Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Who controls glibc?

lwn.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 528 posts

Re: Who controls glibc?

#31

Post by dragonwriter »

laken wrote: post #22
xur17 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is it [0]? Has it been changed since this discussion, or was it not removed? I honestly don't get the joke. [0] https://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node/Aborting-...

It was reverted earlier after RMS saw the commit, and added himself to the email chain. RMS said that as the leader of the GNU Project, he gets the final say, and said to the maintainers that they are under him. One of the maintainers then reverted the commit. To explain the 'joke': In the box at the bottom of that page, it's basically RMS saying that if the government outlaws abortion, they'll have to not give any i…

> To explain the 'joke': In the box at the bottom of that page, it's basically RMS saying that if the government outlaws abortion, they'll have to not give any information on the `abort()` function, and instead say it's not an "acceptable way of terminating a program" (or rather, "acceptable way of terminating a pregnancy")

No, it's not about government outlawing abortion, per se, it's about government regulating communication about abortion, particularly the global gag rule (Mexico City policy.)

Re: Who controls glibc?

#32

Post by MBCook »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #11

Calling it an "abortion joke" is a politicized headline. It's a political/protest joke, maybe. Either way, the glibc documentation is not the ideal place for it.

It’s a political joke. About abortion.

Seems fitting enough.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#34

Post by zeth___ »

Fork if you don't like it.

That's the whole point of free software.

Edit: I find it disturbing that so many people want to erase hacker culture from the internet. Consensus is a Bay Area idea, one that came quite late to the world of computers, and one that many of us disagree with.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#35

Post by bitwize »

Given his penchant for offensive, inappropriate humor, and how little tolerance the modern FOSS community has for such in the prevailing political atmosphere, this is not a hill RMS wants to die on. Save the rank pulls for something really important, Richard.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#36

Post by MBCook »

zeth___ wrote: post #34

Fork if you don't like it. That's the whole point of free software. Edit: I find it disturbing that so many people want to erase hacker culture from the internet. Consensus is a Bay Area idea, one that came quite late to the world of computers, and one that many of us disagree with.

That’s the really odd thing in this situation. The maintainers all seem to want to remove it, and the project governance says the maintainers are supposed to decide based on the quorum.

RMS just over ruled that. Because it was his joke and he felt like it.

Which seems like it goes against the whole “community“ thing.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#37

Post by zeth___ »

bitwize wrote: post #35

Given his penchant for offensive, inappropriate humor, and how little tolerance the modern FOSS community has for such in the prevailing political atmosphere, this is not a hill RMS wants to die on. Save the rank pulls for something really important, Richard.

If Stallman cared for what hill the mainstream thought he should die on he'd still be hacking lisp/emacs at MIT.

Him being completely irrational about pet causes is the reason why we have an opensource community today. I trust him a whole lot more than anyone else in FOSS, including all the glibc developers put together.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#38

Post by RIMR »

lsh wrote: post #28

To call it a joke is a bit of a stretch, more like a turn of phrase or wink to the reader. As far as explicitly inserting one's politics into communal tools, this case is so mild it's hard to fathom any grounded person wasting time on it. However, there is a case at the moment of the author of the BFG tool for git adding a paragraph of text about fighting trump at the end of his tool's output. He won't get rid of it…

Or, if you're going to be subtly political (as GNU often is), at least be current.

That joke was 20-something years old. It ran its course.

Also, as far as calling LGBT rainbows "political", I would have to disagree. You either view LBGT people as equal, or you can be a hateful person. There's no good reason to pander to the latter, but plenty of reasons to stand up in unity with the former.

There are some concepts that need to be aggressively viewed as truths rather than opinions. The civil rights movement was won by people standing up and putting their own enrichment aside to say "You are wrong and we stand up in unity with the people you view as subhuman". No reason to shame anyone from doing that again today.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#39

Post by thsowers »

While RMS has undoubtedly contributed much to the FOSS community, he seems to undermine some of his core points with trivial matters.

For example, his piece "Reasons not to use Facebook"[0] contains some great points, but I find them undermined by the unnecessary usage of the word "useds"

Similarly, this seems like an extremely trival case to "exercise my authority over Glibc very rarely" as he puts it.

[0]: https://stallman.org/facebook.html

Re: Who controls glibc?

#40

Post by lsh »

zeth___ wrote: post #34

Fork if you don't like it. That's the whole point of free software. Edit: I find it disturbing that so many people want to erase hacker culture from the internet. Consensus is a Bay Area idea, one that came quite late to the world of computers, and one that many of us disagree with.

No, that's just another option when it comes to free software. Why not make an effort to cohere rather than disperse? Stronger together and all that.

RMS is pulling the authority card, which is always a dodgy thing to do, and people want an egalitarian project rather than an authoritarian one. Both sides need to learn when to pick a fight and when to let something pass.

Post reply on HN