Bug 488404

Ubuntu won't give you a pony - http://fridge.ubuntu.com/files/no-pony-for-you.jpg

I'm wary of setting the expectation in Fedora that users will be allowed to have ponies.

I'm wary of setting the expectation of there being trains in Fedora, but try:

$ sudo yum install sl

I am allergic to ponies and find this extremely insensitive!

-- 
Fedora Bugzappers volunteer triage team
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers

It depends what you mean by pony?

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pony

Seriously -- please think for a while -- what value does this bring to users apart from growing the repositories a bit and thus making yum a bit slower? :)

Here's some random points to consider:

1.) Does this comply with the "code not content" rule?
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/Guidelines#Code_Vs_Content

Yes, I know there's a wrapper there, which probably classifies this as "code", still I'm inclined to think it's role in the package is rather marginal.

2.) Doesn't this duplicate existing features?
"fortune" package seems to do something roughly similar. Why not use it?

3.) Does this comply with our licensing guidelines?
The ponnies file doesn't have licensing information.

On the second look; there's about a dozen of authors of the pictures, most of them didn't license it for free redistribution. Closing.

http://www.ascii-art.de/info/copyright/
The collection of ASCII art pictures, the text on these pages and the web design may not be copied for non-personal use without the author's written permission.

1) It's on the border of what's code or content, and there are several other packages that are on that border as well. Closing this bug report on that basis alone is arbitrary and unfair.

2) The fortune package plays a slightly different role. Aside from being basically a displayer of certain content, it has played an historical role in Unix and Linux for many years. While this pony might be a good candidate for content to be added to the fortune package, the role of this application is to fill a specific meme in the Red Hat and Fedora communities.

3) The licensing does present some questions. Rather than closing this request due to some prejudice, i've emailed upstream asking about the licensing issue. As i was writing this, i actually got a reply from Don mentioning that he does not have a valid license for this, and realistically we would need to find a public domain picture to use.

I would also like to note that the upstream haskell community has accepted this package as part of their internal culture and memes as well. Licensing issues aside, packaging this would play the same role as packaging fortune in any Unix or Linux distro. IIRC fortune is not installed by default in Fedora. Nor would this package be.

Think along the lines of "Haskell will give you a pony, but not if you use Fedora".

(In reply to comment #8)
> 1) It's on the border of what's code or content, and there are several other
> packages that are on that border as well. Closing this bug report on that basis
> alone is arbitrary and unfair.

I would never close a bug for a reason like this. I'm sorry if I was misunderstood.

> 2) The fortune package plays a slightly different role. Aside from being
> basically a displayer of certain content, it has played an historical role in
> Unix and Linux for many years. While this pony might be a good candidate for
> content to be added to the fortune package, the role of this application is to
> fill a specific meme in the Red Hat and Fedora communities.

Understood.

> 3) The licensing does present some questions. Rather than closing this request
> due to some prejudice, i've emailed upstream asking about the licensing issue.
> As i was writing this, i actually got a reply from Don mentioning that he does
> not have a valid license for this, and realistically we would need to find a
> public domain picture to use.
> 
> I would also like to note that the upstream haskell community has accepted this
> package as part of their internal culture and memes as well. Licensing issues
> aside, packaging this would play the same role as packaging fortune in any Unix
> or Linux distro. IIRC fortune is not installed by default in Fedora. Nor would
> this package be.
> 
> Think along the lines of "Haskell will give you a pony, but not if you use
> Fedora".  

Feel free to reopen or open another review request once you have a package with valid license.

Will do, best thing to do is cooperate with upstream on this one. I'll reopen if/when things get solved.