On 9/9/2011 5:59 AM, Sascha Peilicke wrote:
Hello everyone,
sr#81625 want's to add 'sword', a bible study tool to openSUSE:Factory. While that is totally fine, the spec file %description contains stuff like:
+The SWORD Project is an effort to create an ever expanding software package for +research and study of God and His Word.
While I don't care much for that particular bedtime story, others may well be offended by biased religious views (even more so if their's differing). Of course, this may equally apply to policitcal views or offensive words.
I have the feeling that openSUSE should take neutral stance, be inviting and open for everyone (and we're quite good at that already). But I'm not sure if we should provide a stage for non-technical biased views. Even less so for those with a mission. Thus, the question I'd like to ask is whether we should allow such formulations or not. Do we already have policy for that or do we care at all?
Rephrase the description to the upstream description or similar one that makes no implied judgements. Keep the package wherever, and for the same reasons, that we keep games. I personally have zero use for any games, but there are plenty in the distro. They don't bother me existing. I don't even mind if a few are installed by default as long as they don't take up much space. Religious apps? I have no use for them either, and although I'm absolutely atheist and have quite firm and quite unflattering opinions of anyone who actually believes any of that nonsense, or even allows for it's possibility in any real way, the main reason I have no use for such apps is more along the lines of why I have no use for say, baseball fantasy league management apps or quilting pattern database apps. I have no problem with those apps existing because they ARE things some people do with their computers. It doesn't matter that I don't do that with my computer, it just matters that anyone anywhere for any reason does. They don't need to be validated. Merely that they exist and that someone want's to use it is all the validation necessary, other than the normal requirements and guidelines and cost/benefit things that apply to all packages. Even software that's designed solely to hack other systems is valid, neutral software in itself, since it's the most important security study and testing material. No software or even text is inherently evil. You could use bash (an equally violently named software) to persue all the same goals as sword. Even though I think a disbelief in any religion is fundamentally different than believing one religion vs another, and would argue that it's perfectly valid to criticize any believer and treat them exactly as you would treat anyone else who has demonstrated that they are insane or incompetent or out of touch in any other way, none of that really touches on whether something like a software package like this, even if it included the text, should be granted or disallowed a home in a distributions software repositories. As far as I'm concerned, treat this package exactly like Tux Racer. The description should be changed only because it does essentially insult everyone else who doesn't happen to share the authors favorite fantasy. It will be displayed by yast, an opensuse product, to all users, before they opt-in to such nonsense. The upstream description doesn't have that problem. At least it fails to bother me and perhaps by now you get a sense that I am quick to be offended by any attempts by any religious entities to tell me anything. -- bkw -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org