Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com; run by ezmlm
List-Subscribe: <mailto:cygwin-subscribe AT cygwin DOT com>
List-Archive: <http://sourceware.org/ml/cygwin/>
List-Post: <mailto:cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
List-Help: <mailto:cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com>, <http://sourceware.org/ml/#faqs>
Sender: cygwin-owner AT cygwin DOT com
Mail-Followup-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Delivered-To: mailing list cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Date: Sat, 8 Jan 2005 01:24:28 -0500 (EST)
From: Igor Pechtchanski <pechtcha AT cs DOT nyu DOT edu>
Reply-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
To: "Gary R. Van Sickle" <g DOT r DOT vansickle AT worldnet DOT att DOT net>
cc: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: RE: Obscene content in cygwin file.
In-Reply-To: <37f28640afa40ecb1c1e746d40a7f65a@NO-ID-FOUND.mhonarc.org>
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.61.0501080116460.14515@slinky.cs.nyu.edu>
References: <37f28640afa40ecb1c1e746d40a7f65a AT NO-ID-FOUND DOT mhonarc DOT org>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Note-from-DJ: This may be spam

On Fri, 7 Jan 2005, Gary R. Van Sickle wrote:

> > Most agree that it's a packaging bug in fortune, and that the
> > limericks file should be renamed limericks-o and ROT13'd.
> > End of discussion.
>
> Nononono, don't you try to force your end-of-discussion values on ME!

Heh...  On most other messages you at least leave a name of the person
you're quoting.  Here, I actually had to *read* your reply to figure out
it was me.  What's the world coming to? ;-)

> I agree that at a minimum, the obfuscation you describe is absolutely
> required.  However, I'd like an answer to a question which I raised with a
> different poster:  What's the reason to provide this profanity at all in the
> Cygwin distro?  To the best of my knowledge, there are no Cygwin
> X-screensavers loaded with obfuscated pornographic pictures.  I can't
> imagine one being accepted were it to be proposed by somebody.  But dirty
> limericks get the green light?  Why?
>
> But, in the intrest of the desire of many here to have their porn and
> limericks too, I offer this new constructive vote category suggestion:
>
> "[ ]  I demand more filth!  Add a new "Porn" category to Setup!"

Sure.  No problem.  Go for it.  As long as it's in Debian, it's fine...
];->

> Frankly, I'd think just pulling the off-color material is the easiest
> solution from a legal, moral, technical, and argumentological standpoint.

IMHO (and, since I'm not the maintainer of the fortune package, this is
indeed a HO), the "right" solution is whatever's easiest to the fortune
maintainer in terms of time, both current (doing the work) and future
(maintaining the package with respect to future upstream changes).  This
would imply not splitting the package, cutting out pieces of the package,
etc, since those just add extra work at later stages.

The "obscene" material was not supposed to be seen without special action
on the part of the user (as documented in the man page).  It was seen
without such action, due to a packaging bug.  The bug should be fixed --
period.  However, if some package you maintain contained a bug (e.g.,
buffer overrun) that made it garble, say, its normal help output, and that
new output accidentally contained "f**k" (or some other "obscene"
terminology) -- would you argue for removing the help output, or would you
simply go and fix the bug?  Granted, the analogy's a bit stretched, but
it's the best I can come up with at 1:30am.
	Igor
-- 
				http://cs.nyu.edu/~pechtcha/
      |\      _,,,---,,_		pechtcha AT cs DOT nyu DOT edu
ZZZzz /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_		igor AT watson DOT ibm DOT com
     |,4-  ) )-,_. ,\ (  `'-'		Igor Pechtchanski, Ph.D.
    '---''(_/--'  `-'\_) fL	a.k.a JaguaR-R-R-r-r-r-.-.-.  Meow!

"The Sun will pass between the Earth and the Moon tonight for a total
Lunar eclipse..." -- WCBS Radio Newsbrief, Oct 27 2004, 12:01 pm EDT

--
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/