( some --such as missing-- quotes manually reinserted )

On 170718-08:31+0200, Jaromil wrote:
( https://lists.dyne.org/lurker/message/20170718.062527.b6650d9d.en.html )

> On Sun, 16 Jul 2017, Antony Stone wrote:
( https://lists.dyne.org/lurker/message/20170716.192004.e25654db.en.html )

> > On Sunday 16 July 2017 at 19:55:21, Miroslav Rovis wrote:
( https://lists.dyne.org/lurker/message/20170716.185521.017ad951.en.html )

> > > P.S. I hope no one will produce any hatred of same-sex people out of my
> > > words above. By all means, pls. no!, I only regard those facts to be
> > > truthful as deemed, by a long standing majority, previously to that
> > > medical scientists vote, and false after that vote. IOW that the behavior
> > > of those people is an aberration, is a disease. Such people need help to
> > > get normal. But I don't hate them by any means. And I oppose any
> > > discrimination against them. They are of course human beings as any other
> > > human beings. With all the rights as any other human beings.

> > 1. What does this have to do with Devuan?
>
> perhaps just one thing, that the first image this project ever
> released was a Valentine present, with attached a love declaration,
> between two men. it may be defined a platonic dev relationship, but
> definitely makes Devuan among the most gay distributions out there -
> and with a certain pride! :^D
>
> ciao

To what extent is the above statement by one of the unelected-as-yet leaders',
if not _the leader_
(
and that unelectedness is still fine, but I don't think it can remain fine
forever; Jaromil, pls. see the quotes of your own publicly written statement
(of sorts) of intents further below...
)

To what extent is the above statement of one of our leaders' if not the
leader's, explicit support of gender ideology, and to what extent is it --and
if so, to what purpose?-- an lighthearted banter which carries no other meaning
but good-natured teasing?

The question is not irrelevant, and the answer to is is not obvious. There are
lots of places where gender idiology is dominant, there are places on the
internet where any conservative views are banned...

And I sicerely hope Devuan is not going towards adopting a model of such a
transformation for itself, and attempting to pull along all the momentum of the
movement that it started into such a transformation.

People come to Devuan because of its promise of init-freedom, because they are
sick with SystemDestruction and Poetterware.

I don't think, and I believe I speak here for a huge majority of people, I
don't think they came to Devuan to be in anything like a gay club...

It's fine to get an (alegorical) liberal club in Devuan, and make a compartment
in the liberal club for gays. (I sure won't be one of the visitors there, but
it's fine.)

But then it *must* also be fine to get a conservative club, and open, say, a
Bible-study compartment in that conservative club, in this alegorical
Devuandom.

None of that, however, would be fine (not the gay compartment in the liberal
club, neither my preferred alegorical Bible-study compartment in the
conservative club, I admit) if the Devuan Leaders were to be forcing that
club's views, be it liberal or conservative, and especially not the extreme
liberal which is the gender idiology, and neither the steadfast conservative
approach like mine, I agree...

None of that, however, would be fine if the Devuan Leaders would be forcing any
of that, either liberal or conservative views, let alone gender idiology, such
as, just to make a very clear example on both, such as promoting and declaring
Devuan as being something like a gay club, or, say, recommending Bible-study to
all the newbies, God forbid!... [None of that, however, would be fine if the
Devuan Leaders were to force any of that] onto the users/testers/developers!

I don't want to be in the (alegorical) gay club. And I'm just fine you not
wanting to be in my (alegorical) Bible-study group.

But pls. do not impose gender idiology to people who only want the promised
init-freedom and freedom from poetterware. Believe in it if you want, but do
not expect and absolutely do not require me to believe in gender idiology.

As you can see, the rhetorical-to-be question turns out to have been a great
question.
> > 1. What does this have to do with Devuan?

All of this discussion has a lot to do with Devuan. If gay-supporting views are
allowed, for banter and ... pride (sic! ...), my reply page to the question
about Bible translations
(
the question:
https://lists.dyne.org/lurker/message/20170716.171824.9f2d2a33.en.html
the reply:
https://lists.dyne.org/lurker/message/20170716.185521.017ad951.en.html
)
should really not be disallowed and frowned upon either.

For mere sake of neutrality and the always-so-promptly declared, from the
liberal camp, principle of liberty of views, if not for any other reasons.

But the above thread really has to do a lot with Devuan, because these matters
need to be defined in a Social Contract (is there any draft thereof?) and in a
Constitution.

But Devuan Constitution-to-be is still in a state of draft:
https://git.devuan.org/devuan/devuan-project/wikis/DevuanConstitution

Let us now harken back to earlier, so almost somewhat olden days of Devuan. We
will be traveling back to year 2015, just short of two years ago from this
email of mine that you're reading:

In the email below, to this same mailing list as this email I'm writing,
Jaromil wrote.

Author: Jaromil
Date: 2015-09-03 11:40 -000
To: dng
Subject: Re: [DNG] trollproof spec

Which email is publicly archived (among other places on the internet) at:
https://lists.dyne.org/lurker/message/20150903.114016.317bf12a.en.html

In that email, it reads, the first suggested reading is near complete email
pasted over:
> Regarding the "dictatorial" problem rest assured that the present situation
> is just temporary. Both me and nextime are leading in a more centralized way
> the development and community process until the 1.0 is reached. Meaning we
> have easy and direct reach to the big-red-button in case of all sorts of
> attacks from the systemd-hooligans - and they aren't lacking, there is a
> denigration campaign against us that has yet to be over. But no prob, is not
> hurting, actually its even motivating at times and our main focus is to
> develop our project, not denigrate others
>
> The way we will unlock this situation will be through a social contract and
> constitution for Devuan, which takes off from the Debian one but grows or
> shrinks in needed directions. Us current "dictators" will be not directly
> involved in its drafting (meaning who is in absolute power now does not have
> absolute power on the drafting of the social contract)
>
> VUAs believe in expertise as much as in democracy (or perhaps even more) so
> we are using some of the funds to hire a renown researcher in humanities and
> technology with solid experience of F/OSS and hacker communities to propose a
> new draft and review our process here. If nothing changes in the present
> schedule, she will come up with something interesting to read and debate in a
> couple of months from now.
>
> ciao

Next is the same reading, but commented, and with my questions asked.
> Regarding the "dictatorial" problem rest assured that the present situation
> is just temporary.
That what is in the thought above called the '"dictatorial" problem' is the
same condition/state as what I termed "unelectedness" of our "unelected-as-yet
leaders", and I wrote that it "is still fine, but I don't think it can remain
fine forever", to paste what I already wrote, at the onset of this email.

> Both me and nextime are leading in a more centralized way
> the development and community process until the 1.0 is reached.
Thank Goodness, the 1.0 has, relatively recently, been reached. I hope you will
be making good on the promises.

> Meaning we have easy and direct reach to the big-red-button in case of all
> sorts of attacks from the systemd-hooligans - and they aren't lacking, there
> is a denigration campaign against us that has yet to be over. But no prob, is
> not hurting, actually its even motivating at times and our main focus is to
> develop our project, not denigrate others
I've always only tried to help against such onslaught, most of the time I could
only minimally help (up until recently I was mostly only lurking onto this list
and Devuan, but for one year I now I've ran Devuan in VM, and by now I've
converted all my machines to Devuan). I surely support you in the fight for
init-freedom.

> The way we will unlock this situation will be through a social contract and
> constitution for Devuan, which takes off from the Debian one but grows or
> shrinks in needed directions. Us current "dictators" will be not directly
> involved in its drafting (meaning who is in absolute power now does not have
> absolute power on the drafting of the social contract)
That is that promise and I surely like it.

> VUAs believe in expertise as much as in democracy (or perhaps even more) so
> we are using some of the funds to hire a renown researcher in humanities and
> technology with solid experience of F/OSS and hacker communities to propose a
> new draft and review our process here. If nothing changes in the present
> schedule, she will come up with something interesting to read and debate in a
> couple of months from now.
Some development must have happened, and also published, from then on, by now.
I have searched, but not so very intensively (resources here are not
unlimited).
Can we have links to this reknown researcher's, to her work (or is it just the
Constitution link that I gave
(
repasting it:
https://git.devuan.org/devuan/devuan-project/wikis/DevuanConstitution
)
)? Or maybe she would be so kind to reply here as well?

However, it is democracy that I would very much like to see you guys uphold
your belief in, as declared above, with actions.

Let me pls. first repeat how I think the use of the big-red-button is still
fine at this time. Just the time for it to remain so should soon be starting to
come to an end. Else it would need to be starting to be called dictatorship
proper and maybe also censorship.

And I hope it hasn't been dictatorship nor censorship so far.

A thread about moderation, and about unnamed (in the thread, and neither
otherwise remembered the names of, so far) people banned, so mostly about
principle (even though I'm in favor of giving the banned people recourse to a
democratic institution such as a greater democratic body, a council or somesuch
in Devuan; why? because there's no just court in any democratic
country/institution/association that does not give a possibility of recourse
against pronounced or non-pronounced judgements on persons), but the links to
discussion below are mostly about principle, and that thread about moderation
can still be read at and around:

by Rick Moen, long-time admin of Silicon Valley Linux Users Group (SVLUG):

Forums: was I have a question about libsystemd0 in devuan ascii,
https://lists.dyne.org/lurker/message/20170713.203321.8592ca14.en.html

the advice there, I sincerely believe, is precious even to VUAs, and a reply
of sorts would have been great to read from moderators of Devuan DNG mailing
list (this one that this email hopefully has appeared in). None yet... But with
some discussion on Devuan Constitution and Social Contract that I'm trying to
start here, maybe it's not too late...

and me, no moderation experience, only having-been-unjustifiably-banned
(elsewhere) experience:

( same subject )
https://lists.dyne.org/lurker/message/20170713.191505.6a4421ed.en.html

where I call for, in brief, moderation to be public, without any secret
backroom decisions. Really, pls. no big-red-buttons in hands of one or two for
much longer yet... At this time we're just short of two years since your
promise of democracy, Jaromil... I would appreciate a reply of sort for that
email of mine, too.

Just like with OpenRC upload that I offered to users once I didn't anymore need
any packages myself, because I had already installed OpenRC, I dedicated the
ample time to put this email together hoping to contribute that Devuan
continues to be --or restores the openness and freedom where it possible has,
to minor extent, failed to be-- open and free as the Veteran Unix
Administrators proclaimed it to be when Devuan started to become, out of
Debian.

Regards!

--
Miroslav Rovis
Zagreb, Croatia
https://www.CroatiaFidelis.hr