I could not be less sympathetic on this. If you don't want people protesting your actions, don't, like, invade their country.

"But what if it was the US doing the invading?" Yes, even then. If some Iraqi author made an Xsnow that waved little Iraq flags, that's their right. Even if I disagree, it doesn't harm me, and it might inspire me to consider our actions.

"But what if it makes someone's boss get mad at them?" If my boss saw an Iraq flag on my screensaver, I'd say "huh, look at that! I guess that was added in the new version. I'll change it to another screensaver." And if you live in a country there the likely reaction is that your boss might execute you, your government are the baddies.

I'm very sympathetic to Ukraine and the desire to demonstrate or speak out, but I don't see how this instance is very effective, and doing it has a significant cost to the integrity of Debian, as this argument says:

> Russ Allbery agreed that the DFSG was not relevant; he also warned that citing the Social Contract and DFSG ""turns the conversation into rules lawyering without addressing the actual issue"". However, even though xsnow is DFSG-compliant, he did say that the flag display may be something Debian does not want in its archives:

> > I would, in general, say that software that behaves in deceptive ways, which includes hidden behavior changes based on usernames, locales, or other local settings or information that no user would reasonably expect to change behavior in this way is probably not something that we want to have in Debian. It's a very slippery slope and also likely to create a lot of drama to very little benefit.

• belorn

  today at 5:57 PM

  The simple solution that should make everyone happy is to simply document it. That way it is no longer a hidden behavior, and the Debian maintainer could even do that as a patch without the help of upstream.

  • neilv

    today at 6:42 PM

    That might be responding too narrowly to this objection.

    Then there's the question of singling out some subset of Debian users based on their country, for different behavior they presumably don't want and that is against their individual interests (see the other comment, about displaying a flag getting you beaten).

    The solution is to treat everyone fairly and honestly, and to set an example for how people can get along. Imagine Debian is an international space station: the astronauts will help each other, not bicker and backstab. There are other venues for conflicts.

  • smw

    today at 6:15 PM

    The maintainer and upstream are the same person

• JdeBP

  today at 6:02 PM

  It is interesting to read M. Allbery's comment side by side with the discussion here on Hacker News about a CLAUDE.EXE program with hidden behaviour that subtly changes the way that it outputs an information banner based upon timezones, hostnames, and domain names.

  * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48734373

  Further LWN commentary (as observed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48736518) is that the result would not be solely drama but potentially some fairly nasty real world consequences for some people.

One comment really nails the problem with this sort of thing:

" People in Western countries don't realize how bad the situation on the ground actually is¹; random Ukrainian flags showing up on your work monitor can result in severe problems for you (like losing you job, or worse), especially if you work in the government sector. If they show up on your laptop in a random cafe or an airport, you might very well get a beating from one of many "war heroes" that walk around the cities these days.

No, the government sector doesn't just make missiles and bombs, it also covers schools, hospitals, many other things."

• epistasis

  today at 6:00 PM

  And that's not even so bad compared to what would happen to somebody in occupied Ukraine: they would be sent to "the basement." That's the euphemism for the local torture chamber, outside of which they deposit the dead bodies of the tortured to let everybody in the area know what happens if they do something like speak Ukrainian.

• netsharc

  today at 6:24 PM

  When the war started, Europeans were forcing famous Russians living in Europe to denounce their government's evils. For example an opera house demanded a Russian opera singer to say something against the regime or be "blacklisted".

  As if it's so fucking easy to denounce a dictator who has murderous tendencies and who rules your homeland, as if it's so easy to insult him, and then what, not be able to return home and see your friends and family until that dictator is defeated?

  I found those demands so unthinkingly heartless, it's responding to tyranny with your own tyranny...

• WD-42

  today at 6:16 PM

  How is this an issue? Xsnow is a novelty. You have to make two decisions: the first to still be using Xorg at all, the second to install the application itself which is essentially a gag screensaver.

  The idea that some govt employee would get fired for this is extremely far fetched.

• sombragris

  today at 6:07 PM

  Slackware-current upgraded xsnow to the latest version in June 20th but applied a patch from ALT Linux that removed the protestware bits just because of this reason. I support this.

• dgellow

  today at 6:08 PM

  They don’t have to use the software. It’s such a non issue. Xsnow is closer to art than critical software, you can easily ditch it

  • JdeBP

    today at 6:17 PM

    The naïveté of that position is that the users are not informed ahead of time that there's a random chance of a political protest popping up on their screen, so do not get to make an informed choice before it is perhaps too late. It's not mentioned in the doco. It's obfuscated in the source code as an 'extra tree' in an array of xpmtrees. The commit that added this had the commit message 'willem'.

    • dgellow

      today at 6:24 PM

      Please, tell me, who is ever using xsnow in a place where that would be problematic? It’s such a niche software. Again, complete non-issue.

• JoshTriplett

  today at 6:30 PM

  Note that xsnow already displayed such flags randomly, and this just changes the probability.

• michaelmrose

  today at 6:33 PM

  This sounds like a you problem. Suppose you have software that shows famous faces and quotes as a screensaver would you make it by default not show anyone of color so it would be acceptable in rural Oklahoma or make it show no women so it would be acceptable in Iran?

• mopsi

  today at 6:30 PM

  That's also a good argument for completely removing rainbow flags from everything, in more countries than one. Will we see that happening?

• Arodex

  today at 6:11 PM

  I thought it would talk about the situation on the ground in Ukraine, but no...

  Will anyone think of the poor Russians just trying to go on with their lives?

  Do people in Russia realize how bad the situation is on the ground for Ukrainians?

  >No, the government sector doesn't just make missiles and bombs, it also covers schools, hospitals, many other things.

  Schools forming future soldiers, hospitals healing soldiers so that they can go back to the front...

  The naivety here is astounding. The commenter, those who agree with him and all "normal" Russians would benefit to read Hannah Arendt:

  https://philosophybreak.com/articles/hannah-arendt-on-standi...

  Cue the famous quote...

  https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/12/04/good-men-do/

  • netsharc

    today at 6:17 PM

    So, are you American? What are you doing about your governments funding and supplying of genocide? Your litany of excuses also apply to the average Russian...

    • JCattheATM

      today at 6:27 PM

      Except most Russians support their government and believe its lies...

      • netsharc

        today at 6:38 PM

        I can say that about Americans. What proof do you have, or do you "just know it"?

        https://nestcentre.org/what-russians-think-about-the-war-aga...

        > For most ordinary Russians, the war is not a central concern. This may sound cynical, but it’s the truth.

        > When they do think about it, they tend to view it much like the weather: something that one may or may not like, but which lies beyond individual control and to which one simply adapts.

        I admire a friend of mine in London who every weekend went to anti-genocide rallies in London. But at the same time I can imagine it's excruciating work, yelling and protesting and not saving any single Palestinian child's life. Meanwhile in Russia, protesting will get you arrested and probably be sent to the frontline (as a man) or prison (as a woman). Given those choices, would you also not say "Well, I can be angry and depressed about the Ukranians (and my fellow countrymen forced to fight the war) being killed, or I can just go about my day and put this exhausting thought aside"...

        Meanwhile in America, there's a political party using the Nazi playbook to subvert democracy and succeeding. Are you American? Are you doing everything to stop that, or do you see yourself powerless and so you go about your day and put that exhausting thought aside?

        • JCattheATM

          today at 6:46 PM

          > I can say that about Americans.

          Eh, you'd be wrong. It's a different issue in the US, half the population believe and vote for nonsense, the other half are strongly against it.

          > What proof do you have, or do you "just know it"?

          Friends with Russians, and try to read useful sources like Meduza. It's absolutely very much the case that most of that population are brainwashed and believe the state propaganda.

          > Meanwhile in Russia, protesting will get you arrested and probably be sent to the frontline (as a man) or prison (as a woman).

          Yes, so an armed uprising is necessary if voting is not an option. But if there is no will, there will be no effort.

          > Meanwhile in America, there's a political party using the Nazi playbook to subvert democracy and succeeding.

          America will still have elections, and we won't have to deal with our Putin-wannabe again after their term is up.

• simion314

  today at 6:17 PM

  Yeah, but is open source so if some of the extra rare "good Russians" do not like this super small chance of getting hurt then they diserve their regime, they will finally protest when the regime will affect their own lives but stay silent while other people get genocided.

  I do not own any popular software to put anti Zed/Putin shit in it so sorry I can inconvinience those super rare good Russians.

So, if someone were to modify a Debian package to show Palestinian flag for Hebrew speakers or Iranian flag for ...Enligsh speakers, the change won't be instantly reverted and the user won't be restricted, right?

I was not totally clear on this. The article makes it sound like the behavior is in the debian patches, and not upstream?

I believe upstream is here, and has the same code as quoted:

    https://sourceforge.net/p/xsnow/code/HEAD/tree/trunk/xsnow/src/scenery.c#l332

  if (global.Language && !strcmp(global.Language,"ru") && drand48() < 0.3)
     tt = MAXTREETYPE;

• hexagonwin

  today at 5:59 PM

  it is in upstream. but the debian package maintainer is also the upstream maintainer.

One of the comments that struck me on the lwn.net site is the (albeit small) possibility that someone in Russia could be running the software and unintentionally land themselves in hot water if someone discovers these images on their computer. I'm sure that's not the intended consequence, but I could be problematic.

• weare138

  today at 6:06 PM

  The issue with that claim is xsnow already displayed the Ukrainian flag regardless. And it's in no way a critical app most people would even have installed to begin with. I had no idea it was even still being maintained.

Most do not acknowledge the slippery slope exists until they are sliding down it about to hit bottom...

So next time something like this slips through and it runs rm -rf /* ? Then what?

Shit like this erodes trust.

• JdeBP

  today at 6:32 PM

  I wonder how many people immediately thought about whether similar things had been snuck into xfishtank and xpenguins.

Has anyone confirmed who this 'Alexander Ivanov' person is or even if this is a real person and not some AI bot? I searched for the email address used and it only appears recently in these handful of posts about xsnow.

How is seeing more Ukrainian flags a discrimination?

Discrimination implies something harmful. Like invading neighbor country and perpetrating genocide. This complaint says more about Ivanov than anything else.

• 4bpp

  today at 5:52 PM

  The imputed discriminatory part is that the software only shows the additional flags to users with Russian locale, not that it shows the flags at all.

  • Svoka

    today at 6:07 PM

    Not sure you know what discrimination is.

  • today at 6:05 PM

• jszymborski

  today at 5:41 PM

  Yah that's where I stand on it. The message isn't harmful or hateful, it dares only make a political statement.

  • 4bpp

    today at 6:16 PM

    It's still selective degradation of functionality, as presumably people who download a snowglobe animation program don't do it to see any sort of statement apart from normative depictions of wintery things. The problem would be the same if it showed Russian flags only to users with Ukrainian locale, or ads for Mountain Dew only when the user's locale is set to French, or even just something as impossible to interpret as offensive on its own as adding lots of little cactus men whenever the locale is Dutch.

    • jszymborski

      today at 6:38 PM

      right, which means the software is less useful and as such you might not want to use it. Plenty of software like that listed on repositories, which I think is fine.

    • stonogo

      today at 6:43 PM

      > presumably

      So it's "selective degradation of functionality" based entirely on your assumptions regarding the motivations of the users? How is this a useful description?

  • Svoka

    today at 5:49 PM

    But also it is showing how russians think that Ukrainians existing is somehow discriminatory against them.

• bradrn

  today at 5:55 PM

  This point in the comments made me think twice:

  > People in Western countries don't realize how bad the situation on the ground actually is; random Ukrainian flags showing up on your work monitor can result in severe problems for you (like losing you job, or worse), especially if you work in the government sector. If they show up on your laptop in a random cafe or an airport, you might very well get a beating from one of many "war heroes" that walk around the cities these days.

  [EDIT: I see @krunck reposted this at the top level — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48736518]

  • today at 6:29 PM

  • Svoka

    today at 6:02 PM

    Oh no! Imagine the horror of losing your job. It compares nothing to literal genocide their army perpetrating.

    And yes, it is their, not their government, not some mysterious leaders. Russians reelected same government for 35 years with it invading neighbours pretty much every 5 years.

    • orbital-decay

      today at 6:08 PM

      Imagine living in the occupied part and being sent to the basement for this. Probably not that black and white now... although seeing both activist and slacktivist types being very loud about the land but not the people over and over again, I wouldn't be entirely surprised if you don't care.

    • DiabloD3

      today at 6:10 PM

      As a reminder, the most dangerous job in Russia is "opposition leader".

• epistasis

  today at 5:54 PM

  Given the number of colonized people that speak Russian, including residents of Ukraine, Georgia, Uzbekistan, etc. etc. etc. I think this sort of Easter Egg based on language rather than geographical location is quite appropriate.

  My family speaks both Ukrainian and Russian, and in Russian speaking spaces here in California we find many many many eager supporters of Ukraine's sovereignty, because when they hear Ukrainian spoken they tell us! And also tell us they wish they had been able to keep their non-Russian family language alive too. Most of these supporters are not from the Moscow or St. Petersburg areas though...

• nosioptar

  today at 6:12 PM

  It's not even an anti-Russian statement!

  I wouldn't get bent out of shape if Xsnow showed me a Canadian/Greenlandic flag in response to me using en-us.

• galdauts

  today at 5:44 PM

  Very much agreed. It‘s a statement by the authors of that software, and that is well within their rights.

• 7bit

  today at 5:56 PM

  How can anyone complain about Ukrainian flags, unless these people have a problem that the Ukraine exists.

I thought we all agreed that flags-as-political-statement in software were Certified Cringe after the one-click “add a French flag overlay to your Facebook profile photo” thing, eleven years ago?