Rhonda D'Vine

debian.social BoF

A meetup of the debian.social team and community.

How are things going? What next?

DFSG #5, Karl Popper and free society

Debian is very proud of the DFSG. After all it is an integral part of what software we allow in our archives and which aren’t direct part of Debian.

There is this #5 in DFSG: “No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups”. It is an important part. But there is a caveat, when you think of Karl Popper’s Paradox of Tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance.

While we hold up the principle of no discrimination for the license of the software we ship, we have to think about the impact of its usage. With the rise of rightwing movement all around the globe and the increase of discriminatory content there is even software popping up with the sole purpose of supporting intentional discriminatory content under the disguise of “free speech”.

Let’s sit together and discuss if there is a way against this movement and find a way to apply the Paradox of Tolerance to software.