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Comment by dvfjsdhgfv | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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