Package Maintainers Flags policy

David Woodhouse dwmw2 at infradead.org
Tue May 19 10:39:39 UTC 2009


On Tue, 2009-05-19 at 11:26 +0200, Denis Leroy wrote:
> On 05/18/2009 07:36 PM, Bill Nottingham wrote:
> > Denis Leroy (denis at poolshark.org) said:
> >>> Due to an oversight, this policy was not announced here. ;(
> >>>
> >>> Please see:
> >>>
> >>> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Package_Maintainers_Flags_Policy
> >> Surely, this needs to go through FPC first.
> >
> > Given that it's (essentially) a legal issue (affecting distribution/
> > availability of Fedora), I don't see that.
> 
> It is not really a legal issue, as Tom mentioned. You cannot get sued 
> for putting "Free Tibet" on your web page.

You want to go live in China and try that, then?

You're probably right -- you wouldn't get _sued_ ...

There _are_ real problems with distributing certain flags, in certain
jurisdictions -- and that means problems distributing _Fedora_ if it
contains those flags. And we _really_ don't want to start removing
_only_ the affected flags, which makes it look like we're taking sides
in the issue.

I don't much like the reasons that we have to do it -- but I do agree
that it's best just to stay out of the political debate by not shipping
_any_ flags. That's why I voted for the policy.

I see a very strong parallel between this issue and the issue of
"profanity". The first book of the Bible makes it clear that to be
ashamed of nakedness and natural bodily function is a sign of sin -- so
I believe that anyone who is offended by the word "fuck" is going to
burn in hell, and anyone striving to be sinless should ensure that they
are _not_ irrationally affected by such simple and natural things.

But since some people _are_ offended, it's best for us to avoid the
issue; to bowdlerise our fortune files and screensavers etc.

Some trivial things offend some strange people, beyond all reason and
proportion. It's just best for us to avoid shipping those things, unless
the lack of them is a _real_ technical problem. Which it _isn't_, in the
case of flags.

-- 
dwmw2




More information about the fedora-devel-list mailing list