XPost: linux.debian.devel

Hello,

I think I need some clarification on the scope of the role of the
community team.

I am talking about bugs #1109165 and #1109167

PREMISE
=======

Let me start by saying that fortunes-it-off has existed since 2003 and
there have been 0 complaints from offended people in these 22 years.

It's not pulled as a dependency by anything and even if installed, the
fortune package won't display that content unless the "-o" switch is
passed.

I think it's fair to assume that nobody has ever seen offensive
content from that package by mistake.

EXTRACT FROM CHANGELOG
======================

2004: fortunes 1.99 uploaded to debian
2008: typo fixed
2015: move some offensive quotes in the -off package
2019: typo fixed
2023: typo fixed

CURRENT SITUATION
=================

In 2023 I became maintainer of the package, set up a new upstream
project (since the original website was gone) and I have spent a lot
of hours making it more current.

I did that by removing tens of sexist, homophobic and racist jokes
that were not in the offensive section, and had been there at least
since 2004.

The ones that were just offensive but not funny I removed, those that
had some humoristic value I kept in the offensive section. I did
remove plenty of stuff from the offensive section.

Now, in 2025, after 2 years of me working on this package, and while
in freeze, the community team wants to remove the offensive section of
the fortunes.

When I asked for help to review actually offensive content, both in
the regular and in the offensive section, I got no reply other than a
vaguely threatening email from the release team.

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.


QUESTIONS
=========

1. Can the community team force me to remove a package, even though I
did not violate the COC and they did not receive any complaints?

2. Can they set important priority on bugs while in freeze, about
something that has existed for the past 22 years? What's the sudden
urgency?

3. Can they say something is offensive even without an actual person
being offended?

4. Are they qualified to decide what is offensive and what is not
offensive in languages I can only presume they don't speak?

5. How is wasting my time helping (remember that I've been using my
time to get rid of offensive content that has been there for 2
decades)?

6. Can people who are offended by the existence of systemd request to
drop it from debian?

7. Can someone who is not offended by something ask to drop it because
it could offend some other person (even if this other person might not
exist)?

Best

--
Salvo Tomaselli

"Io non mi sento obbligato a credere che lo stesso Dio che ci ha dotato di senso, ragione ed intelletto intendesse che noi ne facessimo a meno."
-- Galileo Galilei

https://ltworf.codeberg.page/

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XPost: linux.debian.devel

Le Wed, Jul 16, 2025 at 07:42:06PM +0200, Salvo Tomaselli a écrit :

I did that by removing tens of sexist, homophobic and racist jokes
that were not in the offensive section, and had been there at least
since 2004.

Does that mean that sexist, homophobic and/or racist jokes that were in
the -off packages did not get removed? Only the ones in the regular
packages?

If it is the case, the removal requests get my full support. Sexism,
racism and such are not, never were, and can not be funny. Not even in a package explicitly labelled as such.

I have no problem with offensive humour, but oppressive "jokes" are
something else that should not be tolerated in the *universal* operating system. (making fun of cis-het white males can be offensive, and it’s
OK, while making fun of people already suffering from discrimination is oppressive, and that’s not OK)

If on the other hand I misunderstood and what you’re trying to preserve
is non-oppressive offensive jokes, then I have no strong opinion on the
matter.

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XPost: linux.debian.devel

I'm not sure why this is on d-devel and CC'ed to leader@, but let me try to answer in simple terms, as a random DD.

Le mercredi, 16 juillet 2025, 19.42:06 h CEST Salvo Tomaselli a écrit :

QUESTIONS
=========

1. Can the community team force me to remove a package, even though I
did not violate the COC and they did not receive any complaints?

No. The CT doesn't have any delegated powers to force anyone to do anything; they are a group of DDs trying to make the Debian project community a better place to be in, with the support of the DPL (through a delegation) and (I strongly believe) of vast majority of the Debian community (not only DDs).

2. Can they set important priority on bugs while in freeze, about
something that has existed for the past 22 years? What's the sudden
urgency?

Yes. As anyone with an opinion interacting within the project. I believe it's socially and technically OK for me to go and set any bug's priority as I see fit. The maintainer and me (and likely others, such as the release team) can then have a conversation about the severity.

That said… I have quickly skimmed through the two bugs you mentionned (#1109165 & #1109167) and I don't find them particularly well documented; they refer to the fact the -off fortunes were removed in english, which brought me to #1024501 and #1076363, in which the conversation isn't particularly enlightening. It seems there was a conversation somewhere at the end of 2022, which led to the removal of the fortunes-off package in english. Without re- reading all that history, I think that if the project consensus (not unanimity) is that fortunes-off(ensive) ought to be removed in english, it also follows that they ought to be removed in other languages.

A last point about your questions: obviously, the sudden urgency is that the project is getting really close to migrating all packages in testing to our next stable release. And what happened is that Paul, *with his delegated Release Team hat on*, reopened the bugs with their current severity and a rationale (and it's the delegated powers of the Release Team to decide what goes in the stable release). Today's status of the bugs is from Release Team, not Andrew (or the CT).

3. (…)
4. (…)
5. (…)
6. (…)
7. (…)

I read that you're frustrated because a package that you care about is requested to be removed from the Debian archive, for reasons that you don't agree with.

Let me offer you a different perspective: through the past conversations around the offensive variant of the fortunes packages (in english), the project has converged towards considering that this is not a package that it wants to ship to its users. (How this convergence happened, and whether you agree with the end-result are not relevant.) The dataset still exists in the world, and users who want to get their hands on it don't need Debian to ship it (of course, it was convenient as a package, that's why we package things in the first place). Now it was recently noticed by Andrew that the same package existed in other language variants, and he (not using his CT hat) has therefore filed two serious bugs asking the package maintainers to remove the *-off binary packages from their corresponding source packages. And this was then echo'ed by a Release Team delegate effectively saying "remove this or it will not ship in Debian stable" (serious severity).

I think both Andrew and Paul reflect the project consensus (again, not unanimity) that was reached about the fortunes-off package in english: it's not a package the Debian project wants to ship to its users. This is now a request from the Release Team, not the Community Tema.

Now, I think you have two options:
A) escalate further. debian-devel conversations are calls to mobilisation (and is already triggering a too-long thread there), but concretely, the only recourse you have is to convince the rest of the Release Team to override Paul's decision. I think we all know how this is going to end (spoiler alert: the Release Team will kick the whole fortunes-it and fortunes-scn source packages out of testing if they need to).

B) get over it, remove the offensive binary packages from the source packages, close these two serious bugs and move on. Then if it *really* is that important for you, work upstream to make the offensive "jokes" more accessible without involving Debian packages or infrastructure.

Really, I'd echo what Charles has written and encourage you to really decide whether this is a fight worth fighting. And I'd really encourage you to not try making this an issue of the Community Team's existence or members' actions (which it clearly isn't).

Best,
--
OdyX

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XPost: linux.debian.devel

Salvo,

With the hope of being able to give you a hand as I'd really like to
keep both the italian and the sicilian *offensive* fortunes package in
Debian, 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.

Best.


[1] https://sources.debian.org/src/fortunes-it/2.16-1/testi/italia-o/

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