Subject: Re: fortune-mod propagates various non-nice things

From: Maxime Devos <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2022 21:20:44 +0200

On 03-04-2022 19:26, Liliana Marie Prikler wrote:

> Am Sonntag, dem 03.04.2022 um 15:09 +0200 schrieb Maxime Devos:
>> Hi guix,
>>
>> fortune-mod currently propagates (in the non-technical sense) various
>> non-nice things like objectification, misoginy, religious
>> intolerance, anti-mathematician-ism (?) and date rape.  That is not
>> an exhaustive list, these are just the first few things I encountered
>> with "fortune off".
> Well, the purpose of "fortune off" is to provide offensive "jokes".  As
> such, if you're offended by them, you're kinda getting what you've
> asked for.  If removing them falls under what our CoC states, though,
> then so be it, I have no horse in this race.

My point wasn't that some individual could accidentally install a
package that offends them.  My point was that:

> fortune-mod currently propagates (in the non-technical sense) various
> non-nice things like objectification, misogeny, religious intolerance,
> anti-mathematician-ism (?) and date rape.  That is not an exhaustive
> list, these are just the first few things I encountered with "fortune
> off".

More concretely, consider the target audience for such "jokes" instead 
of some random individual.
By including such jokes:

  * we implicitly validate that such views are reasonable (people
    holding those views get validation, unknowing people are nudged into
    considering such views and people rejecting these views are invalidated)
  * As such, we contribute to keeping those vile -isms intact and making
    them more common.

I do not believe this to be a good course of action.

Something can be said about the individuals too, w.r.t. internalised 
$BAD-isms, negative impact on mental health, possibly some other things 
too?). I don't believe inflicting those to be a good idea either.

Csepp <[email-masked]>

> [quoted stuff]
> Honestly this is dumb, it's not even practically useful software. We
> have no obligation to package something that jokes about date rape and
> contributes nothing of practical value.
> This is very different to the reasoning behind the lack of moral clauses
> in the GPL. And again, just because something is free software, we don't have to
> package it.
> It's a ticking PR timebomb and nothing of value would be lost if we got
> rid of that file. If some snowflake gets triggered because we removed
> their favorite date rape joke, they self identified as someone whose
> opinion we should ignore. :P
Exactly, though myself I prefer to reason in terms of "what is / what 
changes / consequences / ..." instead of "how are our actions perceived".

(/me catches up on other responses, haven't read them all yet)

Greetings,
Maxime.