Serious Question about Censorship and Gentoo

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geders · Post by **geders** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 1:15 am

While talking to my boss and her visiting niece and nephew (<10 yrs old), they remarked about my screensaver. It happened to be GLsnake, a part of the xscreensaver package. This screensaver takes a common child's toy and manipulates it into different shapes (like a bendable linear lego set).

Anyway, the niece (who happened to have one of those toys with her at the time) instantly became amazed at the shapes on the screen. As it cycled through the models, she would try to guess the shape (which is described in the upper left corner of the screen). Unfortunately the GLsnake bent itself into the shape of an "Erect Penis", then a "Vagina", and then "Flaccid Penis" and then to "Penis".

To my horror my bosses' niece started asking everyone what a erect penis was, and some less than pleasant faces looked at me asking why my bosses' neice was seeing genitalia on my screen.

These "shapes" were added in the latest release of xscreensaver (and very quietly mind you). It is a trivial "patch" to remove those "shapes" from the GLsnake source code. Should I submit the patch to bugs.gentoo.org, ask the xscreensaver package to give an option to show genitalia, or just keep my mouth shut?

I realized that this suddenly became a "censorship" issue, so what is everyone's take on censoring this kind of stuff? Completely harmless, but potentially troublesome (especially from your boss). Should a patch be provided by Gentoo, or should it only come from the original developer (unlikely), or should no such alteration be done?

Genone · Post by **Genone** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 1:21 am

Sounds like a case for the "offensive" USE flag.

geders · Post by **geders** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 1:29 am

Hmm, never heard of the "offensive" USE flag...I'll take a look at how people have been using it...

crimsonphire · Post by **crimsonphire** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 1:55 am

That kinda sucks! But using an offensive content use flag sounds pretty clever!

Aurora · Post by **Aurora** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 2:08 am

I can understand your frustration.

I wouldn't have a problem with some sort of censorship for something like this. There should be some type of warning, especially if it was added quite recently.

sry that happened to you; I'm sure it was embarassing and worrisome at the same time (what do you tell your boss after that happens, anyways?).

richk449 · Post by **richk449** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 3:16 am

It is a huge stretch to call what you are asking for censorship. It is not as if you are asking that political information be restricted or people prevented from learning the truth. You are simply asking that gentoo not install, by default, screensavers that should not be viewed by children.

I usually am a anti-censorship-nut, but this case is pretty clear to me.

Wolfpack98 · Post by **Wolfpack98** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 2:24 pm

I'm against censorship when it comes to a lot of things, however in this case I'd have to say getting rid of those offensive items would be a good idea...

I make it a point to se my screensaver to something that won't be considered 'offensive' at work *AND* at home, as I get a flood of kids at my house every once in a blue moon (i'm 24, and my mother tends to invite half of the family over for chit chat!).

I'd definitely either 1) apply the patch to your local system, 2) create a "offensive" USE flag or 3) take the screensaver off. I generally stick to two screensavers: XFLame and XMatrix. None of the others interest me oddly enough

avenj · Post by **avenj** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 3:12 pm

I agree, this should be filtered out, preferably via a USE flag.

Please do file a bug, and let us know what the bug number is so interested folk here can track it.

Wolfpack98 · Post by **Wolfpack98** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 3:50 pm

Who? me? <G>

Wolfpack98 · Post by **Wolfpack98** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 3:53 pm

Bug has been submitted...

Bug 46244

avenj · Post by **avenj** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 4:21 pm

Wolfpack98 wrote:Who? me? <G>

Well, preferably geders for the xscreensaver issue -- he claimed to have a patch handy

Wolfpack98 · Post by **Wolfpack98** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 4:28 pm

Well, oops?

Spawn of Lovechild · Post by **Spawn of Lovechild** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 4:30 pm

What's wrong with the human body - I find it offensive to repeatedly see people complain about FREE software.

Seriously, was it really dick, or did you interpret it as one.. '

All this censorship pisses me off.

( . )( . )

shakti · Post by **shakti** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 4:57 pm

Spawn of Lovechild wrote:

What's wrong with the human body

The human body is something you dont talk about. You have to be ashamed to have a penis hanging between your legs, its discusting, dirty and will eliminate any morale you have. Specially dont talk to children about it. Its better they find out by themselfes when they hit puberty, screw around and reproduce when they are 12. No serious, if we would take the taboo off the subject i believe there would be a lot less sexoffenders on this planet. Why raise your children telling them their body is wrong, taboo ? Why lie to your children? A Human will never have a good relationship with someone else (look at divorce rate) if he does not have a good relationship with himself and that includes his sexuallity. We should be able to say Penis in church without burning in hell.... God did create man in his image, what image did he use for women? Did God look away when he created the penis?

avenj · Post by **avenj** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 5:02 pm

Lovechild: the screensaver said it was an erect penis. While I agree on an idealist level that people should not be so concerned over the human body, the reality is that bosses and parents _are_ concerned, and we should make it possible for people to easily avoid being put in an embarrassing situation.

dvc5 · Post by **dvc5** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 5:03 pm

Spawn of Lovechild wrote:What's wrong with the human body - I find it offensive to repeatedly see people complain about FREE software.

Seriously, was it really dick, or did you interpret it as one.. '

All this censorship pisses me off.

( . )( . )

My curiousity got the best of me and I just tried it right now. There's definitely "vagina" and "erect penis" in the rotation of shapes. This is just about the funniest thing I've ever seen in OSS.

nrl · Post by **nrl** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 5:56 pm

shakti wrote: ...
Did God look away when he created the penis?

While I agree with your point I don't think you can lecture your boss on such a matter when he comes asking why his child is talking about erect penises!
As a side note geders why didn't you stop the screensaver afer the first "indecent" image if you were concerned, I ran the program and they don't exactly appear in rapid succession so you could have stopped it as soon as you saw the first one.
Oh and I agree that USE flags are the best solution. Or you could just turn the labels off on the options for the GLSnake program and pretend it couldn't possibly be a penis.

ebrostig · Post by **ebrostig** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 6:09 pm

Why not just remove the text?

Erik

kamagurka · Post by **kamagurka** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 6:44 pm

shakti wrote:Spawn of Lovechild wrote:
What's wrong with the human body
The human body is something you dont talk about. You have to be ashamed to have a penis hanging between your legs, its discusting, dirty and will eliminate any morale you have. Specially dont talk to children about it. Its better they find out by themselfes when they hit puberty, screw around and reproduce when they are 12. No serious, if we would take the taboo off the subject i believe there would be a lot less sexoffenders on this planet. Why raise your children telling them their body is wrong, taboo ? Why lie to your children? A Human will never have a good relationship with someone else (look at divorce rate) if he does not have a good relationship with himself and that includes his sexuallity. We should be able to say Penis in church without burning in hell.... God did create man in his image, what image did he use for women? Did God look away when he created the penis?

good god, look at him go. yadda yadda yadda. no really, that was terrible.

geders · Post by **geders** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 6:59 pm

Bugs have been submitted as requested.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=46256

I agree that removing the text would be a completely acceptable solution to me...then it is just an abstract shape.

ebrostig · Post by **ebrostig** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 7:28 pm

I updated the bug with that suggestion and then we'll leave it to the developers to decide what is easier.

Erik

nrl · Post by **nrl** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 7:30 pm

ebrostig wrote:I updated the bug with that suggestion and then we'll leave it to the developers to decide what is easier.

Erik

Man it seems nobody reads my posts around here! I already said you can turn the text off in the options for the screensaver.

Edit: Hmm I just checked the option is there in xscreensaver-demo but when you select it the GLSnake program crashes with invalid option - wierd. Oh well I suppose I retract that last remark

.

abzs2k · Post by **abzs2k** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 7:35 pm

Damn. I emerged xscreensaver only a few days ago. I better check to see if my copy is clean or not.

geders · Post by **geders** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 8:51 pm

nrl wrote:a side note geders why didn't you stop the screensaver afer the first "indecent" image if you were concerned, I ran the program and they don't exactly appear in rapid succession so you could have stopped it as soon as you saw the first one.

Actually, I killed the screensaver after she asked questions about the first one...I only saw the others while looking through the source code...it was a new addition from one of the releases (4.12 maybe?)

ebrostig · Post by **ebrostig** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 9:08 pm

nrl wrote:
ebrostig wrote:I updated the bug with that suggestion and then we'll leave it to the developers to decide what is easier.

Erik
Man it seems nobody reads my posts around here! I already said you can turn the text off in the options for the screensaver.

Edit: Hmm I just checked the option is there in xscreensaver-demo but when you select it the GLSnake program crashes with invalid option - wierd. Oh well I suppose I retract that last remark .

Damn...

I'm sorry, I should have seen that, my apologies...

Edit:

again, I overlooked your last comment...
But then I actually tried it and I had no problems with the screensaver after unchecking the "show text" button... I'm using 4.15...

Erik

Serious Question about Censorship and Gentoo

Serious Question about Censorship and Gentoo

Not Censorship