In the application xsnow, which creates the effect of falling snow on the desktop, a hidden change was discovered. This change results in a 2% chance of displaying the Ukrainian flag, and for users with Russian locale, the probability increases to 30%. This alteration was found in the Debian package xsnow, available in the Debian 13 repository.
A complaint has been filed with the Debian Quality Assurance Team, responsible for maintaining quality standards within Debian. The complaint argues that this unexpected behavior goes against the essential criteria for software approved by Debian, suggesting it could be viewed as discriminatory towards certain users or groups. By changing its behavior and displaying targeted messages, xsnow appears to cater to a specific user demographic and alters its neutral functionality based on user settings.
Despite the complaint, Debian’s guidelines regarding discrimination currently only address issues related to code licenses, not the behavior of the software. This means there are no specific rules governing situations where software attempts to convey political messages or behavior that deviates from its intended purpose. Essentially, this type of activity is not explicitly prohibited within Debian’s regulations.
To address this situation, one potential solution being considered is to treat the program’s actions as errors or undocumented behaviors that require corrective patches to restore the neutral and anticipated functionality. However, complicating matters is the fact that the maintainer of Debian’s xsnow package is the same individual who introduced the controversial behavior.