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Xsnow "protestware" in Debian

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Re: Xsnow "protestware" in Debian

#81

Post by michaelmrose »

trollbridge wrote: post #73
michaelmrose wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like a you problem. Suppose you have software that shows famous faces and quotes as a screensaver would you make it by default not show anyone of color so it would be acceptable in rural Oklahoma or make it show no women so it would be acceptable in Iran?

In rural Oklahoma, it is entirely acceptable to have “anyone of colour” portrayed in something like a screensaver. I don’t know much about Iran, but depictions of women seem common in advertising there.

Most women whom one would display inspirational quotes wouldn't be displayed in a head scarf as they would come from a range of cultures most of which don't have the same restrictions. I think that the point is that political moral and cultural norms aren't neutral and many are just morally deficient and free software shouldn't be in the business of pretending that Nazis and Jews are 2 different groups with equally valid rights not to be offended.

This is a corporate mindset we adopt because we want everyone's business not a useful or correct attitude for individuals who aren't the beneficiaries of the publics money in the first place.

The Russian aggression is evil, the Russian culture as a whole is abhorrent. We shouldn't be afraid to call it out and fight back. I would be ok if every Debian terminal printed a message raising donations for the defense of Ukraine.

Its free software so Russians worried about political correctness herein meaning defense of mass murder torture and genocide can run a fork which boots up to Russian military propaganda if they like.

Re: Xsnow "protestware" in Debian

#82

Post by LtWorf »

striking wrote: post #58
sssilver wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't there discrepancy between that and The Debian Linux team removing “offensive” quotes for the “fortune” application [1]? [1] https://x.com/LundukeJournal/status/1952340426892984580

I think there is in fact a discrepancy between displaying flags and advocating directly for gendered violence: > 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 shou…

> I think there is in fact a discrepancy between displaying flags and advocating directly for gendered violence

NosiyCoil forgot to mention that I removed hundreds of fortunes containing racist/sexist jokes from the regular section, installed by default to every Italian user and displayed by default.

I basically grew up reading them and 20 years later, I forked fortunes-it to get rid of them and put them in the offensive section. And then Cater unilaterally decided to remove it.

But neither NoisyCoil, nor Cater, not anyone else stepped up to actually read the fortunes that were not tagged as offensive and were being installed and displayed by default.

One year later, I'm still the only person doing this work.

Archlinux is still using the pre-fork version where this content is still present in the main section.

That article is very one sided. The author spoke to Cater but did not think of reaching out to me for comments.

Re: Xsnow "protestware" in Debian

#83

Post by kstrauser »

antonvs wrote: post #77
kstrauser wrote: post #45

I could not be less sympathetic on this. If you don't want people protesting your actions, don't, like, invade their country. "But what if it was the US doing the invading?" Yes, even then. If some Iraqi author made an Xsnow that waved little Iraq flags, that's their right. Even if I disagree, it doesn't harm me, and it might inspire me to consider our actions. "But what if it makes someone's boss get mad at them?" I…

Don’t you mean Iran, not Iraq? Or are you hoping Dick Cheney’s ghost will see the flag?

Argh, yes. Sorry, for most of my life we've been mad at Iraq and pals with Iran, or vice versa, and today I got that backward.

Re: Xsnow "protestware" in Debian

#84

Post by NooneAtAll3 »

kstrauser wrote: post #45

I could not be less sympathetic on this. If you don't want people protesting your actions, don't, like, invade their country. "But what if it was the US doing the invading?" Yes, even then. If some Iraqi author made an Xsnow that waved little Iraq flags, that's their right. Even if I disagree, it doesn't harm me, and it might inspire me to consider our actions. "But what if it makes someone's boss get mad at them?" I…

the problem isn't protesting someone's actions - it's supporting the other side

do you really want to support country that kidnaps its citizens off the streets and honorary reburied Nazi criminals?

Re: Xsnow "protestware" in Debian

#85

Post by bill_mcgonigle »

I haven't heard of this package personally and it's not on my desktops so it must not be pulled in by any of the task- desktop environment metapackages I use. So you probably have to go looking for it.

I really don't care about this package or protest but what might be more interesting to consider is what if this were in a default package and what if the affected locales were different?

If I make a list of all the countries who have recently been at war or are currently engaged in hostilities or have ethnic animus towards each other and just choose to taunt them all, that would really be a dick move and it's probably OK for Debian to drop the package. FWIW I'd rather see them adopt a kindhearted fork than override an author/ maintainer when possible.

If there's no special pleading for the ru/ua conflict then it's not too concerning.

Re: Xsnow "protestware" in Debian

#86

Post by kstrauser »

bjourne wrote: post #78
kstrauser wrote: post #45

I could not be less sympathetic on this. If you don't want people protesting your actions, don't, like, invade their country. "But what if it was the US doing the invading?" Yes, even then. If some Iraqi author made an Xsnow that waved little Iraq flags, that's their right. Even if I disagree, it doesn't harm me, and it might inspire me to consider our actions. "But what if it makes someone's boss get mad at them?" I…

Not everyone who speaks Russian is a Russian or lives in Russia. It's like show a Palestine flag specifically to users with a Jewish calendar.

I didn't write that and I'm not arguing with you. I don't have skin in this game. That said, I think the likelihood of someone having their locale set to RU also being in Russia is substantially improved.

Re: Xsnow "protestware" in Debian

#87

Post by LtWorf »

bill_mcgonigle wrote: post #85

I haven't heard of this package personally and it's not on my desktops so it must not be pulled in by any of the task- desktop environment metapackages I use. So you probably have to go looking for it. I really don't care about this package or protest but what might be more interesting to consider is what if this were in a default package and what if the affected locales were different? If I make a list of all the co…

The debian maintainer and the original author are the same person. If they added this feature in the original version, I doubt they will drop the package or fork it and place the fork in debian.

Re: Xsnow "protestware" in Debian

#88

Post by kstrauser »

alwa wrote: post #61
kstrauser wrote: post #45

I could not be less sympathetic on this. If you don't want people protesting your actions, don't, like, invade their country. "But what if it was the US doing the invading?" Yes, even then. If some Iraqi author made an Xsnow that waved little Iraq flags, that's their right. Even if I disagree, it doesn't harm me, and it might inspire me to consider our actions. "But what if it makes someone's boss get mad at them?" I…

That may be, but if I do in fact live in a place where my "government are the baddies," why does it follow that open software should punish me—for nothing more than happening to be alive within that jurisdiction—by provoking my "baddie" government to visit its badness upon me personally? For speech I wasn't even trying to make—for speech that you kind of put in my mouth without asking me? It would be fine if you gave…

To be explicitly clear, I have nothing to do with Xsnow. I don't even use it.

That out of the way, I can't and won't sanitize my words so that they're perfectly inoffensive all the world around. I've made comments over the years critical of a great many governments. If the fragile leadership of those countries saw my words on a screen there, perhaps they'd get angry at the person reading my writings. I do feel bad for that person and certainly didn't try to get them in trouble. But neither am I going to not criticize a government that's behaving poorly — even my own — for the sake of a hypothetical situation that may never even exist.

Re: Xsnow "protestware" in Debian

#89

Post by LtWorf »

dgellow wrote: post #38
JdeBP wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The naïveté of that position is that the users are not informed ahead of time that there's a random chance of a political protest popping up on their screen, so do not get to make an informed choice before it is perhaps too late. It's not mentioned in the doco. It's obfuscated in the source code as an 'extra tree' in an array of xpmtrees. The commit that added this had the commit message 'willem'.

Please, tell me, who is ever using xsnow in a place where that would be problematic? It’s such a niche software. Again, complete non-issue.

> who is ever using xsnow

We don't know? Debian doesn't spy on users.

Re: Xsnow "protestware" in Debian

#90

Post by kstrauser »

LtWorf wrote: post #66
kstrauser wrote: post #45

I could not be less sympathetic on this. If you don't want people protesting your actions, don't, like, invade their country. "But what if it was the US doing the invading?" Yes, even then. If some Iraqi author made an Xsnow that waved little Iraq flags, that's their right. Even if I disagree, it doesn't harm me, and it might inspire me to consider our actions. "But what if it makes someone's boss get mad at them?" I…

Looking at your comment history, it's odd how you feel this way about certain countries but not certain others.

Which countries have I not criticized for invading others? No, seriously, please let me know if I've missed some and I'll fix that immediately. I've certainly criticized my own country's misguided attacks on others who I don't think were a direct risk to us or our allies.
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