Bug of feature? [LWN.net]

Bug of feature?

Posted Jun 30, 2026 15:01 UTC (Tue) by evgeny (subscriber, #774)
In reply to: Bug of feature? by pizza
Parent article: Xsnow "protestware" in Debian

> Taking any other position than "software should do what its authors want" is effectively dictating what software folks can or can't write (and/or redistribute)

I beg your pardon. First, "write" and "distribute" are very different things. BTW, the Free Software/Open Source licensing terms are largely about the latter. And I fully agree that it's the right of any person to write any kind of software they like.

But you seem to miss my point: it is the *hidden* property of this feature that raises the red flag for me. I want to believe that Debian makes every effort to fix security holes as quickly as possible. And I wish to believe that, similarly, Debian makes every possible effort to ensure that I (or any other user) am not adversely affected by the political opinions of an upstream author.

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Bug of feature?

Posted Jun 30, 2026 15:10 UTC (Tue) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

> But you seem to miss my point: it is the *hidden* property of this feature that raises the red flag for me.

Most software features are "hidden".

> And I wish to believe that, similarly, Debian makes every possible effort to ensure that I (or any other user) am not adversely affected by the political opinions of an upstream author.

You may wish to believe this, but has it *ever* been the case?

...Except insofar as the importance of "free software" (and the DFSG) is a political opinion, making Debian itself an exclusionary political statement.