Yesterday while I was browsing Ubuntu Forums I came across a thread posted by someone named EssexJames. He recounts a recent experience with showing his 10 year old son Ubuntu:
I enjoyed setting up Ubuntu 8.10 with my 10 year old son. We learned about Ubuntu together and I was pleased that he was really engaged and interested in the whole process of installation and the philosophy of Ubuntu.
We looked at the various packages that can be installed – to see if there was anything that looked really interesting. We got some graphics and video applications. All excellent.
Then we hit a snag. “Daddy, what’s Brainf**k?” he said. (This is the name of one of the packages).
Can I ask the community that develops Ubuntu and those that compile distributions, to please bear in mind that computers are family devices.
This forum’s terms and conditions state “…you warrant that you will not post any messages that are obscene, vulgar…”. It’s a great shame that the development community don’t apply similar rules.
He continues in a follow up post:
If the objective of Ubuntu and other Linux distributions is to provide an operating system which people can use to replace Microsoft software, then it will need to tidy up the use of profanities in the code and application names. Families with children will see these things, decide it’s not for them, pay the devil and go to Microsoft instead.
I’ll happily f and blind with the best of them, but don’t expect profanities to appear on-screen when installing operating system software.
I wanted my son to become enthused by Linux and to learn about it himself. I install filters for web browsing for him – but I didn’t think I’d need one for an operating system and its components.
There have been several good replies to these two posts that I wanted share with you. Indeed, it would be rather awkward for any parent who is showing their child a free OS and then discover within the package manager (which organizes over 26,000 different individual programs/dependencies and actually requires you to type in an administrator password before it can even be looked at) an uttering of profanity. Here’s what some members of the Ubuntu community had to say in response to this:
From “steveneddy”:
I suggest that you explain it to him politely and professionally and if it bothers you, don’t mention it to him again.
All children are going to learn these words eventually.
This is a good time to wear the Daddy hat and sit down with the little tyke and have a man to man talk.
I also raised my two daughters, now 20 and 23, and have my two grandchildren here living with me.
We just have to decide that when that day arrives, and it will, that we are man enough to explain things like this to them in an adult manner so that they understand why it is that way and why some of us choose not to use those types of words around our children.
Don’t think worse of the whole community just because of the lapse in judgment of one developer.
From “starcannon”:
It is best to preview any material that you wish to expose your children to. It would be wrong to drop software simply because someone does not like the name. I would say that if freedom of speech and all of its implications are not something your prepared to deal with, perhaps some other OS is appropriate for your situation; I think Ubuntu is the greatest thing since sliced bread. I have 2 daughters, one is 11 and the other is 12, I do not see that they have been damaged at all by the occasional exposure to a slang word in the package manager, they hear much worse on the school bus; and then there is popular media such as television, movies, and music, all 3 of which have much more offensive words and ideas than a satirically named and obscure [programming] language.
There is plenty of xxx software for MS Windows, arguably much more than for any other OS, the difference is that when one searches for software for windows they may use the google search engine, when one searches for software for Ubuntu they use the Synaptic search engine; ironic isn’t it that if one runs across the “F” word on google while looking for windows software, that is acceptable; if however, one runs across it on the Synaptic search engine it is not acceptable. Ultimately I don’t care what a package is named, I care what the package does, indeed I never even knew about BF until you posted about it, /shrug, and again, it is your responsibility as a parent to do the parenting, not Microsoft’s, not Canonical’s, not Linux’s, not GNU’s, not Apple’s. Accept responsibility or don’t either way I certainly hope that package availability is never based on psuedo puritan ideals that have not even come close to actually existing in over 125 years.
“Grant A”, complimenting starcannon adds:
You are 100% correct. People say they are getting their kids ready for the real world, and THIS is the result. V-Chips, and their kin have made parents very lazy and thus devaluing the social standards the U.S. once held. Life has cuss words, believe it or not your children WILL hear these words. It is up to YOU to teach your child what it means. And no matter what you do, you can train him, you can stick a shock collar on him (please don’t) he WILL still say cuss words, or think them. I know a preacher who is a profane cusser. I am very offended that you want to step upon my rights to FREE speech as declared in over 200 countries, I do not tolerate fascism.
I am aware that this post may have sounded derogatory, but it wasn’t. Sometimes the blunt truth is the best truth. I’m not going to sugar coat everything I say on the Internet. I tried to keep this as civil as possible and avoided all the flaming I wanted to do. Please teach your children yourself, who else will? The Internet is not your baby sitter. If you don’t want your kid to see cuss words, you might as well have left him illiterate.
I agree with all of what was said in the above responses. It ultimately falls on the parent to do the parenting of their child. Grant A’s mentioning of the V-Chip, I think, is a good example of how some parents try to use technology to avoid awkward conversations with their child about things like sex, violence, drugs and “adult” language. That being said, it should be emphasized that the Internet itself is a far more profane place than a simple package manager ever could be. Slightly off topic, I think to call any computer which is attached to the Internet a “family device” is a contradiction, no matter what operating system you choose to use.
EssexJames has marked his thread as “Solved” since posting it yesterday, but he’s not posted any kind of followup to indicate exactly what the replies have solved for him. So I sent him a private message asking him what he’s decided and he says, although little can be quickly done to enable a profanity filter in Synaptic (and possibly won’t be implimented quickly because of resistance/misunderstandings), he and his son will continue to use Ubuntu. He added that he will also start keeping a closer eye on him and his computer activities. Good job, dad!
