Hi,

I proposed to remove bs1770gain from Debian. Besides the problem from
#913352, the upstream homepage and domain that we direct users to (via
Homepage: field and other places) contain extremist content.

I don't think it's worth distributing software that does this in
Debian.

If there are no objections from the maintainers, I'll reassign this to
ftp.d.o in the next days.

Ansgar

Re: Ansgar

+1. The homepage is full of nazi symbols. Let's get rid of it.

Might be worth considering removal from stable as well.

Christoph

I do not buy into the cancel culture.  I further do not find the guilt by
association argument (his web page is full of bad stuff, so his software
is bad) convincing.  In short, I fail to see it as an argument for
removing bs1770gain from Debian.

I removed the controversial text from the running program in response to
#913352, and see no point is doing anything more with that issue.

The bs1770gain program is an excellent tool to adjust the sound level of
media files, and I do not care much about any real or percived political
views of its author.  I see no need to spend time studying it, nor
comment on my view of it, in a Debian context.

Re: Petter Reinholdtsen

By playing innocent and claiming that this would be "cancel culture",
you are effectively promoting these views. The problem is within
bs1770gain, not the rest of Debian.

That is by far not enough. The homepage header is still pointing
directly to a page with clear nazi content. And even if you remove
that, the racism/fascist/nazi crap still part of the source code that
we ship.

It's not just "views" of the author. The crap is deeply embedded into
the source code. This thing needs to go.

Christoph

[Christoph Berg]

No, I am not.  Exceptional claims require exceptional proofs.

Where and what is this 'crap' that is 'deeply embedded into the source
code'?  Are we talking about the stuff disabled by
debian/patches/2000-non-controversial-usage.patch or something else?

A friend of mine from USA visites this summer, and said he was impressed
that in my country people with opposing views were able to talk together
and treat each other with respect.  I believe it is a property that is
worth protecting, as the way to change peoples mind is by treating them
with respend and communicating with them as fellow humans.

There's still a link to his moronic racist views in the Debian
packaging itself (the Homepage field), and the stuff you've patched
out is still in the source we distribute. At the very least they
should be removed IMHO.

There's a difference in degree here that I hope you might recognise?
We like to discuss different opinions, sure. But hatred of others is
not a worthy *opinion*.

Distributing and linking to racist propaganda is really *not*
something Debian should be doing.

Personally I find the story of Daryl Davis inspiring, and believe such
approach have higher chances of success than one using contempt and
rejection.

<URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daryl_Davis >
<URL: https://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/544861933/how-one-man-convinced-200-ku-klux-klan-members-to-give-up-their-robes >

The Homepage URL is a statement of fact about a package, ie its origin
and where users can check out the upstream information.  It is also
useful to track down upstream if it move in the future.  It is not a
useful marketing channel, but can improve search engine ranking slightly
due to its use within Debian.  I believe the advantages of machine
readable links to the package origin outweigh any improved search
ranking, as I believe the latter is very minuscule.

If I understand the objections about the code, it is about the strings
'#WLM' and 'Nanos gigantum humeris insidentes.'.  The former seem to be
a reference to 'white lives matters', a sad reaction to the 'black lives
matter' movement that have gained traction the last few years[1], and
the latter is a reference to a cristian quote initially from Bernard of
Chartres, according to wikipedia[2], and later made more known by Isac
Newton.  As I see it these strings have no operational function for the
software and I have no attachment to them whatsoever.  I understand that
the objections is regarding believed intent behind the strings.  I do
not see any point in spending time discussing them, and thus removed
them from the binary.  In my opinion they have no marketing or
promotional value in the source, so I see very little gain from taking
the extra work to repack the tarball with these 9 lines from the source
code

 [1] <URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Lives_Matter >
 [2] <URL:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_on_the_shoulders_of_giants >

my few cents: the problem with censorship is, once you start, the
rabbithole is infinite.
Whatever shitty homepage or comment it is, eventually it's just a homepage
or comment.
I think debian-devs should not be going down the rabbithole of scanning all
code for 'bad' words, bad images, suspicious logos etc, as the creativity
of humans in infinite too..
The reactive path also plays in the hands of those activists (expect
"debian turns out to be ran by X" youtube vids).

kind regards

Leon (and hi if we haven't met yet)

Cat't agree more. The offensive content has been patched out already there
is no merit to keep digging down on it more and more.
This package is actually useful as Petter already stated clearly, so removing
it just on the basis of a homepage does not seem good.

A sensible compromise maybe to remove the homepage field from d/control if that
serves the purpose. Debian was always about technology and shall always be about
that (let's not forget that at the end of the day it is an operating system).
Imposing debian values over each line of code over each package makes it no longer
fully focussed about technology. We can't and shouldn't expect each upstream's ideologies
to be same as ours, that's literally impossible.


I personally value inclusiveness, being excellent to people a lot but those things
should be applied to developers/contributors engaging in debian. Not for each and every
package's contributors that lands in debian.
I doubt if a user is going to migrate all the way through the source code,
and visit upstream homepage and get offended because _we_ vendor the software. In the
end it's our and the user's loss because a useful software would be dropped out of the bag for
reasons not related to technical aspect.

In the end, you will do what you want (i.e. maybe removing the package and I know that) but I just
wanted to speak up.
(And I see this as a different case as compared to the fortunes-off thing as this does not spit
that kind of virtiol onto user's terminal after the patch)

It is clear that there is no concensus on this issue.  It is not a
technical problem with the code, but a question of opinions.  Because of
this, I set severity to wishlist.

I wonder if there is a better way to deal with this than reassigning #1024493
to the tech-ctte? (Looping in the community team would be my other idea.)

I'm also wondering if someone who is describing promoting nazis^wtheir white
german heritage as a question of opinions is really suitable to be a Debian
developer! Seriously. Go to that webpage and read yourself. (But do use torbrowser...)

Also, this developer is on the lowNMU list, so maybe NMUing the package
and removing the links pointing to that homepage could be a first,
hopefully rather non-controversial step.

But then, I really don't see why we should keep software by an open white supremacist
in Debian, if there are alternatives, and there are, as documented in this
bug.

Le Sun, Dec 04, 2022 at 08:25:09AM +0100, Petter Reinholdtsen a écrit :

Hi Petter,

I came to this bug through the discussion on debian-project@l.d.o.

The homepage of bs1770gain is clearly an outlier.  I have downloaded
the text contents of 35,760 homepages listed on my apt's cache and
screened for the kind of keywords found in bs1770gain's homepage or
related to discriminated communities, and found:

  - bs1770gain,
  - a second package that clearly dehumanises a whole category of people,
    on which I will open a bug,
  - a SF game package with clear bad taste in the vocabulary ("The
    ultimate goal is to genocide the enemy race"), but no association
    with any existing or past human group.  (I will probably do nothing.)
  - A homepage with a typo in it that leads to a porn site (just offered
    to NMU it).

That's all.  I have been considering the use of a LLM for more extended
screening (in a pilot test on bs1770gain and the other package, both
are caught), but I am not sure it is necessary.

I think that we should not lead our end users to one-click exposure to
contents that we deeply disapprove on our communication channels.  Given
the screen I made above, this is a promise that seems easy to make:
there are very few packages to change.

Would you consider to update the bs1770gain package so that its Homepage
field does not link to the official homepage?  Our tech-savy users know
that debian/copyright will lead them to the upstream sources.  (And
of course they know how to use search engines too.)

Obviously, removing the homepage will trigger signals that may attract
more people to the homepage, thus defeating our point.  For instance new
contributors who may propose their help help fix the no-homepage-field
lintian tag.  On debian-project I suggested to either add a lintian
override or to use a Homepage placeholder such as
https://www.debian.org/intro/diversity, but there may be better solutions.
Maybe https://tracker.debian.org/media/packages/b/bs1770gain/copyright-0.9.8-1
or equivalents for instance?

I hope that the points I make feel valuable, especially the
demonstration that bs1770gain is a total outlier among more than 30,000
packages, and that you will consider taking action.

Have a nice week-end,

Charles

Dear Charles,

[Charles Plessy]

I was never in doubt that bs1770gain is an outlier, and your willingness
to process tens of thousands of web pages to try to prove this point did
not really provide any new information, nor change my opinion regarding
the homepage URL of this package.  Note thought that I do find it
valuable to have it measured and documented that this is an outlier, and
to know that there are very few packages from people with views that are
so far from my own.  I also do appreciate your feedback and willingness
to try to follow through your opinion with actions to convince others to
share your view.  I still believe though that the advantages of machine
readable links in debian/control to the package origin outweigh the
effect of any improved search ranking, as I believe the latter is very
minuscule.

Your email did on the other hand remind me to have a look at the package
and made sure I became aware of some minor issues in BTS that need to be
taken care of.  Thank you for this.  I'll try to get to that as soon as
possible, and contacted upstream in the hope that he will fix the C code
to keep the program working also with newer versions of glibc, so I do
not have to.

The reason I find the Daryl Davis story inspiring is that I believe
dialog with the people we disagree with is the only way to change such
peoples minds.  His willingness to have a dialog the members of the Ku
Klux Klan while confronting their opinions seem to me a very good method
to reduce the number of racist people.  The trailer for the documentary
covering the story can be found via
<URL: https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=V7fh5J_mo5E >.

Hey Petter,

sorry - I know that I'm late to this discussion.

One aspect which was not mentioned (yet) within this bug is that the
content of the linked website might very well be illegal according to
german legislation. Due to WW II we have thankfully a very strict
legislation in regards to n**i speech and symbols related to that
episode of time.

According to german legislation you/we/debian is partly also responsible
for all links on our website - german: "zu eigen machen". See e.g.
https://www.prigge-recht.de/haftung-fuer-inhalte-und-links-im-internet/
(unfortunately in german)

Please do contact a lawyer if this website is legal under german
jurisdiction before discussion any further. If there are any
uncertainties please remove all links to the website.  All debian
website are accessible within germany and the upstream author is
obviously also a german racist.

With best regards
Patrick