Package inclusion criteria

[ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès)]

Hello,

Leo Famulari <leo@famulari.name> skribis:

> On Mon, Jan 29, 2018 at 06:09:16PM -0500, Mark H Weaver wrote:
>> Hi ng0,
>> 
>> > commit 57f9671d22bb4ee37962c31b9eed0ae50859398a
>> > Author: ng0 <ng0@n0.is>
>> > Date:   Wed Jan 17 22:42:55 2018 +0000
>> >
>> >     gnu: Add badass.
>> [...]
>> > +  (package
>> > +    (name "badass")
>> > +    (version (git-version "0.0" revision commit))
>> [...]
>> > +    (synopsis "Hacking contribution graphs in git")
>> > +    (description
>> > +     "Badass generates false commits for a range of dates, essentially
>> > +hacking the gamification of contribution graphs on platforms such as
>> > +Github or Gitlab.")
>> 
>> Why do you think this belongs in Guix?  Do you intend to use it
>> yourself, or do you have reason to believe that Guix users would want
>> this?
>> 
>> There's a lot of garbage out there.  Guix doesn't need to include every
>> script that someone uploaded to github.  Frankly, I'm embarrassed to
>> have a package like this in Guix.
>
> As the committer, I thought of this as an amusing toy, and we do have a
> couple of those.
>
> But if people would rather we not distribute it, I won't object.

I can understand Mark’s concerns, though I don’t have a strong opinion
on this particular package (I find it both “weird” and “amusing”; it
reflects on how people use those Git services.)

The only formal acceptance criterion for packages in Guix is that it
must be free software and FSDG-compatible.  However, there might be
software we’d rather not include in Guix proper for various reasons.

One example we discussed recently is a package that allowed users to
exploit specific security vulnerabilities, IIRC, and at the time we
chose not to include it.  I suspect there are other situations where we
might be inclined to reject the package, but it’s hard to anticipate
them; I suspect it’s going to be rare, though.

Thoughts?

Ludo’.