Debian's Anti-Harassment Team Is Removing A Package Over Its Name

[dlq84]

Not all that surprising that the response in this forum is "this is madness".

I agree, because it is madness.

[JAYL]

Personally, for me, I don't really care. I'm not part of the Debian community and I think they can do whatever they want. Though, I really enjoy people getting overly upset or "triggered" about it. Same thing happened when the linux kernel adopted a CoC that basically amounted to "Don't harass people, especially not for being a protected class".

[dlq84]

Personally for me, I don't really care. I'm not part of the Debian community and I think they can do whatever they want. Though, I really enjoy people getting overly upset or "triggered" about it. Same thing happened when the linux kernel adopted a CoC that basically amounted to "Don't harass people, especially not for being a protected class".

Because it's censorship based on arbitrary rules: "someone might get offended".

[carewolf]

What is offensive about Web-oob?

[dungeon]

Steve Ballmer was offended by Linux. Maybe we should remove balls and eggs, yeah in some languages or slangs eggs means balls

So egg is like this boob, same thing

Love is also offending word as there are various meaning of it

[L_A_G]

You'd think that the people on the "Anti Harassment" team would have enough sense to understand that springing into action over something as trivial as this would reflect badly not just on them personally, but also on their whole mission, not to mention their equivalents at every other project that has one. If you're not a fan of them and other teams with similar goals, you should be happy that they've just made an ass of themselves and their mission. On the same note, if you support them and their mission, then you should probably be rolling your eyes right now as they made an ass of themselves and their mission.

But yeah... We're definitely seeing a slide backwards when it comes to morals and sexuality similar to what took place in the 1950s. Except this time it's done under the guise of more trendy goals and ideologies rather than an idea of "decency" inspired by the Bible and social norms from the 1800s and earlier.

[ferry]

IMHO with these things it would be most the the intention making the offensiveness. Is it the readers dirty mind or the writers?

So my first impression was, it's an abbreviation and the abbreviation is covering the function of the package pretty good. No need to fuss about it.

But then I saw the logo. There is no doubt that the writers are intentionally associating the name of their software with boobs. And that in itself is not acceptable for a professional product like Debian.

The same for 'manpages'. Nothing wrong with the name, it's not a man, but a manual (stems from hand, a hand book). Until they change the logo into the cover of Penthouse Magazine.

[LaeMing]

Goodness! My brain just triggered on multiple different levels, none of them good!:

* Web-oobs, is presumably how it is intended to be said, or at least where it was derived from. While We-boobs is slightly snigger-worthy as it contains 'boobs', the two words used together like don't even parse to anything that makes grammatical or actual sense in English!

* I saw a linked picture where the letter 'o's of Weboobs was replaced with spherical X-mass-tree decorations. .... While I find the modern hyper-consumerist nature of that particular holiday rather not to my taste and as such don't participate in it at all myself, I don't go around telling other people they can't celebrate it. (I know some people are interpreting the spheres as breasts, but honestly, have they ever seen breasts? If you need a reference, the internet is full of boobs, for Yoni's sake! Plenty of pictures of breasts too, for that matter. Also, the globes pictured are different sizes and while breasts are generally no more identically sized than feet, they are also generally no less differently sized! I honestly think this could be interpreted as simply "replace letter 'o's with X-mass globes"!).

* Are they going to scan package names for potential innuendo across the entirety of the i18n domain? If not, why not? - are they cultural-linguistic biggots or something? (And one whole Internet will be awarded to the first person to find a language in which the characters 'DEBIAN' or their sound is even the remotest bit snigger-worthy!)

* What the hell is so offensive about boobs anyway. I don't particularly obsess over mine, but I am not at all unhappy with them, and strongly resent any pressure to feel ashamed of having them!

* Here in Australia we are so comfortable with boobs that we elect them to govern us and make national laws that over-ride the very laws of mathematics!

* While I am generally among the first to hurl ridicule at anyone wailing "SJW" any time a sniff of equality or general good manners wafts their way (and there are a depressing number of them, even on this board), this is just ... SJWism in the actual! Thanks Debian for forcing me to take that pathetic term and the pathetic people who use it seriously!

* Taking things like this to the extreme that appears to be presented here is nothing short of open-faced bullying in itself. Not really a huge surprise, human nature being involved here and all.

* It is their Distro, and they certainly have the right to marginalize it however they want. And I am one day off the X-mass to NewYear workplace shutdown where I am generally just bored enough at home to want to try complicated new things. And the small fleet I manage at work gets a routine wipe-and-rebuild in January too. I won't be recommending or demonstrating it to any of *my* students. (After 18-years a FanGrrrl. :-/ )

* It looks like the /source code/ had some genuine issues, but that was apparently patched out recently.

....

Well, I feel better getting all that off my ... uh ... chest.

[Dedale]

If you have good sense, you do not join an anti-harassment group in the first place...

I was familiar with the jokes about debian being a nest of fundamentalist beardies but i wasn't expecting THAT kind of beardies.

That said, aside form the ridiculous political aspect of this, that these kind of preoccupations can have an influence over such a massive project as debian means that the dumb people have taken over and the smart ones are powerless. So i expect the software to perform less in the long run.

Moving from debian based distro will be a pain in the @ss. But i have time to do this.

[aht0]

slippery road.. With sufficient want, one can claim nearly everything as being offensive.. Where should you draw the line..?

Snow is white - does it mean God is a racist? Here in kindergardens I've heard Snowwhite in a fairytale been renamed to Snowblack..

Following that train of thought: should I sue my parents? I was born tall blond white male. Sure as fuck this fact itself is offensive and racist to some.