Re: Distributing software written by hostile upstream developers

[Petter Reinholdtsen <pere@hungry.com>]

[Steve McIntyre]
> There has been some discussion in the last couple of years about
> whether or not Debian should distribute software that was written by
> developers that we consider to be "hostile".

In my opinion, the current recommendation in the developer references
is enough for now:

  If you find that the upstream developers are or become hostile
  towards Debian or the free software community, you may want to
  re-consider the need to include the software in Debian. Sometimes
  the social cost to the Debian community is not worth the benefits
  the software may bring.

If someone really want to maintain such package, we should not
prohibit it, but we should make it clear that it is strongly
recommended to not maintain such package, and that the advantage of
the software should be weighted against the problems it causes for the
Debian community.  Perhaps we should also suggest that one start
working on alternatives for packages with hostile upstream, instead of
spending time on social interactions with upstream. :)

> I also ended up talking to multiple people at DebConf about this
> issue and it was suggested that we should have a proper project
> discussion on this front, maybe leading to a GR to properly gauge
> the opinion of the project as a whole.

I do not believe this warrant a full GR vote.  A simple web survey
would be enough, in my opinion.

Happy hacking,
-- 
Petter Reinholdtsen