Julian Andres Klode dijo [Thu, Mar 31, 2022 at 06:57:06PM +0200]: > > I think this is a good position, especially in this case. > > > > We have Debian developers and users in Ukraine and Russia: hostilities > > continue. > > If the project were to endorse this, you might put people in a dangerous > > situation - in an area subject to Russian control, anybody involved with > > Debian, even peripherally, would be breaking Russian law if the above > > passed and might be subject to 15 years imprisonment. > > [A factual statement with no further judgment]. > > Can you provide a source? Regardless though, I can imagine a crumbling > regime to do basically anything, and this is certainly a valid point, > and also a problem for any of our Russian DDs if they were to face priso > for association with an enemy organisation or whatever.
Regardless of whether Andrew's concerns are to be feared in the current situation, lets apply them in general. If our project aligns to either side in a geopolitical issue, whatever that issue might be, it could be expected that DDs (or, more widely, Debian Contributors) in the affected regions could face problems due to their identification with our project. We can avoid Russian and Ukranian, Chinese and Taiwanes, Serbian and Kosovan, Israeli and Palestinian Debian people many issues by refraining from issuing statements outside our main sphere of interest. > > If this is a precedent, would you feel as happy to make a value call on > > the rights of the Karens / Rohinggya in Myanmar? The Hmong across SE Asian > > borders? Strong feelings about Taiwanese status, flag, designation have > > already caused issues in Debian and other Linux distributions. > > At least for Taiwan and Kosovo, I think that by holding DebConfs in > those places and engaging with their self-determined governments we > have de-facto accepted them as self-determined sovereign nations. Please don't read that much into it. A lot of discussion about this precise topic was generated when we chose Israel for DebConf20 (which was, as you might be aware, converted to an online conference due to a strange bug that's not reported in our BTS, although it might have been observed to have impacted Debian development during the past two years ;-) ). DebConf chooses the place where we will host our conference not based on the politics, not because of the countries -- but based on the work and the commitment shown by the organizing teams. The Israeli proposal was mainly put together by Tzafrir, Lior and Talat, coalescing commitment of several other people. The Kosovo bid was mostly pushed by Enkelena, joining forces with FLOSSK. For Taiwan, we had a somewhat larger team. We did _NOT_ choose any of those countries (nor any other DebConf editions due to their governments. We _have_ been beneficary from resources directly granted by governments. We _do_ consider some geopolitical issues when choosing a DebConf venue, such as the ability to obtain visas or the risk it would pose to our attendees (i.e. countries where homosexuality is forbidden). But we do not "choose sides" nor endorse any government or such entity. - Gunnar Wolf DebConf Committee member
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