On Fri, Jan 03, 2025 at 11:55:18AM +0000, piorunz wrote:
> Hi w@uter,
>
> Thanks for your reply.
>
> While their political statement does not directly violate any parts of
> Code of Conduct, I feel that it is not aligned with it at all. It's not
> open and not meant to help collaboration (CoC points 3 and 5),
That's not what those two parts of the code of conduct are meant to say.
"be open" means "do not say things behind people's backs". This is not
that.
The request to collaborate is about making it easier for people to work
with you on software. It is not about other subjects. This is also not
that.
> it is meant to divide and separate instead.
I do not see how? It is a polite request to donate for a cause. If you
do not want that, then you can ignore the request. There is no
obligation, so I do not see how it can possibly divide and separate.
> Is it not made in good faith (point 2).
The only places where the code of conduct mentions "good faith", is
where it says that you should *assume* good faith. I would like to point
out that by that very statement, you have just clearly missed that ball.
Of course, assuming good faith only works if everyone agrees to also act
in good faith. When it is clear that acts are performed in bad faith,
then the assumption is obviously flawed and we should not make it
anymore.
But this is, again, not that.
> I assumed good faith (point 2) when installing a package, but that faith
> failed me, because what I received was a country flag banner with a
> politically charged message behind it.
>
> While their intent might have been genuine, the inclusion of such
> content in a package aimed at children (among other groups) could be
> seen as not displaying good faith toward the broader and culturally
> diverse Debian user base. Especially in software meant for education,
> this type of messaging risks alienating users who may not share the same
> views or prefer to keep politics separate from technical tools.
I can understand why Russian nationals might want to not see this
message. After all, the oppressive Russian regime has made it a crime to
even speak up against the Russian government these days, and so they
could be at risk of being imprisoned by using this software.
Almost anyone else, however, can see this message for what it is: a
polite request to donate to a good cause. One may believe that the
request is inappropriate, but that does not make it a violation of the
code of conduct.
An example of a very similar situation is vim: for decades, running
"vim" with no arguments has presented the user with, amongst other
things, a request to donate to the ICCF to help needy children in
Uganda. While what vim does is less visible than the ukrainian flag on
thonny's tool bar, the concept is the same. We have never considered
this a problem, and I don't think we should.
Free software is inherently a political action, and so it is not at all
unusual to see political statements. In and of itself, that is not a
violation of the code of conduct -- if it were, then making Debian would
be a violation, and that obviously fails the ridiculousness test.
Although I wouldn't consider thonny a tool that is meant *only* for
education, I can understand a desire to hide the button in educational
environments, and so perhaps a run time configuration option to hide
that button could be appropriate, if upstream can be convinced that this
is a good idea. That option could then default to leave the button there
but it could be disabled where appropriate.
The final group of people who do not fall within the above two groups,
and who for obvious reasons also would not like to see this message, is
"Russian government employees charged with trolling the Internet to
support Russia's message". If this is you, then please do the world a
massive favour and quit. Today. There are better uses of your time.
--
w@uter.{be,co.za}
wouter@{grep.be,fosdem.org,debian.org}
I will have a Tin-Actinium-Potassium mixture, thanks.
