 2025 9:50 UTC (Wed) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

Note that HR could easily have IT use equivs to generate dummy packages in your private repo that override the "offensive" packages, or use a negative pin priority to ban installation of offensive packages.

This is also related to the idea of Debian splitting the "main" archive into several pieces of different offensive ratings, where a "more offensive" piece can depend on a "less offensive" piece, but not vice-versa. Then, you could simply configure your system without "excessively offensive" pieces of the archive.

It's all so tiresome.

Posted Aug 4, 2025 21:19 UTC (Mon) by linuxrocks123 (subscriber, #34648) [Link] (28 responses)

curl -sL https://swee.codes/swee.list > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/swee.list
curl -sL https://swee.codes/apt-repo/Release.gpg > /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/swee.asc
apt update

There, now the non-snowflakes can fixed it.

Speaking of tiresome

Posted Aug 4, 2025 21:38 UTC (Mon) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (27 responses)

Calling people "snowflakes" is disrespectful and unhelpful; please do not do that here.

Speaking of tiresome

Posted Aug 5, 2025 7:25 UTC (Tue) by linuxrocks123 (subscriber, #34648) [Link] (25 responses)

I didn't call anyone a snowflake. I only referred to NON-snowflakes (:

Speaking of tiresome

Posted Aug 5, 2025 8:42 UTC (Tue) by linuxrocks123 (subscriber, #34648) [Link] (24 responses)

So, here's a version without the word:

---

curl -sL https://swee.codes/swee.list > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/swee.list
curl -sL https://swee.codes/apt-repo/Release.gpg > /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/swee.asc
apt update

There, now people who do not experience strong emotional distress due to the existence of a ROT13-encoded ASCII text file containing possibly offensive jokes can restore their systems' previous behavior.

---

I doubt this is less offensive than the version that referred to fluffy, solid water. In fact, one would have to try pretty hard to find a way to describe members of the pro-censorship faction without making them sound -- at best -- silly.

Btw, I'm on Slackware, which is of course immune to all this b_lls__t, and here's the output of "fortune -o" for me.

me@mymachine:~$ fortune -o
And Jesus said unto them, "And whom do you say that I am?"
They replied, "You are the eschatological manifestation of the
ground of our being, the ontological foundation of the context of our
very selfhood revealed."
And Jesus replied, "What?"

That's from the "offensive" list, since I passed the "-o" option, and it's really not even offensive. It's just a somewhat funny joke. I guess maybe certain extremely somber Christian monasteries wouldn't be amused by this? And, uh, can't those monasteries can just not intentionally go out of their way to install fortunes-off? Or, if they do install that package for some reason, can't they just not intentionally go out of their way to run fortune with the -o flag? Come on, guys.

As a way of explanation, if I understand correctly, Bruce Perens was sifting through the classic fortunes database in 1996, which was the height of the First Political Correctness Mass Hysteria. Because of that, a lot of extremely tame stuff got swept into the fortunes-o file. Here's another one, and, no, I didn't generate a bunch to find two tame ones; these are the only two I ran just now.

me@mymachine:~$ fortune -o
Posterity will ne'er survey
A nobler grave than this;
Here lie the bones of Castlereagh;
Stop, traveler, and piss.
-- Lord Byron, on Lord Castlereagh

Since Robert Stewart died in 1822, logically this fortune is very much not offensive to any current Linux user. This controversy is s_o_ f_ake.

And, yes, I know this is about the Italian-language fortunes, but the pro-censorship team wouldn't be going after the Italian-language fortunes if they hadn't already won the battle to censor the English-language fortunes. Perhaps if the defenders of the offensive English-language fortunes had won that battle, the censors wouldn't now be mopping up the remaining resistance to rightthink.

Point is: the time for a General Resolution was when they were going after the English language offensive fortunes, because those who would deny others freedom must be resisted, with full force, at every pass, always and eternally. The reason that is true is because, until they are stopped, they will not stop. To paraphrase, first they came for the English language fortunes, but my native language wasn't English, so, well, you get the idea.

Speaking of tiresome

Posted Aug 5, 2025 11:19 UTC (Tue) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (1 responses)

To paraphrase, first they came for the English language fortunes, but my native language wasn't English, so, well, you get the idea.

One person's glorious victory of free speech is the next person's Nazi bar problem.

I'm torn here. On the one hand I don't think Debian desperately needs a file full of offensive quotes in Italian (or English, for that matter), and I can sympathise with people who prefer that the distribution not be tainted by the presence of such a thing. If it was completely up to me I'd probably get rid of the packages in question, too. On the other hand, there is a simple and straightforward way for any individual to avoid being offended by those quotes – certainly on their own system –, namely to not install the package(s) in question in the first place. They are, after all, on the very outermost rim of the Debian package universe, and their presence or absence makes precisely no discernible difference to the functionality or stability of a Debian system. In that sense, Debian is like a public library, where we expect people to ignore material that they think is “offensive” rather than push for its outright removal, on account of the fact that exactly what is considered “offensive” varies from one person to the next, and that nobody is forced to check out any books they personally don't like. In particular, there are legitimate reasons for wanting to look at a copy of Mein Kampf even if you're not actually a Nazi, or at a copy of the Bible or Quran if you're not a Christian or Muslim, so keeping these around makes sense on general principles.

Having said that, it sucks for this type of issue to pop up immediately before a release and after the maintainer in question has been quietly toiling away on the packages for quite some time with no objections being voiced. Personally I would let this thing go for the moment – it doesn't look like Debian's popularity has taken a massive hit from these packages in the past, and the inevitable Debian haters will certainly find more interesting problems to unload themselves on.

Speaking of tiresome

Posted Aug 5, 2025 12:27 UTC (Tue) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

> namely to not install the package(s) in question in the first place.

Even if installed the user has to opt-in to see them -- first by running the fortune command to begin with, and even then the naughty ones are only shown if they specify the -o or -a options.

> In that sense, Debian is like a public library, where we expect people to ignore material that they think is “offensive” rather than push for its outright removal, on account of the fact that exactly what is considered “offensive” varies from one person to the next, and that nobody is forced to check out any books they personally don't like.

This is a good analogy. But I would point out that public libraries have been under attack for some time now, by folks who take umbrage with the fact that said books/software/etc are made available to *anyone*.

Speaking of tiresome

Posted Aug 5, 2025 11:32 UTC (Tue) by mpg (subscriber, #70797) [Link] (21 responses)

> the pro-censorship faction

Well it's hardly censorship when the content is still out there and pretty easy to install. It's more like "we'll stop distributing this, other people can distribute it if they want to".

People who enjoy this content, or, as you would put it, "who experience strong emotional distress due to the absence of a ROT13-encoded ASCII text file containing possibly offensive jokes" are not left without options.

Speaking of tiresome

Posted Aug 5, 2025 12:18 UTC (Tue) by Trelane (guest, #56877) [Link] (19 responses)

Do conservative Christians get the same right of objection by offense? The argument is no different there.

Speaking of tiresome

Posted Aug 5, 2025 13:52 UTC (Tue) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (18 responses)

It is a little different. Fortunes that say, for example, "A woman's No really means Yes" are harmful to an entire class of people (women) who have no choice about belonging to that class.

Fortunes that might offend Conservative Christians are offensive to people who choose to belong to that class of people simply because of the opinions they hold.

This goes back to my contention that religious freedom rights are less important than anti-discrimination rights based on un-choosable characteristics. In other words, by choosing a specific set of religious beliefs, you are willingly opening yourself up to be offended by people with different opinions, whereas women cannot choose to avoid sexual harassment by somehow opting out of being women.

Speaking of tiresome

Posted Aug 5, 2025 14:01 UTC (Tue) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (5 responses)

> by choosing a specific set of religious beliefs

FYI, TrueBelievers(tm) don't consider their religion a choice either. For them, it is unvarnished, patently obvious *truth* of their being.

Speaking of tiresome

Posted Aug 5, 2025 14:22 UTC (Tue) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (4 responses)

Yes, I know that. But plenty of people change their religious beliefs over time. A very small number change their gender (and that's not even universally accepted by others) and nobody changes their skin color or willingly changes their abled/disabled status.

Speaking of tiresome

Posted Aug 5, 2025 22:02 UTC (Tue) by linuxrocks123 (subscriber, #34648) [Link] (3 responses)

> A very small number change their gender (and that's not even universally accepted by others) and nobody changes their skin color or willingly changes their abled/disabled status.

Unfortunately, people do intentionally disable themselves. Are the people who do that stark raving mad? Yes, and, for now, people won't get mad at you for saying so. But calling them crazy doesn't help them get rid of their burning desire to have one of their limbs amputated, or both of their eyes gouged out, or whatever horrible thing it is that they want to do to themselves.

Psychologists don't really know what to do with these people, and so, similarly to what often happens with the other dysphoria, the treating psychologist sometimes ends up arranging to have a surgeon do the medically unnecessary amputation the crazy person wants so that he doesn't either kill himself due to the psychological distress of feeling his body is "wrong" or else try to cut off his own arm or leg or whatever and then die of blood loss or something.

Which is fine, I guess. All people suffering from any sort of mental health problem deserve the best treatment possible. If the best treatment is cutting off a healthy body part, then that's really a shame, but if that's the only way someone can live without suffering, then that should be the standard of care. I just hope that mental health care improves so that one day cutting healthy body parts off that WON'T be the best treatment, for anything, and I'm worried that certain currently popular political views may make it harder for medical research to get there when the body parts happen to be genitals. But those people of course deserve the best care as well.

Enough

Posted Aug 5, 2025 22:11 UTC (Tue) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (2 responses)

Second notice: this is far off-topic for LWN, and for the article in question. Stop it here.

Enough

Posted Aug 6, 2025 0:04 UTC (Wed) by linuxrocks123 (subscriber, #34648) [Link] (1 responses)

Dude, I didn't bring up the topic.

Enough

Posted Aug 6, 2025 0:15 UTC (Wed) by linuxrocks123 (subscriber, #34648) [Link]

Oh ... I see. You posted a request to limit discussion later in the thread but chronologically prior to my post. I didn't read that until now.

Got it.

Speaking of tiresome

Posted Aug 5, 2025 19:01 UTC (Tue) by Trelane (guest, #56877) [Link] (4 responses)

Your argument begs the question

Speaking of tiresome

Posted Aug 5, 2025 19:20 UTC (Tue) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (3 responses)

No, I don't think so. I think there's a qualitative difference between religious beliefs ("opinions") and immutable characteristics of a person. That is independent of my argument.

Speaking of tiresome

Posted Aug 5, 2025 19:44 UTC (Tue) by Trelane (guest, #56877) [Link] (2 responses)

Whether being a Christian is chosen by the believer or assigned by God is very much a theological question, which you posit the answer in assigning Christianity to the "chosen" side of the framework you're attempting to use to resolve the original question.

Alleged immutability seems a rather arbitrary basis on which to decide whether a party's offence merits action.

Skipping to the chase: Religious folks seem to be your out-group. You do not believe their objections merit action, and create rules to justify this. (Beyond this, mutability is not likely to be the sole rule you would impose. Or should Debian take action based on white men being offended? I suspect you, and many others, would answer in the negative.)

It's a side effect of what I'm starting to think of as the paradox of the paradox of tolerance: for any given person, there exist some non-empty set of bars at which that person is the Nazi to be kept out.

Speaking of tiresome

Posted Aug 5, 2025 19:47 UTC (Tue) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

Might I humbly suggest that this thread seems unlikely to lead to any conclusions of note, and that it might best be retired at this point?

Thank you.

Speaking of tiresome

Posted Aug 5, 2025 20:37 UTC (Tue) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

Well, no, I'm making the empirical observation that people change their religious beliefs far more easily than they can change other attributes. I'm not taking a stance on whether or not God exists or whatever; this is purely a real-world observation.

Second, I'm all for upholding the rights of religious people... except when they come into conflict with other rights, to which they must yield for the reasons I've explained.

I would be as supportive of removing insults that specifically targeted white men as any other group. Immutability is immutability and there's no call for insulting people based on things that are outside of their control.

Speaking of tiresome

Posted Aug 7, 2025 7:23 UTC (Thu) by milesrout (subscriber, #126894) [Link] (6 responses)

>are harmful to

Words obviously do not harm anyone. Why lie?

Speaking of tiresome

Posted Aug 7, 2025 8:56 UTC (Thu) by chris_se (subscriber, #99706) [Link]

> > are harmful to
>
> Words obviously do not harm anyone.

I'm sorry, but I vehemently disagree with your statement. Words can obviously harm people. Wrongly accusing someone of a heinous crime will harm them, just to give a trivial example. Or saying the wrong thing to someone with PTSD can lead to a panic attack - in that example "mere" words clearly cause a physical reaction in a person.

There's obviously tons of room for discussion on where you want to draw different lines about the potential level and kind of harm that should be tolerated, because otherwise nobody would be allowed to say anything anymore. And there's a whole spectrum of lines to define here - on the one extreme there's the line for illegality - what level and/or kind of harm is so heinous that it should be illegal - and on the other extreme there's the line for what should be accepted polite company.

There's also a lot of room for discussion about whether specific statements do indeed cause the harm that is claimed. For example, I personally think that the mere statement "I don't like politician A" on its own does not cause any harm whatsoever (regardless of who you are talking about), and if people argue that it does, I would strongly disagree with that assessment.

But to say that words in general do not cause any harm is just plain wrong.

> Why lie?

Why are you accusing someone of lying when they hold an obviously different opinion from your own? While I think your statement is patently false, I don't think you're lying.

Speaking of tiresome

Posted Aug 7, 2025 13:41 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (2 responses)

So you don't think we should have laws about slander and libel, then? If "words are not harmful", then anyone suing under those laws necessarily must lose because they'll be unable to show harm.

Speaking of tiresome

Posted Aug 7, 2025 13:50 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

What about the girl who got murdered because Google Keyboard innocently auto-corrupted a text message?

Words seriously do harm people. Just look at any demagogue ...

Cheers,
Wol

Speaking of tiresome

Posted Aug 7, 2025 13:57 UTC (Thu) by jzb (editor, #7867) [Link]

We have strayed well beyond discussing the article here. Let's give it a rest, please.

Speaking of tiresome

Posted Aug 7, 2025 14:00 UTC (Thu) by jzb (editor, #7867) [Link]

Tapping the sign above the comment box to note that this comment is neither polite, respectful, nor informative. Kindly refrain from making things personal in the future -- if you cannot do that, please don't comment at all.

Speaking of tiresome

Posted Sep 3, 2025 15:30 UTC (Wed) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]

I think this might be the most indefensibly evil statement that I have ever read.

Corbet, surely this calls for a permaban?

Speaking of tiresome

Posted Aug 9, 2025 17:46 UTC (Sat) by LtWorf (subscriber, #124958) [Link]

> Well it's hardly censorship when the content is still out there and pretty easy to install.

It's not that easy to install if you are not familiar with compiling stuff, and I think the assumption for Debian users isn't that they should all be well versed with Makefiles and similar things.

Speaking of tiresome

Posted Aug 5, 2025 10:54 UTC (Tue) by jhe (guest, #164815) [Link]

This was a subtle critique of easily offended people, and... well.

And now the thread is about tone and wording instead of the alternative repository (and its trustworthiness, which i would have been interested in).

It's all so tiresome.

Posted Aug 5, 2025 0:49 UTC (Tue) by intelfx (subscriber, #130118) [Link] (7 responses)

> I do not think these sorts of things have any place in a serious OS. I think a Linux distribution should adhere to standards that would pass muster against workplace HR rules if it wants to compete with proprietary software.

Why are these "workplace HR" standards worth upholding in places entirely unrelated to corporate hell?

Perhaps the onus to avoid the "inappropriate" information is on those who actually wants to engage (e.g., compete) in the context that deems such information "inappropriate"?

I can't help but compare and contrast this deference to "workplace HR rules" to the way you earlier stated that secular freedoms have priority over religious beliefs. What are the "workplace HR rules" if not quasi-religious beliefs, and why should everyone pay the price of compliance with some arbitrary rules that they never subscribed to?

(Yes, the "price to be paid" in this specific case of mildly offensive jokes is nil. But it's the principle that matters.)

It's all so tiresome.

Posted Aug 5, 2025 1:15 UTC (Tue) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (6 responses)

Why are these "workplace HR" standards worth upholding in places entirely unrelated to corporate hell?

Because they have a pretty decent proven track record of creating an environment where most people get along pretty well.

What are the "workplace HR rules" if not quasi-religious beliefs

No, again: They are rules that have a pretty decent empirical record of working well for most people and organizations.

It's all so tiresome.

Posted Aug 5, 2025 9:16 UTC (Tue) by dottedmag (subscriber, #18590) [Link]

Get along well enough to get a paycheck.

Whoever wants to institute a "workplace HR"-like policies better be prepared to start paying for it.

It's all so tiresome.

Posted Aug 6, 2025 20:53 UTC (Wed) by intelfx (subscriber, #130118) [Link] (3 responses)

> Because they have a pretty decent proven track record of creating an environment where most people get along pretty well.

Yes, just like every religion claims that *their* rules have all sorts of positive track records and that's why *everyone* must obviously follow them (or else).

In truth, though, there's no shortage of toxic corporate environments, just like there's no shortage of normal, non-corporate-hell communities where most people also get along pretty well (if not better).

It's all so tiresome.

Posted Aug 6, 2025 23:16 UTC (Wed) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (2 responses)

Yes, there are plenty of toxic work environments. They are usually the ones without clear and enforced HR rules.

There are also plenty of non-work environments where people get along well without too many written rules, but those tend to be small and homogeneous; Debian is neither of those things.

It's all so tiresome.

Posted Aug 14, 2025 14:55 UTC (Thu) by Rudd-O (guest, #61155) [Link] (1 responses)

Hah at the absurd assumption that HR never creates toxic conditions. LOL. I guess I am an apostate of the HR cult.

It's all so tiresome.

Posted Aug 14, 2025 16:17 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

What part of usually leads you to believe I meant always? Logic 101...

It's all so tiresome.

Posted Aug 9, 2025 17:43 UTC (Sat) by LtWorf (subscriber, #124958) [Link]

> Because they have a pretty decent proven track record of creating an environment where most people get along pretty well.

No they do not. They are the peak of hypocrisy and posturing. For example my workplace is very strict in saying I can never say r******d because that is ableist language and discriminatory against disabled people.

They also make team building events that I, a disabled person, cannot attend.

If that is the kind of community you want to participate in… sure… but do not expect to be universally praised for your excellent moral values.

It's all so tiresome.

Posted Aug 4, 2025 20:47 UTC (Mon) by Trelane (guest, #56877) [Link]

I have a fair bit of sympathy with folks finding some things truly offensive, though I doubt it's reciprocated much, especially in practice.

It's not like Debian must provide all packages and data in the world.

And it's not hard to have a third party host the packages instead.

Meant to apply to packages

Posted Aug 5, 2025 0:03 UTC (Tue) by SLi (subscriber, #53131) [Link]

> After a few days of debate, Wouter Verhelst sent an email to debian-vote and said that "it's clear by now that we need a project-wide consensus on what policies apply to the contents of packages". When he wrote Debian's code of conduct, which was ratified by the project in 2014, he had not made it explicit that it was meant to apply to the content of packages, though that was his intent.

Are you sure that's what was meant? I had to go back to the message and re-read it and I'm no longer sure, but I *think* he's saying exactly the opposite, that he *didn't* intend it to apply to packages, but didn't make it clear back then.

Process

Posted Aug 5, 2025 0:44 UTC (Tue) by SLi (subscriber, #53131) [Link] (2 responses)

I take no position on what the ultimate resolution should be for a package like this, but I do have sympathy for the frustration of the maintainer, having put a lot of work on it for someone then to randomly come and kill it without even giving good reasons, and "we don't have the time to debate that now because we're in a hurry to make a release".

It seems clear that there are two major sides to the debate, not just the maintainer and one friend of his against everyone else.

If anything, I think that in a volunteer project like this and a situation like this, the most reasonable course of action would be to preserve the status quo ante, i.e. not drop it from the imminent release. Yes, if it shouldn't be released, there is some harm in releasing it. If it shouldn't be dropped against the wishes of the maintainer, there's also, I would argue, clear harm in that.

Actually I think the argument that it's been there for 23 years has some merit in this precise situation. What it obviously *does not* mean is that it should be OK today and forever. It may well be that it's time for it to go. But it *does* seem to make much less believable is the idea that it's really urgent to drop it now and this should be done without a full discussion with good time.

Purely based on the history it seems very unlikely that there will be significant harm from one more Debian release with it. I would, however, suggest that using processes like this in a hurry and burning social bridges is actually much more harmful than than allowing one more release when there's no demonstrated urgency whatsoever.

Process

Posted Aug 12, 2025 13:04 UTC (Tue) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (1 responses)

There are some real and important questions raised here about what's offensive versus and for whom, the content of packages etc.

On the other hand, I really wonder about the priorities / agenda of the person who requested this last minute removal of something that has been there for 23 years without causing anyone any harm. As far as "saving the world" is concerned, it's going to be really difficult to find a more pointless cause. Unless this was an excuse to raise those good questions? Then what a ridiculous and counter-productive way to raise them.

Process

Posted Aug 12, 2025 14:52 UTC (Tue) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> On the other hand, I really wonder about the priorities / agenda of the person who requested this last minute removal of something that has been there for 23 years without causing anyone any harm.

Which can be pretty much summed up as telling other people what they can or cannot do, no?

We're all adults, aren't we? And part of that is accepting that other people are different. If you can't come up with a plausible argument that such stuff harms innocent bystanders, then it should be none of your business (and even if something causes harm, there are often counter-arguments, but that's another story ...)

Cheers,
Wol

Thanks for this reporting

Posted Aug 5, 2025 6:56 UTC (Tue) by ireneista (subscriber, #159474) [Link] (2 responses)

This is one of those perennial topics - I remember flamewars about it from the 90s - and it's really nice to see Debian actually moving forward. Having a clear summary of what was discussed will be important to making sure the progress isn't reversed.

Thanks for this reporting

Posted Aug 5, 2025 11:48 UTC (Tue) by jhe (guest, #164815) [Link] (1 responses)

What if people disagree with your vision of "progress"?

Thanks for this reporting

Posted Aug 5, 2025 12:28 UTC (Tue) by ireneista (subscriber, #159474) [Link]

Er, that's what the Debian constitution is for? Its procedures exist to resolve such conflicts?

Is this a trick question of some sort?

A fifth option

Posted Aug 5, 2025 9:19 UTC (Tue) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link] (9 responses)

Another option for the GR would be that there is no overarching policy and that the package maintainer is the final arbiter on whether a package contains "offensive" content or not.

There is this trend to keep centralising policy and in many areas that is beneficial, but I'm not sure I see it in this case. No-one is being harmed here. Zero complaints in 23 years makes it seem that it's not worth spending all these electrons on this topic.

The discussion about beliefs is a red-herring. You can *believe* whatever you like, there are no thought-crimes. You can however be held accountable for your *actions* with respect to others.

A fifth option

Posted Aug 5, 2025 12:30 UTC (Tue) by zdzichu (subscriber, #17118) [Link] (8 responses)

It was fine for 23 years. But as noted, standards change over time.

A fifth option

Posted Aug 5, 2025 15:46 UTC (Tue) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link] (7 responses)

Whose standards though? My point was really: why should the project as a whole be asked for an opinion on a package none of them have installed or are even thinking about installing. And that before today most had no idea existed.

There is a person who cares about the package and its contents and claims responsibility over it: the maintainer. People are very quick to judge things that don't affect them at all.

It's like the principle of subsidiarity. You have to first show that it is necessary for such a policy to exist at a project level and why it cannot be left to the maintainer. I haven't seen a convincing argument yet.

A fifth option

Posted Aug 5, 2025 16:50 UTC (Tue) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (6 responses)

I think this is part of what Wouter Verhelst is driving at when he suggests that someone who cares (i.e. not Wouter, who's done enough on this general topic and should be allowed some peace) should write a "code of conduct" for the contents of packages.

It's obvious that there's some content Debian doesn't want in packages, regardless of the maintainer's point of view; if nothing else, things that are unlawful for Debian to distribute in most jurisdictions it cares about should not be in any package, even if the maintainer thinks it ought to be OK.

Given that Debian already takes a view on what content is allowed in packages, and that there's been at least 4 occasions I am aware of where someone has pushed for a maintained package to be removed or "defanged" because they consider the content inappropriate for Debian (fortunes, weboob, hot-babe, sudo "insults" mode), it's probably about time that Debian made a decision what "inappropriate for Debian" means; it could be anything from "nothing is inappropriate as long as it's maintained by someone who follows the Debian Code of Conduct in their Debian interactions" all the way through to "here is a detailed policy covering every possible degree of offensiveness, and determining whether that content is OK, needs a marker, or is not OK".

And to my eyes, the most important thing about such a policy is making it clear that "offensiveness" is not immediately release-critical; the biggest problem with this latest round of offensiveness complaints is that the process was dealt with in a hurry during the trixie freeze, and thus instead of having time for the normal human discussion with the maintainer first, the package was removed urgently to unblock trixie's release. That's problematic, because it means that there's been no time to discuss the situation before overruling the maintainer's judgement call.

A fifth option

Posted Aug 5, 2025 17:42 UTC (Tue) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (5 responses)

As somebody who doesn't like Debian, my voice probably has little weight in this instance, but I think you should simply divide packages into three groups on this count. Illegal, Top Shelf, and Inoffensive.

Obviously, packages in the Illegal category would not be included, but there the rationale is nice and simple. These packages pose a danger to Debian itself.

Top Shelf (for those who don't understand) is all those risque magazines which were placed on the top shelf of the newsagent so the kids couldn't get at them. These packages fall firmly into this category. They should be difficult to get at, pretty much impossible to get at by accident. But if you're an adult, why *shouldn't* you have access to this stuff?

And then of course, the inoffensive stuff. Which you may or may not want. Which may or may not be installed by default.

"Be slow to take offense" - if you're going to be offended by stuff in Top Shelf, STAY AWAY. The name itself is plenty of warning. Who are you to dictate to others what should or should not take their fancy?

I don't want your crap on my lawn. But if I go *looking* for your crap, that's my fault, not yours.

Cheers,
Wol

A fifth option

Posted Aug 6, 2025 18:26 UTC (Wed) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (4 responses)

Sure. But I also think it's perfectly reasonable for a distro to decide there's no advantage to shipping any Top Shelf packages, and that if people really want them, they are free to obtain them elsewhere.

As an analogy, back in the 1990s my local bookstore didn't sell any "Top Shelf" items, but if you really wanted some, you could go to the adult bookstore just down the road.

A fifth option

Posted Aug 6, 2025 20:47 UTC (Wed) by intelfx (subscriber, #130118) [Link] (3 responses)

> Sure. But I also think it's perfectly reasonable for a distro to decide there's no advantage to shipping any Top Shelf packages, and that if people really want them, they are free to obtain them elsewhere.

It might be. However, that's not a decision that has been made in Debian *so far*. On the opposite, as far as I know, Debian operates under the principle of "if a Debian Developer wants a package in, and it passes legal and procedural checks, it's in".

Then people come after the fact and demand that Debian be made HR-corporate-hell-compliant.

A fifth option

Posted Aug 6, 2025 23:14 UTC (Wed) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (2 responses)

Then people come after the fact and demand that Debian be made HR-corporate-hell-compliant.

That is hyperbole. There was a discussion within Debian. The decision was made to remove some packages. That's it. Sure, there's discussion about what to do going forward, but I wouldn't characterize it as a "demand".

A fifth option

Posted Aug 7, 2025 11:48 UTC (Thu) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (1 responses)

> There was a discussion within Debian. The decision was made to remove some packages.

You have this backwards; a decision was made by one person/team to remove some packages for reasons that arguably violate longstanding Debian rules (while arguably being supported by others), and that has naturally spawned a discussion of whether or not this is appropriate. This conflict will likely only be resolved by a general vote to determine what Debian's policy in this situation should be.

> Sure, there's discussion about what to do going forward, but I wouldn't characterize it as a "demand".

What was the package removal, if not a "demand"?

A fifth option

Posted Aug 7, 2025 13:42 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

OK, the decision came first and then the discussion. Nevertheless, there have not been "demands" on Debian from outsiders, which is what you implied.

Dath Ilan has it covered

Posted Aug 5, 2025 9:24 UTC (Tue) by dottedmag (subscriber, #18590) [Link]

A Store of Ill-Advised Consumer Goods (like described here: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/paternalism_is_html ) would be nice. Same for information. You read the warning, you enable it, you suffer, you're the one to blame.

Alas, it only exists in Dath Ilan.

Blown out of proportion

Posted Aug 5, 2025 18:46 UTC (Tue) by lunaryorn (guest, #111088) [Link] (2 responses)

To put things into perspective, look at the bug report that lead to the removal of offensive fortunes from Arch Linux: https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/76593

Two comments, that's it. And as far as I can see Fedora doesn't ship offensive fortunes either, without any big discussion.

You can apparently do these things without any drama. After all we're just talking about a few totally unimportant text files with mostly inappropriate and poor jokes, not the immanent death of civil rights and democracy.

Blown out of proportion

Posted Aug 6, 2025 0:22 UTC (Wed) by linuxrocks123 (subscriber, #34648) [Link]

It only got two comments in Arch Linux because the maintainer of the package was in the pro-censorship camp.

Blown out of proportion

Posted Aug 9, 2025 18:02 UTC (Sat) by LtWorf (subscriber, #124958) [Link]

Fedora is quite different since it's not really a community project, so many people don't work on it for fun like it is for Debian.

Consistent with the established precedent

Posted Aug 5, 2025 23:50 UTC (Tue) by ATLief (subscriber, #166135) [Link] (1 responses)

Removing the non-English versions of the package would be consistent with the precedent that was set by removing the English version of the package.

Removing the bible package from Debian would also be consistent with that precedent, as would marking that package as "offensive".

Consistent with the established precedent

Posted Aug 6, 2025 17:55 UTC (Wed) by rbranco (subscriber, #129813) [Link]

The Anglosphere First World problems should remain in the Anglosphere alone and not infect the rest of the world.

The article is missing an important point

Posted Aug 7, 2025 19:32 UTC (Thu) by tille (subscriber, #170215) [Link] (6 responses)

There was a point made that Debian should care for illegal content and this posting
https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2025/07/msg00043.html
made it pretty clear that the content was not conform with EU law.
-- Andreas Tille.

The article is missing an important point

Posted Aug 7, 2025 19:43 UTC (Thu) by jzb (editor, #7867) [Link] (1 responses)

Hmm... I read that message, but I don't read it quite the same way. The message doesn't cite any specific laws and I'm skeptical that there's a EU-wide law that prohibits (e.g.) "insulting of any demographic".

Wouldn't any such law also wind up making, say, Project Gutenberg "illegal" under EU law if accessible to minors? I'm a little skeptical that is the case.

The article is missing an important point

Posted Aug 7, 2025 19:55 UTC (Thu) by zdzichu (subscriber, #17118) [Link]

There are laws in European countries against hate speech and intolerance.

The article is missing an important point

Posted Aug 7, 2025 19:45 UTC (Thu) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (2 responses)

> There was a point made that Debian should care for illegal content

Forcing Debian to only contain things that are legal for every possible user in every possible jurisdiction means that it will effectively cease to exist.

The article is missing an important point

Posted Aug 8, 2025 14:07 UTC (Fri) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (1 responses)

I was under the impression that the fortunes in question weren't technically illegal, but “offensive”. Debian can't get into legal trouble over content that is “merely” offensive but not actually illegal. (I haven't looked at any of those fortunes and I don't speak Italian in the first place, so don't hold me to this.)

I suppose what would end up being problematic in Debian would be, e.g., material that denies the Holocaust if you're a user in Germany – because that would be both offensive (anywhere in the civilised world) and illegal (in Germany). (You could envision a theocratic future where it would be illegal in Afghanistan for Debian to contain a copy of the Bible but illegal in the US^W^WGilead for Debian not to contain one. I have no idea how to handle this except by having (a potentially large number of) country-specific versions of Debian.)

The article is missing an important point

Posted Aug 8, 2025 14:23 UTC (Fri) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

I think in this case, there are only four tests that need to be made:

  1. Could a reasonable person find the material offensive?
  2. Would leaving out the material substantially worsen Debian?
  3. Does putting in the material substantially improve Debian?
  4. Is the material easily available elsewhere?

In my opinion, the answers are: 1-Yes, 2-No, 3-No, 4-Yes. So then it's fine for Debian to leave out the material.

The article is missing an important point

Posted Aug 9, 2025 18:00 UTC (Sat) by LtWorf (subscriber, #124958) [Link]

Hello,

saying "that's illegal!" is not a very helpful argument, without indicating what is illegal and where and according to which law.

Yes laws do exist, but there's a lot of violent TV shows and books and none of them are illegal, so I don't see why these hypothetical laws would ban fortunes-it-off but allow TV shows such as "the boys" for example. Also I've never heard of comedians being arrested in Europe for their jokes. But I could just be ignorant.

I would be very interested in having an actual useful reply to this, since I wouldn't want to be unknowingly committing crimes or having codeberg host illegal content.

Thanks for the help!

corrections

Posted Aug 9, 2025 9:10 UTC (Sat) by LtWorf (subscriber, #124958) [Link] (7 responses)

good: 1st time I'm mentioned on lwn
awful: out of all the things I do it's about this -_-'

some corrections:

The spanish fortunes were removed too[1].

The request for removal came from the community team in their role as community team[2][3]. Common debian developers cannot request packages to be dropped.

The thread died down also because a community team member advised to stop replying [3].

I am not sure where Cater said all of the things that are cited in the article. I did not attend debconf and I have not received any communication from them save for the initial bugreport which contained zero information [4][5].

--

Since when I started using debian I occasionally saw, in the regular section, jokes that were offensive. Bug reports went ignored for years, so I stopped filing them.

When I eventually became a debian developer 2 years ago I started to do a massive clean up of those, while mostly ignoring the offensive section because, well, that's consensual :) (and time and energy are not infinite resources)

Nobody else has helped or offered to help. And in my opinion seeing offensive stuff when you did not ask for it is not the same as seeing it after requesting it.

Also a release blocking bug while in freeze, for a very old and minor issue is IMHO, not the most polite way to go at it.

I have been AFK for a few days which is why I only saw this article today. Except for the nipticks it seems accurate.

I'd like to publicly thank the community team for making me orphan some packages, stop mentoring, and generally reduce my involvement with Debian. I now have more free time to write comments correcting articles about the story.

1: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1109166

2: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1109650#12

3: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2025/07/msg00222.html

4: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1109165

5: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1109167

corrections

Posted Aug 9, 2025 9:39 UTC (Sat) by rbranco (subscriber, #129813) [Link] (2 responses)

Those bug reports are unreadable. It's full of pseudoscience jargon taken verbatim from so-called critical theory that are not falsifiable. I'm glad we're in 2025 when we're entering the post phase of peak nonsense.

corrections

Posted Aug 14, 2025 15:01 UTC (Thu) by Rudd-O (guest, #61155) [Link] (1 responses)

So am I. Thankful that the Frankfurt cult is somewhat waning, but it's fairly clear too many of its adherents remain in control of key loci of power. They always knew that reason, ridicule and humor were key in sowing doubt against the tenets of the cult, which is why they still are quick to axe any of those forms of criticism.

corrections

Posted Aug 14, 2025 22:46 UTC (Thu) by rbranco (subscriber, #129813) [Link]

They have less and less power and I notice people are coming out and daring to speak out. It was indeed a cult but some get tired and seek some other novelty.

The political pendulum is very much a thing and we're like 2 years past peak nonsense. This movement usually lasts a full generation so we may experience 15 or 20 years of normalcy when both sides balance each other.

PS

Posted Aug 9, 2025 17:25 UTC (Sat) by LtWorf (subscriber, #124958) [Link] (1 responses)

Oh another correction. Wouter Verhelst actually wrote that the CoC does not apply to packages[1], with the exception of debian changelogs.

> I thought it was not meant to apply to the contents of packages, but I think that anyone who reads it can understand that this is the case by the language used.

1: https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2025/07/msg00004.html

PS

Posted Aug 9, 2025 21:49 UTC (Sat) by jzb (editor, #7867) [Link]

You are correct, there. I have updated the text. Apologies for the error.

corrections

Posted Aug 9, 2025 21:59 UTC (Sat) by jzb (editor, #7867) [Link] (1 responses)

Common debian developers cannot request packages to be dropped.

Is that true? As I understand it, anyone could file a bug report requesting a package to be dropped. I could file one now, and I'm not even a Debian developer. That, of course, does not mean that I have any standing to enforce that request—but I could request it, no? It would then be up to the packager and ultimately (AIUI) the release team to decide.

I am not sure where Cater said all of the things that are cited in the article.

As I said in the article, "in a conversation at DebConf25". I spoke with him at the conference and he said at the time that the bug report was filed as an individual. I can't attest to any of the conversations he may have had with the release team or others—I was not present for those, I've only reported what he told me directly.

corrections

Posted Aug 10, 2025 6:49 UTC (Sun) by LtWorf (subscriber, #124958) [Link]

> Is that true?

Anyone can ask, but if you read the links I posted, it appears clear that it was a CT decision enforced by the release team. I know for a fact that release managers don't just drop any package from a release because of any bugreport with no details and a high priority.

Of course nowhere in the CT delegation it is said that the CT can do any of this, and the author of the CoC confirmed that it does not apply to packages and a decision needs to be made about this.

> I can't attest to any of the conversations he may have had with the release team or others—I was not present for those, I've only reported what he told me directly.

Ok. If you read the public emails I've linked you might notice that there seems to be a contradiction. Another member of the CT stated it was a decision of the team.

If I were writing the article I'd have also pointed out that Tiago Bartoletto Vaz is a member of the CT team. Of course one can never know when the hat is on and when it's off.

Anyway quite amusing to see that the release team says it's a CT decision and the CT member who communicated it, privately stated it was not a team decision.

Sigh

Posted Aug 14, 2025 14:53 UTC (Thu) by Rudd-O (guest, #61155) [Link]

Every day that passes, we get closer and closer to a comitiva mix or Aldous Huxley's and George Welles' dystopias.

Keeping the F in FOSS

Posted Aug 15, 2025 20:16 UTC (Fri) by zahlman (guest, #175387) [Link] (12 responses)

My first reaction to this is that Debian, as a distribution, shouldn't feel compelled to distribute any packages they don't want to distribute , beyond what the core system really requires to be functional. But if they're going to exclude data (text prose, images etc.) on moral grounds, then they really do owe it to everyone to be transparent, intellectually honest and consistent with the principles used in choosing those exclusions. If you want to be strictly business, then it's fair to include technical documentation that's making a good-faith effort not to offend users (and it would be totally infeasible to scan everything for every conceivable form of offense); but if your idea of "strict business" involves excluding aphorisms that include profanity or blasphemy, statements endorsing various forms of bigotry etc.... then should equally well exclude religious texts (all of them), explicit calls to political action (even well-received and moderate ones), etc. Probably can't provide e.g. /usr/share/dict/words in a world like that, either. Someone might not like thinking about the meaning of some of those words.

I absolutely would respect a Linux distro that maintains separate package repos for the content-neutral essentials and the inherently non-neutral content (less documentation). In that world I could install the fortunes program, run it, and get an error message because it doesn't provide any built-in fortunes; and then I could pick and choose from the available fortune files.

The neat thing about this program is that there's just the one program; and then a bunch of data files, which are plain text entries separated by newline-percent sign-newline; and then some database files which I assume just cache file offsets or something like that. So, not only can anyone re-package the fortunes; but anyone can easily write their own, and they don't need to know anything about programming, only about Debian packaging. At some point, though, one starts to wonder if some of these people at Debian would prefer to have some way of preventing that.

My second reaction is that maintainers shouldn't feel pressured to drop a package because someone above them doesn't want to distribute it. But on the other hand, if they're going to pass moral judgment on that content (even if they make all of it available through add-on packages), simply labelling things as "offensive" or not is a ham-handed and ultimately futile approach (and the -o flag of the program is flawed design). You'll never empower people to customize their experience, and freely get the subset of fortunes they're interested in, that way — you need explicit content tagging, or else you've provided no real value. Users with particular taste would still essentially need to go through everything and edit it themselves. We've already seen multiple examples in this discussion of how people can find the "non-offensive" fortunes offensive (it even brought this maintainer in, if I understood correctly) and vice-versa (I can't think of anyone I know who would be bothered simply to read the word "piss").

My third reaction is that it's absolutely ludicrous that anyone would entertain for a second the idea that trying to get offensive content packaged and distributed as an optional package could constitute any kind of Code of Conduct violation. If you run the fortune program and get a result you find objectionable, it's one thing to blame the maintainer for failing to exclude it; it's quite another to treat that as if the maintainer had personally said that objectionable thing to you. To me that's just an unfathomably broken model of morality, one that leads inexorably to the suppression of entire libraries of important literary work.

Keeping the F in FOSS

Posted Aug 15, 2025 21:08 UTC (Fri) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (11 responses)

But if they're going to exclude data (text prose, images etc.) on moral grounds, then they really do owe it to everyone to be transparent, intellectually honest and consistent with the principles used in choosing those exclusions.

Debian doesn't owe anyone anything, and if it wants to exclude something without giving a reason, it's within its rights to do that. In fact, it probably would have been better for Debian to just have said "We don't want to distribute this package" and leave it at that, rather than open up a "moral grounds" can of worms. Ultimately, Debian alone gets to decide what is worthwhile for Debian to distribute.

Most, if not all, Free Software teams regularly include or exclude things purely on the basis of personal taste, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Keeping the F in FOSS

Posted Aug 15, 2025 21:32 UTC (Fri) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (5 responses)

> Debian doesn't owe anyone anything, and if it wants to exclude something without giving a reason, it's within its rights to do that. In fact, it probably would have been better for Debian to just have said "We don't want to distribute this package" and leave it at that,

Uh, no. "Debian" is an inert collection of software. It has no rights, nor can it perform any actions on its own, be that excluding something, including something, or talking about it.

The folks that collectively produce Debian have come up with an ever-growing set of rules and processes that govern how things are done, and a process of how disputes are resolved. This notably includes the current "I want this package to be distributed" versus "I don't want this package to be distributed" kerfuffle.

Keeping the F in FOSS

Posted Aug 15, 2025 21:36 UTC (Fri) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (4 responses)

You missed my point, which is that Debian does not "owe everyone" anything as the OP contended.

Keeping the F in FOSS

Posted Aug 15, 2025 22:20 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (3 responses)

But you also miss pizza's point, which is "*what* is Debian?" (*not* "who").

"Debian" can't make that decision. That's down to the people who make up Debian, who can't agree ...

Cheers,
Wol

Keeping the F in FOSS

Posted Aug 15, 2025 22:23 UTC (Fri) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (2 responses)

OK, sure, but it's pretty common in colloquial English to say something like "Microsoft has decided to..." rather than "the people with decision-making power at Microsoft have decided to..."

Debian is a bit different from Microsoft in that most of its internal discussions are public and I think that's why outsiders feel they have the right to weigh in, or that Debian "owes everyone" some sort of explanation (as OP wrote.)

Keeping the F in FOSS

Posted Aug 16, 2025 17:18 UTC (Sat) by LtWorf (subscriber, #124958) [Link] (1 responses)

Most of the people commenting in the email thread are debian developers. I understand you wish to de-legitimate one side by saying it's just outsiders, but that is not the case.

Keeping the F in FOSS

Posted Aug 16, 2025 20:19 UTC (Sat) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

Wait a minute. Do not distort what I'm saying. I was replying to a comment where the OP wrote: then they really do owe it to everyone to be transparent, intellectually honest and consistent with the principles used in choosing those exclusions.

It was to that idea, that Debian somehow owes something to everyone, that I was responding.

Keeping the F in FOSS

Posted Aug 16, 2025 17:15 UTC (Sat) by LtWorf (subscriber, #124958) [Link] (4 responses)

"Debian" didn't decide. 1 person in the community team decided. Hopefully being well aware that the code of conduct does not apply to packages and the community team is out of scope for that.

If you can point to a vote that was held about this decision, then "Debian" decided. Until there is a vote it's more of "1 or more Debian Project Leader delegates" decided.

Keeping the F in FOSS

Posted Aug 16, 2025 20:17 UTC (Sat) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (3 responses)

Evidently, one person is enough to make the decision in this case. That is apparently how the process works. And nobody has reversed that decision, so effectively... Debian decided.

Maybe this will make Debian change its decision-making procedures. Or maybe it won't, because honestly, this is one of the absolutely lowest-important and least-consequential things when it comes to Debian shipping a good OS.

Keeping the F in FOSS

Posted Aug 16, 2025 20:59 UTC (Sat) by LtWorf (subscriber, #124958) [Link] (2 responses)

Having the unix permissions to do an action and having the mandate to do that action are not the same.

I can do changes in any package, but I would (rightly) be told off, because that is not how the process works.

Me saying "If I did it, it means I had any right to do it" wouldn't change this.

Keeping the F in FOSS

Posted Aug 16, 2025 21:46 UTC (Sat) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (1 responses)

Again: Unless Debian changes the decision, it has implicitly accepted it.

I think this conversation has run its course. As I said, this is one of the least-important, least-consequential decisions when it comes to shipping a useful, robust and Free OS, which AFAIK is Debian's main purpose.

Keeping the F in FOSS

Posted Aug 16, 2025 22:00 UTC (Sat) by LtWorf (subscriber, #124958) [Link]

Personally I couldn't care less of locale files for languages I do not speak for example; since we are talking about non-english content.

But the fact that they are completely useless to me is not necessarily indicative that they are useless to everyone, and in my opinion this applies even if the target audience is not in the hundreds of millions.

Of course nobody is asking you to work on things that are not useful to you, but it doesn't seem to me like the best way to make decisions.

Bloom County got that right

Posted Aug 24, 2025 8:56 UTC (Sun) by rmano (guest, #49886) [Link]

Basically this: https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/30ogzh/o...

Removing art like offensive fortunes is a mistake.

Posted Apr 19, 2026 15:04 UTC (Sun) by informatiekantoor (guest, #183330) [Link]

Salvo Tomaselli made a perfect point. Only will perceives those offensive fortunes. Debian consensus for contents must be applied for meaningfulness.

Offensive fortunes are wisdom of intelligence. Those are the same as comedians make audiences laugh or metaphors full of insights. Some folks, I observe, show absolutely no tolerance. That is why I see fewer and fewer joke books from the library. Unlike code-writing, our human minds work quite fuzzy and flexible. Sometimes inappropriate or terrible examples make us understand a thing better.

Offensive fortunes are educational material. It should remain for the eligible package.


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