Hitler Quote Controversy In the BSD Community

New submitter Seven Spirals writes: Recently, the FreeBSD folks have removed Fortune with a fairly predictable far right 4chan condemnation. Then last weekend saw a lively debate on NetBSD's current-users mailing list about the inclusion of Hitler quotes in the Fortune database with dozens of posts falling on the left and right. The quotes themselves are fairly tame material probably intended as cautionary. However, the controversy and the reaction of BSD users has been real and very diverse. So far, the result has been to pull Fortune out of FreeBSD and to relocate the quotes into the "offensive" database in NetBSD's case.

Comments

Re:I refuse to be trolled

[eneville]

This. Fortune is just a database of strings. It is as much a library as a public library, there seems to be gentrification in the community, IMO, if it offends get over it. Don't go and try to memory hole history, it happened, the west is the way it is now due to the battles, but you have to remember at the time Hitler did have a following, no matter how right or wrong, it is worth remembering what he did so that it can be avoided in the future. If we ignore it fully then how can we be wise to stop a repeat?

Much ado about nothing

[wjcofkc]

I think that's been defended enough. What should worry people is when Hitler quotes are dropped in other context. There was an Antifa rally awhile back. One of the prominent members was giving a fairly lengthy speech. And the many Antifa members who were there could not contain themselves over these great word being spoken that embodied all that they are. There was a problem. Every last bit of the speech was directly, word for word, quoted from Hitler speeches. When you are so busy looking for monsters that you find them where there are none, the real monster will sneak up and gas you.