Hello,

I think I need some clarification on the scope of the role of the
community team.

I am talking about bugs #1109165 and #1109167

PREMISE
=======

Let me start by saying that fortunes-it-off has existed since 2003 and
there have been 0 complaints from offended people in these 22 years.

It's not pulled as a dependency by anything and even if installed, the
fortune package won't display that content unless the "-o" switch is
passed.

I think it's fair to assume that nobody has ever seen offensive
content from that package by mistake.

EXTRACT FROM CHANGELOG
======================

2004: fortunes 1.99 uploaded to debian
2008: typo fixed
2015: move some offensive quotes in the -off package
2019: typo fixed
2023: typo fixed

CURRENT SITUATION
=================

In 2023 I became maintainer of the package, set up a new upstream
project (since the original website was gone) and I have spent a lot
of hours making it more current.

I did that by removing tens of sexist, homophobic and racist jokes
that were not in the offensive section, and had been there at least
since 2004.

The ones that were just offensive but not funny I removed, those that
had some humoristic value I kept in the offensive section. I did
remove plenty of stuff from the offensive section.

Now, in 2025, after 2 years of me working on this package, and while
in freeze, the community team wants to remove the offensive section of
the fortunes.

When I asked for help to review actually offensive content, both in
the regular and in the offensive section, I got no reply other than a
vaguely threatening email from the release team.

I do not appreciate wasting my time, I do not appreciate having to
write this email and I do not appreciate the collective time wasted on
this.


QUESTIONS
=========

1. Can the community team force me to remove a package, even though I
did not violate the COC and they did not receive any complaints?

2. Can they set important priority on bugs while in freeze, about
something that has existed for the past 22 years? What's the sudden
urgency?

3. Can they say something is offensive even without an actual person
being offended?

4. Are they qualified to decide what is offensive and what is not
offensive in languages I can only presume they don't speak?

5. How is wasting my time helping (remember that I've been using my
time to get rid of offensive content that has been there for 2
decades)?

6. Can people who are offended by the existence of systemd request to
drop it from debian?

7. Can someone who is not offended by something ask to drop it because
it could offend some other person (even if this other person might not
exist)?

Best

-- 
Salvo Tomaselli

"Io non mi sento obbligato a credere che lo stesso Dio che ci ha dotato di
senso, ragione ed intelletto intendesse che noi ne facessimo a meno."
                -- Galileo Galilei

https://ltworf.codeberg.page/

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