Debian's Anti-Harassment Team Is Removing a Package Over Its Name | Hacker News Reader

Debian's Anti-Harassment Team Is Removing a Package Over Its Name

phoronix.com

50 pointsValmar47 comments

The name alone is likely not a problem, and it’s unlikely that other Scunthorpe names will cause problems purely on the name.

The authors of the project made the logo misyoginost (the OO) are two globes representing breasts, and there’s reports of other juvenile work in the same vein. That’s enough to cross the line.

There was a JS testing framework called Testacular, which was also fine until attracted more male genetalia references in the libraries extracted and the documentation, at which point it wasn’t fine anymore. Called Karma now.

Just a name can be can be unintentional, a language fub or acceptably silly and whimsical. But creating and attracting artwork, words, references and trolls makes things toxic.

There is a line, and it is the anti harassment team’s job to draw it.

What's misogynistic in a picture representing breasts? Are they pictured in pain, or something like that?

There is actually no such picture so no one knows, the logo has spirals, or currently, Christmas tree decorations.

I bet if you make a public poll asking what part of a human body can be represented by two spheres of glass hanging, the woman's breast will not be a winner.

More than that, there are some pretty bad insults, here's one that was removed:

https://git.weboob.org/weboob/devel/merge_requests/228

They then added it back with a different insult:

https://git.weboob.org/weboob/devel/merge_requests/232/diffs...

I mean I can understand the sentiment some might have that overzealous political correctness is taking over. I might be on that side of the fence if this was just purely about the name. But this is on a whole different level. Debian doesn't need to ship this if they don't want to. I personally wouldn't want to make a distro that provides my users software to install that insults them (and not a joking insult, this is just straight up poor taste). It just looks tacky, isn't necessary, and (this is biggest issue) is very insulting to certain groups of people.

Yeah, my bar is already pretty low. Random insults directed at me are fine, but I’m not going to ask my team to even evaluate this as viable software, because both the women and men will probably be uncomfortable with this. That’s a sad state for a technical project to be in.

Wow! so the asshole detector detected assholes in the seat of the decision makers at debian.

It's sad when debian is not a welcoming place anymore and makes stupid decisions like this that make it look bad.

Great a package that happens to be really useful and innovative is now removed. Thanks to this much needed move women are now massively using debian right away because they do not feel threatened anymore by this package name, specifically among all those non english speaking people like France where this software is from.

On the other hand this move may make debian looks bad and unwelcoming.

One day we will be asked why did we allow literal nobodies to enjoy these power trips at the cost of our work and community.

Forgot to add source for the "asshole detector reference: http://laurent.bachelier.name/2013/12/weboob-the-asshole-det...

Just found out that the devs are aware of the situation and posted about it last august in one of the most prominent french linux website.

they basically say that since 2010 they've been trolled on regular basis about the name of their software that happens to be a coincidence. These trollings gave them the inspiration to push further with visual elements and other part of the naming scheme used for other components.

The regular attacks from social justice warrior seeing in weboob a cisgender patriarcal homophobic masculinism are causing incomprehension among the female devs contributing to weboob and among the women gravitating around this project. Mostly it seems these attacks are coming from men who want to impose their view on women about what's right and wrong.

He ends the post by saying that he was supposed to give a talk with his girlfriend data scientist about the conjoint use of weboob and machine learning to scrape dating websites at pyconFR titled "find love with weboob <3", though the talk was well recevied, he was asked to provide a different title to the talk due to chances that people misinterpret it and complain based on the code of conduct of PyconFR.

https://linuxfr.org/users/moules/journaux/le-comble-du-ridic...

Do any Debian package names refer to anything which sounds violent? If so, all offenders should be eradicated!

And how about that "fsck" thing, that seems like a thinly veiled swear word, too. I know I'm cursing if I have to invoke it ;)

Removal for an acronym ending in "boob" seems really over the top to me. Though in this apparently hyper-vigilant time in which we live, perhaps I'm not allowed an opinion since I am a male with only breasts and not boobs.

Though in this apparently hyper-vigilant time in which we live, perhaps I'm not allowed an opinion since I am a male with only breasts and not boobs.

Of course you're allowed an opinion. Other people are allowed opinions too though, and if you're not going to respect what other people think (even when you disagree) then no one has any reason to listen to you.

First immediate association with this was some forum bots which cannot understand context and check posts for obscene words using a simple regexp, having huge rate of false alarms as the result.

Surely Scunthorpe bots would raise alarms for git and gimp? They are full word matches, and in my culture the words are more offensive than boob.

I think it's more the gratuitous insertion of sex into an area that has nothing inherently to do with sex, not that the word is itself offensive.

Unfortunate acronym, but this is so asinine. Did the people who reported this have nothing better to do?

I guess liboobs is next?

What about coq? https://packages.debian.org/stable/math/coq

Oh God. Is the ebook converter that can take the proprietary LIT formate done for too? It's call clit.

http://www.convertlit.com/index.php

Reminds me of the "hot-babe" package from 2004: https://lwn.net/Articles/113644/

As I understand the actual reason, it’s mainly about the package being over-sexualized when the package itself has nothing to do with sexiness:

https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2018/07/msg00428.html

My main concern is that this might be only a beginning as said in phoronix forums:

  > 12-20-2018, 03:16 AM
  >
  >... and to be a bit more serious: This is only the testrun. 
  > You will see them removing packages because of "non-
  > compliant" political views of developers.

It's the first time I've heard about Weboob, and it looks like a genuinely useful package, I'm definitely trying it out.

As for the name, I can see the tool is created mainly by French people. Frankly, having some Americans ask them to change the name would have to sound bizarre to them.

Given the logo, (removed) homophobic comments[1] and error message, the blogpost on the topic[2], a developer's idea of a "welcoming and inclusive environment" [3], and the range of icons used in the tool [4], I think it's pretty clear that the developers do understand, and don't wish to change anything.

This comment[5] from a Debian developer seems an excellent summary of the issue:

"It's fine to show a woman in underwear if you try to sell women's underwear […]. It's not ok to show a woman in underwear if you try to sell a chair (and the scantily clad woman is just decoration / an object to draw attention to the ad) […]

"It's IMO fine to talk about and show breasts in a game which teaches the names of body parts to children; or in an app that helps women to detect early warnings signs of breast cancer; or (Ian's example) in software controlling sex toys; etc. Because there they are simply on-topic.

"And it's IMO not ok to use the boobs theme for a web scraper or other software unrelated to boobs themselves, where its only function is to make a small group of users giggle while objectifying, offending or boring the rest of the world."

[1] https://git.weboob.org/weboob/devel/merge_requests/228/diffs

[2] http://laurent.bachelier.name/2013/12/weboob-the-asshole-det...

[3] https://git.weboob.org/laurentb/devel/commit/e4ed7bf8e384f4a...

[4] http://weboob.org/modules

[5] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2018/07/msg00428.html

Yes, it's clearly a cultural difference. I'll give you an example. In the nineties I bought a French software magazine with a CD with apps (I don't remember the name, it could be L'Ordinateur). Apart from demos, trials, shareware etc. I found a separate folder on the CD called "Charmes". I look inside - et voila! - I see the directory full of naked women. In a computer magazine! A major one! I can't think it could happen in the USA (or most other European countries for that matter). So I don't see any possibility of mutual understanding here.

A now defunct Danish computer magazine used to do the same thing, with the porn "cleverly" hidden in a maze-like nested folder structure.

I remember those times. Sometimes you had to pay to view them. I remember one case where I discovered it was regular picture files with just the extension changed, so I wrote a GUI to automatically rename all the files to *.jpg.

I also remember having freewares of mine put on those CDs, which was rewarding.

Wasn't Weboob initially (partly) developed to scrape porn websites? If so, then the name definitely is on-topic.

I don't think so. It was used for scraping dating websites, but not porn IIRC.

The logical solution if something is not ok for you is to not use it. It's not a required dependency in an OS or a critical piece of software without any alternatives.

That's one logical solution.

Another logical solution is to change the thing so that it is OK to use it.

Another is to prevent other people from using it, or to make it more difficult for them to do so, which can promote alternatives.

If you prevent other people from using it or make it more difficult you make the life of those who want to use it a tiny bit harder. Does an issue outweigh it? Per my estimation it doesn't, but you may disagree with me on that.

Yet the decision was made by men; doesn't seem very inclusive does it?

Maybe Debian should remove itself.

I'm a long time debian user and supporter and this is ridiculous. They are going insane over weboob an acronym for "Web Outside Of Browsers"? If people don't like it, then tell them not to use it.

And what's with the "our values" nonsense that so much of the tech leadership and business leadership have been using to justify censorship and their authoritarian behavior?

If they are going to remove weboob, then they should also remove man/pages, mongodb, git, gimp, strip, tail, head, gnome, etc. You can view anything as being offensive if you choose to.

So if debian somehow becomes a naughty word in our culture, will debian just shut down or change their name?

Also, does debian's "values" apply only to english? What if the names is innocuous in english but highly offensive in other languages? Will they remove it from the package list or demand the name be changed?

What is going on here? It's like someone released poison and the few people running things have turned into hypersensitive clowns.

It's a bit disingenuous to claim that weboobs is some kind of an accidental acronym. The logo combined with a brief glance at the page is plenty to make it clear it's very intentional.

A quick look at http://weboob.org/applications/: handjoob wetboob boobsize

Look, I enjoy a good dick and boob joke, but some people (people, not just women) get understandably uncomfortable with people start sniggering about body parts. Hence I don't do it in public. It's called basic manners.

None of your other examples set out to be interpreted that way, and most of them are a hell of a stretch. Weboobs very clearly set out to make as many immature jokes as it could.

If we need more explicit examples, what about the WTFPL? Should a license text exist on the system that has that word in it?

There is also a license which use the word Bugger off (Etymology source this down to heretics who were thought to have come from Bulgaria), calls lawyers for jackals, and has the word twit in it which all sounds quite nasty for a single license.

Is WTFPL in Debian? Given the unclear legal nature of that license I'd be surprised.

Frankly, I'm fine either way. People seem to have assumed from my reply I'm strongly against this Weboob being in Debian. I'm not. I don't really care, but I recognize why an organization might want to distance itself from that kind of humor.

I just really, really, hate bullshit arguments. And claiming that the "boob" association is accidental like the parent is 100% that.

Yes, there are a few packages but if you want specific here is a link: https://packages.debian.org/stretch/libcaca0 A funny side note: Sam Hocevar, Debian's former project leader, wrote version 2 of WTFPL..

But you are right that it is not accidental association. I attribute the humor to be intentional and very similar to that of the WTFPL authors.

Something that might be a accidental association is a pattern I noticed in the debian mailing list. For some peculiar reason, the vast majority of those in favor of removing the package are from the UK and US, while those against it are from east Europe and France. I guess diversity of culture is not high on the agenda of the diversity team.

You might want to learn about how the name weboob came to be:

  --- Day changed Sat Feb 13 2010  
  ...  
  13:02  > bon donc il nous faut un nouveau nom  
  13:02  > enfin, un nom  
  13:09  pankkake> grob  
  13:09  pankkake> Get Rid of Browsers  
  13:10  pankkake> bad (Browsers are Doomed)  
  13:11  > grob, ça me plait  
  13:12  pankkake> et en tout cas y a pas de paquet nommé « grob » sous gentoo  
  13:12  > idem debian  
  13:13  > ou woob (Web Out Of the Browser)  
  13:13  > (variante de ton wootb, en mieux)  
  13:14  > http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woob  
  13:14  pingouine> [Link Info] title: Urban Dictionary: woob  
  13:14  pankkake> sauf que éliminer of et pas the, c’est pas logique  
  13:14  pankkake> bon on peut dire que « out of » c’est un vrai mot  
  13:14  > Web Out Of Browsers, ça se dit pas ?  
  13:14  pankkake> si  
  13:14  > bah voilà  
  13:15  > et woob ça te plait comme mot ?  
  13:15  pankkake> ouais, c’est rigolo  
  13:15  > ça va être dur par contre de grimper dans google  
  13:16  > bon moi woob ça me plait, on part là dessus ?  
  13:16  > à moins que tu aies d'autres suggestions  
  13:16  pankkake> non, j’en ai pas  
  13:17  > ça fait juste chier que le mot existe, en fait :)  
  ...
  17:25  > warning  
  17:26  > il y a déjà un projet nommé woob  
  17:26  > (plus ou moins)  
  17:26  > https://www.ohloh.net/p/wooboard  
  17:26  pingouine> [Link Info] title: wooB  
  17:27  > bon on va dire que c'est pas grav  
  17:27  > e  
  17:29  > hmm, ça peut être weboob (WEB Out Of Browsers)  
  17:29  > pankkake: t'en penses uqoi ?  
  17:31  > ook: pareil  
  17:31  > (même si tu t'en cognes)  
  17:39  pankkake> pas mal, y a boob dedans :)

https://linuxfr.org/nodes/100988/comments/1514849

Not sure the point you are trying to make here. If Google has translated it correctly, that last line:

> pankkake> not bad, there is boob in :)

So... yeah. Started with a boob joke that they double and tripled down on later. Got it.

If you feel uncomfortable then that's your problem, not everyone else's. And as I said, you are free not to use it.

Also, "immature jokes" has been the backbones of technology and the hacking community. It's called having a sense of humor.

If people are so offended, then why not go create your own distribution with only "non-offensive" software instead of poisoning software that exists. That's what made tech and the open source and hacking community so wonderful. Not everyone has to be boring cookie cutter puritans. Rather than doing that, the puritans are trying to enforce their authoritarian vision on everything.

Most of the debian and open source and tech community doesn't care about weboob or the hypersensitive agenda. Why should the community be affected by a tiny handful of puritans?

> If you feel uncomfortable then that's your problem, not everyone else's. And as I said, you are free not to use it.

That's a lazy argument, and you know it.

"If your offended by me watching porn in my office, that's your problem not mine, feel free not to come in."

Or just consider if that package was called the n-word. Would you be upset with Debian for not choosing to distribute that?

> Also, "immature jokes" has been the backbones of technology and the hacking community. It's called having a sense of humor.

Slavery was the backbone of the American cotton industry. We seem to be under the impression that was a bad thing.

Look, we all know that a line exists. You can argue about where is should be, but trying to argue there isn't one is just lazy, and refusing the actually engage in thought.

This boils down to one simple thing: Debian chose not to distribute some guys boob joke. Seriously, that's what your mad about? Flip it around, and show me someone coming into the project demanding the name be changed, and I'm on your side. But just because you told a fart joke doesn't mean I have to repeat it.

>If people are so offended, then why not go create your own distribution with only "non-offensive" software instead of poisoning software that exists.

Feel free to create your own distribution that does. We already have a distribution that cares about this kind of thing. It's called Debian.

> Most of the debian and open source and tech community doesn't care about weboob or the hypersensitive agenda.

Citation needed.

> some people (people, not just women) get understandably uncomfortable with people start sniggering about body parts. Hence I don't do it in public. It's called basic manners.

All right. But is this an issue for an “Anti-Harassment Team”? I mean, there might be basic standard of decency which Debian should uphold, and this package might fail that standard and ought therefore be removed, but in that case, the Anti-Harassment Team should have nothing to do with this – this would be an issue for the whole of the Debian project to decide on what limits on basic decency to have.

Or, the over-sexualization present in the package is actually harassing some specific group, in which case the AHT would be perfectly correct to take issue with the package. But the argument here is rarely made explicit.

Well I'm the usually the one being radically free-speech, etc. And I guess mostly here too.

But: This project seems _really_ immature. Not that it should be banned for it in this case or any other. But you can't deny the intention behind it. And more: The photo you see on the projects website? You can find the un-edited original of it on the web. And the middle paper doesn't have the logos spirals on it... Which, again, is fine. But the naming is 100% intentional.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com