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davorg (18)

davorg
  dave@dave.org.uk
http://dave.org.uk/
Yahoo! ID: daveorguk (Add User, Send Message)

Hacker, author, trainer

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Journal of davorg (18)

Thursday February 08, 2007
08:05 AM

Time::Cubic

[ #32351 ]

I know that there's no barrier to entry on CPAN. And I see that as a great feature.

But do we really have to put up with offensive crap like Time::Cubic? If you don't see the problem, try looking at the source code.

Update: The module seems to have vanished from CPAN.


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  • I saw this crap last night. I don't think that a module was ever forcibly removed from the CPAN but this here should be. It's not so much a Perl module but a political manifest of stupidity and hatred.

  • Perhaps a set of clear Terms and Conditions for CPAN Authors is needed to ensure that anyone who uploads this kind of hatred fully expects it to be removed and not even hit BackPAN. His LICENSE agreement pretty much means no-one can use it, not that I can imagine anyone even wanting to.

    Plus, last time I looked a cube has 6 sides not 4. Flamebait or just ignorant? I suspect both.

    • The CPAN is a service provided for free where you are not entitled to expect anything, anyway. No policy is required to justify an unceremonious canning of that piece of trash. How many times has this sort of thing happened that we’d need to make mandates about it? If they’re made, is anyone going to invest the ongoing effort required to enforce them? If so, is that a good use of their time?

      I don’t think we need any kind of explicit policy at this time.

      • You're right, we're not entitled to anything. But I expect a certain amount of professional community ethics on CPAN and it's administration. So far I've always been very happy with their decisions. And if someone decides that there are cases where things are deleted off CPAN, I would expect a policy of what is acceptable and what is not. And having stated this, I indeed think there should be a policy needed to remove any kind of "trash."

        (Especially if emotional reactions and calls for removal seem to go
        --
        Ordinary morality is for ordinary people. -- Aleister Crowley

        • Well OK then, here’s a simple policy that merely codifies existing community expectation and would suffice to catch this one case: any upload must be under a Free licence.

          Now who is going to comb through everything ever uploaded and every new upload to ensure it complies with this policy?

          Because if you don’t enforce the policy consistently, then all it is is pretence. Removals can be justified by pointing to the policy, but whether you exercise it is every bit as arbitrary as before. All you

          • Sure it's hard work, but that's not what I was talking about. Also, this doesn't seem to have to do something with the actual problem. Would you accept the module if it was under GPL2/Artistic?
            --
            Ordinary morality is for ordinary people. -- Aleister Crowley

            • No, I wouldn’t, but I don’t care about hypothetical situations. We have exactly one problem to deal with right now; there is no flood of hate speech modules to rein in. Until and when that happens, I do not see the value of making policies to deal with hate speech modules, just because we had one black sheep. It is, to put it in Bruce Schneier’s terms, a bad security tradeoff. It will cost a lot of effort to actually implement, and it’s more likely than not that the policy itself wil

              • Well, then we just simply disagree.

                And who in hell's name is talking about "legislative fixes"? Please try not to exaggerate what I am saying, even if it fuels your annoyance. If people have complaints, I find it rather logical to phrase those and state what the actual problem is.

                I find it rather scary, that the only policy you could think of seems to be "No non-free licenses." IMO that is not the large problem causing complaints in this case.

                If one wants to make and execute a judgment about someone else, s
                --
                Ordinary morality is for ordinary people. -- Aleister Crowley

                • Sure, “hate speech” and “controversial humor” are relative, so someone will have to decide if a module falls into those categories or not. But then, that’s the same right now too, just without any phrased words or policies, which will lead the discussions to a morale point.

                  Ah. I think we agree more than we disagree; I just disagree on the last point that not having policy will necessarily mire us in a pointless debate over morale.

                  Oh, and I did not say the module should be

                  • Ah. I think we agree more than we disagree; I just disagree on the last point that not having policy will necessarily mire us in a pointless debate over morale.

                    I feel that we partly are already in such a morale, emotional debate. 80% of comments about this module contain the words "crap", "trash", "shit" and other such terms. Not that I want to say it isn't (personally though, I just think it's strange humor), but saying "it's just crap, delete it" is not so far for me from full morale discussions.

                    Oh,

                    --
                    Ordinary morality is for ordinary people. -- Aleister Crowley

          • Well OK then, here’s a simple policy that merely codifies existing community expectation and would suffice to catch this one case: any upload must be under a Free licence.

            I was under the impression that this was already a requirement. Upon further research it appears this was not set out as straightforward as I thought.

            The CPAN FAQ specifically fobids [cpan.org] software which requires a fee to use, and says that if the license is not included [cpan.org] you should ask the author for clarification. That same section [cpan.org] does however talk about the OSI approved licenses, although it puts "approved" in quotes.

  • I have no opinion on whether Time::Cubic should stay or go. I'm just surprised that it seems that no one realizes this is a joke and reference to http://www.timecube.com/ [timecube.com], a long-standing insane internet meme/site.

    See its entries at Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Dramatica.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Cube [wikipedia.org]

    http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/index.php/Time_cube [encycloped...matica.com]
    --
    rjbs

    • I'm very surprised, myself. The only hatred I see genuinely expressed in this joke would be hatred of Gene Ray. The rest is caricatures of his statements, and direct quotes.

      If you can't lampoon the loony, batty, anti-semites, who can you lampoon? Although I agree CPAN probably isn't the place for such a joke, unless maybe you want to put it in Acme::.

      --
      J. David works really hard, has a passion for writing good software, and knows many of the world's best Perl programmers
    • Had it been put in Acme then maybe I'd believe it was joke but since he didn't, I tend to think that he's trying to push his nutty beliefs on others. After all, there are tons of kooks out there that believe crazier things than this.

      I also can't help but wonder if this is the same Joseph Evers who was banned from Digg.

      • Of course it's a joke! Good grief. Did you read the license? Also, notice the number of links to Encyclopedia Dramatica, catalog of internet memes and jokes -- Joseph Evers runs it.
        --
        rjbs
        • No, I hadn't read the license until now because I was distracted by all of the racist/anti-semetic crap. Now that I have I can see that it is the same Joseph Evers that Digg has banned multiple times (under different logins). These types of "jokes" don't belong in a Perl repository.

      • I tend to think that he's trying to push his nutty beliefs on others.

        This may be a little late, but I think the point was that those who knew about Gene Ray and "Time Cube" would know immediately it was a joke (unless they had reason to believe it was Gene Ray himself). The fact that the person who uploaded the "joke" was as ignorant of Acme:: as he was tasteless in his humor doesn't alter his intent.

        --
        J. David works really hard, has a passion for writing good software, and knows many of the world's best Perl programmers
  • BanTown are fairly notorious trolls - it's clearly a joke albeit not a particularly funny one. Previous shennanigans are easily searhcable including stuff like this [livejournal.com].
  • I just wish that it had been ignored quietly, rather than turned into a meta-thread on module-authors, and having it publicized here where you draw attention to it.
    --

    --
    xoa

    • Bad behavior isn't discouraged by ignoring it, and community standards aren't established unless people speak up against bad behavior. I'd rather have a community with a reputation for policing itself instead on one that tolerates everything.
        • >> Bad behavior isn't discouraged by ignoring it

          > Doesn't that depend on whether the goal of the bad behavior is to get attention?

          Not at all. It's not attention they are after, but a certain sort of attention. If your kids do something bad to get attention, are you going to ignore it because they are doing it to get attention, or are you going to give them the sort of attention they don't want?

          Letting people do bad things just because they want attention only encourages people to do more bad things
  • Whether or not the module belongs on the CPAN, it certainly doesn't seem like it's using the best choice of namespace.

    Is there precedent or existing policy for modules@perl.org renaming modules? This one should probably be somewhere in the Acme:: namespace.
    • Not really.

      We mostly recommend or hint about better names, and most of the time people do what we suggest.

      If the code does actually implement the the cubic time, as bizarre as it is, the module is named correctly.

      If it doesn't, and it's a joke, then it probably should be moved to Acme::

      So far, it's not really been the job of CPAN to censor what goes up there, if it isn't damaging (in a technical sense, not in people's perceptions) to the CPAN.

      I think you could be fairly sure we'd pull down something related

      • Personally, I'm obliged to approve of the module itself, but ask them to use an open source license or pull it themselves.

        That seems like the most reasonable and practical approach to me as well.

  • You said:

    The module seems to have vanished from CPAN.

    Andreas König on the module-authors list said [perl.org]:

    Thanks, Joshua and all others in this thread for their heads up. Please continue to be that wake and watchful.

    I’ve removed account and directory.

    And now we have Joseph Evers himself weighing in [perl.org]. Joy.

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