The debian-private mailing list leak, part 1. Volunteers have complained about Blackmail. Lynchings. Character assassination. Defamation. Cyberbullying. Volunteers who gave many years of their lives are picked out at random for cruel social experiments. The former DPL's girlfriend Molly de Blanc is given volunteers to experiment on for her crazy talks. These volunteers never consented to be used like lab rats. We don't either. debian-private can no longer be a safe space for the cabal. Let these monsters have nowhere to hide. Volunteers are not disposable. We stand with the victims.
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Re: next approach: new non-free/contrib policy

> > Absolute Drivel!
> 
> Thank you for your kind words ;-)

:-)  [That probably needed a smile, sorry to be so strident.]

> > If what you say were true, some tin pot dictator could decide to outlaw 
> > computer programs and thus move the entire distribution into non-free.
> > 
> No, we would only need to remove the distribution from any ftp servers in
> that country.

You say that in this (admittedly silly) case we would only need to remove the 
packages in that country, and that this would not affect their main/non-free 
status.

In the case of US servers, on the other hand, the fact that the package cannot 
reside on the servers is enough to warrant expulsion from the main 
distribution.

This is a double standard.

> Removing all ftp servers from the US wasn't determined to be a helpful
> solution.

Absolutely, but there is a difference between the logical structure of the 
distribution, and the physical location and structure of the servers on which 
it resides.

Surely we can decide the logical structure of the archive without being 
blinded by the fact that it may have to be structured differently physically 
(i.e. bits of it outside the US).

> > Please try to avoid ``USA == whole world'' thinking.
> > 
> Nothing in what I said either explicitly or implicitly declared the above
> statement to have any relevance.

Well, there seemed to be an implicit ``US laws matter more'', and that 
impression is reinforced by your dismissal of my pathological example above 
(i.e. that little country's laws don't matter as much as US law).

Oh dear, now I sound like I've got an anti-US chip on my shoulder, which is 
not in fact the case.

All I'm trying to say is that we should make design decisions without 
reference to local legal variations, and then where legal variations cause 
problems, implement technical solutions to overcome them (rather than 
modifying the logical design).

> Gene splicers don't make up the "whole
> world" either, but software that can't be used by Gene splicers is not
> considered to be Free Software. Neither should software that is restricted
> from distribution by a national government.

I think you've got you logic a little tangled here.

If gene splicers declared en-masse that they refused to use nvi for example, 
this would have no effect on nvi's status as free software.  If on the other 
hand author of nvi declared that gene splicers were prohibited from using it, 
this would make it non-free.

Equally, if another group of people (i.e. the population of the US) declare 
that it doesn't want to use bzip, then that has no effect on the freedom or 
otherwise of bzip.

> In addition, the US is not the
> only backward government when it comes to restricting 'cryption software.
> I know that, at least, France has more restrictive laws in this reguard
> than even the US does.

So is this a reason to throw even more packages out of main, or not ?

Cheers, Phil.




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