
Since SVN revision r4027 source code is personally insulting me (2008) - 6581
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=477454
======
gregmac
Consider the amount of effort collectively spent by people in that thread
trying to justify not spending the time to modify a single line of code, where
the fix is just to substitute in any other meaningless string placeholder. Any
single person involved could have applied the fix in several orders of
magnitude less time than they spent typing a reply.

I mostly skimmed the inane discussion, but I think at one point someone was
trying to make the argument "if we're going to fix this, we also have to fix
every occurrence of profanity within the entire Debian codebase"?

Given that was 12 years ago, it would be interesting to hear the same people's
current reactions to their response at the time.

~~~
Arnavion
>where the fix is just to substitute in any other meaningless string
placeholder. [...] I mostly skimmed the inane discussion,

You shouldn't have skipped the part where they talked about how the fix was
not just that. (Though I don't think the actual fix merited the amount of
bikeshedding it got either.)

------
lobe
I clicked on the link thinking it would be someone being offended over nothing
as tends to be my stance. But no, that is too far. I wonder what the culture
is like such that anyone thought committing that, with your name on the
commit, was a good idea.

~~~
MPSimmons
And then the replies defending the idea of not changing it.

I am at a loss.

------
Daviey
The day I lost respect for Lennart Poettering, was when a user reported a
bug[0] that starting pulseaudio (which he authored) gave a vulgar error
message and his response was simply "Sorry, but please don't waste my time,
will you?"[1].

It wasn't as if the user was doing anything exotic, just opening it:

    
    
      $ pulseaudio
      W: main.c: D-Bus name org.pulseaudio.Server already taken. Weird shit!
    

In the end Ubuntu carried a patch specifically to remove it. I thought it was
a real shame he thought that it was both appropriate to do in the first place,
and acceptable to be that dismissive to a polite bug report.

Doesn't surprise me he later won a Pwnie award[2] for his bad handling of
bugs, specifically security. I'd recommend giving them a read!

[0]
[https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/+bug/44...](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/+bug/444400)

[1]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20101129202632/http://pulseaudio...](https://web.archive.org/web/20101129202632/http://pulseaudio.org/ticket/672)

[2]
[https://pwnies.com/archive/2017/winners/#lamestvendor](https://pwnies.com/archive/2017/winners/#lamestvendor)

------
Etheryte
While I'm not familiar with any of the people involved, it's very puzzling to
me to see some people actively oppose removing such blatant personal insults.
Surely changing one string in a package shouldn't be a challenge to Debian
maintainers?

~~~
ComputerGuru
I would have changed it. That said, I get where (presumably) the reluctance to
change it comes from. It means diverging from upstream and introducing
patches. When upstream changes, your patches fail, the package breaks. It's
introducing frailty for non-technical correctness, which is a bit harder to
justify for many engineers I know than frailty for technical correctness.

------
Lammy
See also: Gentoo bug #124595 '"quodlibet" package is useless'

[https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=124595](https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=124595)

~~~
Arnavion
I don't think that one is particularly relevant. The quodlibet author is right
to complain there.

Distro users should be reporting bugs in the distro bug tracker, and the
distro package maintainer should be the one to surface these to the author, or
in that specific case, let it rot because there's no maintainer.

~~~
Lammy
It's completely relevant. The original Debian issue was the same general
thing, with the distro packaging QL alongside an incompatible gstreamer
leading to bug reports for the dev: [https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-
bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=421167#15](https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-
bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=421167#15)

------
JoshTriplett
Is there some especially compelling reason to dredge up a decade-old petty
flamewar? Does anyone believe doing so would produce some interesting
discourse or enlightenment?

~~~
compiler-guy
Culturally this is very interesting to me. So here is one vote that is glad it
showed up again.

------
dochtman
This is (2008).

------
merlincorey
The best part of this thread (from a yak shaving nerd perspective) is joeyh's
breakdown of profanity filtered for personal insult in the Debian changelog:
[https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-
bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=477454#101](https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-
bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=477454#101)

"""

Now that this bug has been brought to my attention, I cannot help myself. I
have to grep Debian changelogs for profanity, filter for profanity that
includes personal insults, and wonder why these packages reached the archive
w/o RC bug reports being filed:

"""

~~~
Tomte
I still don't understand where the personal insults are.

"The fucked up system release": no personal insult

"Changed debian/watch to match with the new fucking Sourceforge Interface.
Sourceforge sucks!": no personal insult

and so on.

The only ones are possibly "thanks Gerfried Fucks" and "The upstream author is
kind of a lazy bastard".

Still, what is that exercise supposed to mean for that bug?

~~~
hinkley
> \+ file:///Sebastian/Droge/please/choke/on/a/bucket/of/cocks", "")

I’m pretty sure that if someone did that to any of several people I know,
they’d find out that not all nerds are soft.

~~~
Tomte
That's obvious,I was talking about Joey Hess and his "there are so many
personal insults in other packages, we can't do anything about it" examples.

------
dewey
This really shines a bad light on some of these Debian maintainers. Everyone
spending all that time arguing about that in dozens of posts instead of just
fixing it and moving on.

------
jimbob45
Heh that’s pretty funny.

------
severine
2008!

