Package Maintainers Flags policy

[Seth Vidal]

On Tue, 19 May 2009, Denis Leroy wrote:

> Will you also stay out of the profanity debate and blacklist all packages 
> contains any textual occurrence of a profane word ? Or ship them in a 
> separate "-adult" subpackage ? This is completely ridiculous, and the fact 
> you are a member of FeSCO is plain scary. This can only be excused by lack of 
> time and/or interest to think about a better solution.
>
> Worst of all, this "policy" is forced on us, without any sort of valid legal 
> reason for it, or even chance for discussion on the mailing list.


The simple reality is China. The Chinese gov't was not happy about 
taiwanese flags being marked on Taiwan - or the Tibetan flag on Tibet. 
Now, your next question is "why is that our problem?" And the answer is - 
if we are banned from distribution in china then we have lost a bunch of 
potential contributors.

And then your next question is "does the Chinese gov't really care about a 
linux distro having a Taiwanese or Tibetan flag in some programs it 
ships?" and the answer to that question is yes, very much.

So, of course does this mean we are siding with china? No, we're not 
siding with anyone, that's the whole point.

Flags mean a lot to a lot of people. They carry a lot of patriotic crap 
w/them.

-sv