Debian and the hot babe problem [LWN.net]

Debian and the hot babe problem

Posted Dec 3, 2004 2:45 UTC (Fri) by dkite (guest, #4577)
Parent article: Debian and the hot babe problem

One obvious objection is that in some jurisdictions, someone running this
application on their desktop could cause their employer to be sued for
creating a hostile work environment.

Seriously.

Ubuntu may want to consider this in their choices of images as well.

Yes it is strange, and doesn't make sense, but true.

Derek

to post comments

Ubuntu's choice of images

Posted Dec 3, 2004 11:52 UTC (Fri) by cbetan (guest, #10157) [Link] (2 responses)

If you keep an 'offensive image' on your desktop for a full month, then I conclude that it was not 'accidentally there', and fairly enough your employer can be sued in those jurisdictions. If the image was there by accident after a default install, it can be easily corrected within one minute. No employer can be sued for that.

It is not Ubuntu's fault: it is the user's choice to disable the images or not.

What do I care about some jurisdictions in the USA? I don't live there, Ubuntu's HQ is not there, and I have quite a lot of fun with Ubuntu's creativity on their image choices. However I respect your opinion, the solution would not be to make Ubuntu 'consider their choices of images'.

Remember: there is a World 'out there' beyond USA borders.

Ubuntu's choice of images

Posted Dec 3, 2004 12:33 UTC (Fri) by piman (guest, #8957) [Link] (1 responses)

But Debian *is* located in the US, insofar as the main FTP server is located there and Debian's non-profit umbrella is incorporated there.

It's one thing to say "the US has stupid laws". It's another thing to say "let's ignore the US's stupid laws, even though SPI, Red Hat, Novell, IBM, etc, are based there." The first is the start of a solution; the latter is a quick way to discourage free software use in the US.

Location of Debian

Posted Dec 9, 2004 18:59 UTC (Thu) by etbe (subscriber, #17516) [Link]

Technically it would not be difficult to setup a master server for a
country that contains packages that comply with the laws and customs of
that country. So a Debian server in Iran or China could have a much
smaller list of packages, and a Debian server in the Netherlands could
have even more packages than the server in the US. This has already been
suggested, but some people don't like that idea, they want the US and
Netherlands repositories for Debian to contain the same set of packages
that are considered suitable for an Iranian mirror.

As for SPI incorporation, this problem doesn't seem to apply to
multi-national corporations. I can think of a couple of examples (which
I won't name due to legal reasons) of subsidiaries of US companies in
other countries performing actions that would almost certainly result in
them being successfully sued if the parent company in the US did the same
things. I doubt that Debian in the Netherlands could get SPI in trouble
any more than a subsidiary of a US corporation can get the parent company
in trouble.

A baseless law suit can kill a small company if the attacker has a
significantly larger legal budget than the victim. If Debian could be
destroyed in such a manner then it's quite likely that someone would have
tried it already. However due to it all being free software Debian is
immune to such attacks. The code will always remain free and the
developers will always want to work on it so no matter what happens
Debian will remain.