Debian's Anti-Harassment Team Is Removing A Package Over Its Name
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Weboob («Web Outside of Browsers») — is a bundle of opensource software to automate the gathering of Internet data and transferring it to the other applications. Software from Weboob bundle offers a lot of interesting tools for getting the data from Internet and its' processing: e.g. Galleroob — find and download the image albums, Boobtracker — work with bugtrackers, QBoobMsg — go through the messages, and Weboorrents — get the needed torrents. Weboob has been at the Debian repositories since 2010 during 8 years; however, because of the pressure by "anti-harassment group" the head of Debian project Chris Lamb has been forced to remove this package.
The headline on Phoronix is rather misrepresenting the situation.
If it was simply the name of the package, you might have a point.
But it's far more.
The package contains programs such as "flatboob", "handjoob", "wetboobs", etc.
https://git.weboob.org/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&search=handjoob&group_id=&project_id=1&search_code=true&repository_ref=master
The various names are very clearly intentional to have the connotation people are thinking of.
The icons are also rather crudely suggestive.
That they added alt-right insults to replace other the insults that people objected to was pretty horrible too and the homophboic insults in error messages clearly weren't an accident either...
The upstream for that package is basically using the software as an elaborate troll, which is a shame, because the project itself sounds useful.
For what it's worth, I don't see a problem with any of that. It's certainly not harassment, and I think it's unfortunate that software is being excluded just because of its authors' sense of humor.
OK so the boobs are alt-right nowadays? :D Despite that you found this "boob stuff" unfunny, removing the useful functionality from Debian is a clear example of SJWs from "anti-her-ass-ment" team gone mad. Guess next will be renaming the "manpages" to "personpages", and also touch and grep and fsck... Some people forgot that computing should be fun and are trying to fence it with their boring corporate PC culture. Like with hackatons: originally they were the cool fests where the people were partying having fun and wrote great open source code, but today its mostly a corporate shithole competitions of who better licks their ass :P
Although there's a good side: because of this free publicity given by those mad SJWs, a lot of people including me have learned about this wonderful set of utilities, and I already found some use for them ;) Also, what's great is that the names of Weboob packages are quite easy to memorize because they are unusual :)
I am a translator!
Meanwhile "thefuck" is packaged by many distros (including Debian, Parabola, Hyperbola, Ubuntu...) despite this naming issue on github:
and GIMP could be also considered "offensive" :P by the way: unzip; strip; touch; grep; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; umount; sleep ;)
Pyraman:
> because of the pressure by "anti-harassment group" the head of Debian project Chris Lamb has been forced to remove this package.
Debian's Anti-Harassment Team was asked to assess the situation and give their recommendation,[1] and Chris Lamb seems to have wanted their input.[2] That's not the same as them pressuring him.
In fact, AH did not even insist that the package be removed. They determined that the package violated Debian's Code of Conduct,[3] but considered it to be "not a 'flagrant' violation." They also suggested "[working] with upstream on correcting these issues" and "forking and/or patching it" as alternatives to removing the package, in order "to find a solution that respects our users and our community while keeping a useful piece of software in the archive."
You might disagree that this significantly violates Debian's Code of Conduct, or you might disagree with Debian's Code of Conduct itself, but it isn't as if AH attempted to coerce anyone into this decision.
Pyraman:
> OK so the boobs are alt-right nowadays?
Someone contributed a patch[4] to remove some unnecessary slurs in code comments and in a message that prints an insult to the user. In response, the developer added different insults.[5] I think that jxself is referring to these, not to the name of the program.
I think that the slurs and insults might also contribute to why AH considers the package "disrespectful." As you and aloniv point out, other packages have names that can be similarly construed, and I don't think weboob would have received any special attention just over its name.
jxself:
> The upstream for that package is basically using the software as an elaborate troll, which is a shame, because the project itself sounds useful.
Yes, assuming it is true that "weboob does not (with the exception of the paypal module, which breaks very often) run js code"[6] then weboob could be very useful for accessing sites that are otherwise difficult to navigate without executing non-free JavaScript. It's a shame that this is how I, and probably others, are first hearing about the program.
[1] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=907199#47
[2] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=907199#62
[3] "Be respectful" https://www.debian.org/code_of_conduct
[4] https://git.weboob.org/weboob/devel/merge_requests/228/diffs#85eabf8cd7ee0b4611976309bd723f6ad7b301c4_785_784
[5] https://git.weboob.org/laurentb/devel/commit/6c4e9d73d01c7f68c2ab5c106b14ab0ae4ad700c
[6] https://git.weboob.org/weboob/devel/issues/48#note_622
I am a member!
Wow, these program names are way worse than "thefuck" or "BitchX".
It's one thing to use naughty words. It's another thing to name a program after words or phrases that target and insult actual people.
The F word in itself doesn't insult a person, but the N word does.
I was 12 years old once, and talking about boobs and sex in this fashion was fun. Adults who do this just make themselves look like losers though. Obviously none of these guys has a daughter.
Debian could just attach a note to it: "Use at your own risk. The developers of these packages are so obviously immature, we cannot guarantee the packages will work at all, and if they do work that they won't bork your system".
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