> On 9 Jul 2026, at 16:55, Antonio Terceiro <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Jul 09, 2026 at 09:58:13AM +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
>> On Wed, Jul 08, 2026 at 05:20:02PM -0700, Soren Stoutner wrote:
>>> On Monday, July 6, 2026 2:04:44 PM Mountain Standard Time Marco d'Itri
>>> wrote:
>>>> On Jul 06, Marco d'Itri <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>> Do you mind removing "Debian might follow the same path" from your site?
>>>>
>>>> For the records, he refused.
>>>
>>> As a fellow Debian Developer, I find that concerning.
>>
>> Me too. Do we have any leverage against a DD who makes false claims about
>> the project on their private web page?
>
> I'm sorry but this is being blown out of proportion. Saying that
> something might happen in the future is clearly someone's opinion (or
> goal!) and needs no policing.
>
> I have no particular sympathy for this "rewrite it in X" fad, but we
> don't know, maybe at some point of the future, rust coreutils may be
> better than GNU coreutils, or maybe not. That's clearly not the case
> today, and if it is someday, a replacement will surely go though a long
> and devastating discussion that will stress us all, before actually
> happening. In the meantime, let people experiment.
I understand where you are coming from. I’m not completely disagreeing with
you, and I’m all for experimenting as well; however, I see a trend of pushing
things further and further. The behavior of not being aggressive on the
surface, not saying anything strong, but doing the opposite, has great
potential to divide people and apparently bothers some of us. It bothers me for
sure.
Yes, Open/Free Software circles are not easy places to be, and the mode of
discussion sometimes resembles a flaming mosh pit. On the other hand, I believe
we can exercise a little more agency and show more respect for each other’s
views.
Yes, writing forward-looking statements in a project page might not be
technically wrong, and we should respect the choice. On the other hand, when
people bring up their discomfort and highlight its dangers, those who do so
command the same respect. Dismissing views and possible dangers is not the
right thing to do here.
Let me put another forward-looking statement: Big Linux vendors might stop
sharing source packages for their versions of uutils, and may even bake in DRM
and/or “user-watching analytics” features into them to TiVoize their
distributions, effectively making them non-free. This possibility bothers me.
While I have nothing about the author(s) of uutils (I don’t know them to begin
with), the possibility of this bothers me a lot. Do we want Debian to be one of
these vendors, enabling this possibility? Where does it place Debian in
relation to its motto, “The Universal Operating System”?
Am I (or others putting this possibility forward) blowing this out of
proportion, too?
Even if we’re going to have this “devastating” discussion, we can address these
questions in a kind and considerate manner. While I see no reason to light the
mailing list ablaze (it’s summer and hot already), I see no reason to desert
the subject completely either.
Kind regards,
H.
