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Who controls glibc?

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Re: Who controls glibc?

#81

Post by [deleted] »

drb91 wrote: post #60
Jasper_ wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Writing an essay to persuade someone means talking to them on their terms. If you start off with the "Micro$oft"s and the "Windoze"s you're going to lose the people you want to reach, especially when it reeks of childish namecalling.

> Writing an essay to persuade someone means talking to them on their terms. If you start off with the "Micro$oft"s and the "Windoze"s you're going to lose the people you want to reach, especially when it reeks of childish namecalling. I can't say I'm mourning the loss of people who think it's childish, or that it's a bad thing--at most it's a silly distraction. If you care, why don't you rewrite his stuff to be more…

[deleted]

Re: Who controls glibc?

#82

Post by MBCook »

t3soro wrote: post #65
lsh wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> some people want an egalitarian project rather than an authoritarian one Plenty of us prefer the authoritarian model, rather than the chaotic model of arbitrary consensus.

Which is totally fair. But that’s not how this project is set up. And that’s what makes this so odd.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#83

Post by RIMR »

zeth___ wrote: post #54
thsowers wrote: post #39

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://…

Here is a mantra every programmer should repeat every morning: >RMS was right. It doesn't matter what the topic, or how insane what he says sounds. He is always right and you're just not developed enough to understand why that's the case.

I bet RMS would have something really heated to say about blindly following a leader's every word.

Unless of course that leader is him, in which case his narcissistic side will gladly welcome it

Re: Who controls glibc?

#84

Post by nxc18 »

briandear wrote: post #42

Maybe I just don’t have the sophistication to “get” it, but what the heck is this all about. At first glance this just seems like something childish. Someone educate me.

It's juicy gossip about RMS with sprinklings of information about how the glibc org works and how that fits into the bigger open source picture.

Some people are into gossip and accept it, other people are into gossip and deny it. I've met very few people who don't love gossip, especially high-quality gossip like this. (Note: I'm sure there are many exceptions, but as a generalization, this one's about as good as they get)

Re: Who controls glibc?

#85

Post by danmg »

sneak wrote: post #41
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.

Forking out any vestigal rms authority would benefit everyone. They’re bikeshedding over whether or not to include a comment on a controversial topic. It is not relevant to the functioning of the library and is just a distraction. Rip it out and ban rms for perpetuating such idiotic drama.

RMS isn't the one bikeshedding it.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#86

Post by _sdegutis »

scrollaway wrote: post #68
drb91 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I follow. What's wrong with his term? Either people get what he's writing, and the term is irrelevant, or they don't get what he's writing, in which case I doubt that it would be because they were so distracted by a single word they couldn't focus on anything he's writing at all. So you just don't like the term. This is fine! But you've failed to make any point.

> in which case I doubt that it would be because they were so distracted by a single word they couldn't focus on anything he's writing at all Well, you'd be wrong then. It's like people writing "Micro$oft". No I can't focus on anything you're writing after you use terms like that because I'm picturing an immature child. And why would I listen to an immature child's arguments? Put it this way, it's like giving a talk…

In other words the character of a person affects the weight of their arguments. That’s pretty fundamental to society but not acknowledged a lot in the tech world, especially when eccentricities are involved. We like to pretend that life is a meritocracy where we’re all judged solely on our contributions but that’s emphatically not how life works. We can’t change the human nature and the nature of social signaling no matter how hard we close our eyes and wish.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#87

Post by matthewbauer »

So what annoys me about this discussion is that both sides are not being very honest. Calling it an "abortion joke" is to me highly misleading. It's an "abortion law joke" & has nothing to do with the procedure of abortion! The people arguing against it seem to be implying its much more inappropriate than it is.

Anyway, no where in the article is the actual "joke" mentioned. So I'd like to include it here just so people can judge for themselves.

"Proposed Federal censorship regulations may prohibit us from giving you information about the possibility of calling this function. We would be required to say that this is not an acceptable way of terminating a program."

Re: Who controls glibc?

#89

Post by readme »

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.

Excellent idea! Just rename it political-libc for all the people who want politics mixed in with their C library.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#90

Post by geofft »

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.

"Hacker culture" is a myth - not in the sense that it's false, but in the sense that it's a set of stories that people like because of their storytelling power, and its exact historical truth is not particularly relevant. As a myth, it tends towards better remembering things that make better stories, like great men inventing things through sheer force of will. And as a myth, it's a story about our origins, which were no doubt messier than we would like to remember. That our present does not seem as awesome as the myth is an unavoidable effect of myths.

But there a few historically true things that are relevant here: first, that an important part of "hacker culture" unequivocally originated in the Bay Area (Fairchild Semiconductor, Homebrew Computer Club, BSD, etc.), and second, that "consensus" has been an important idea in this culture for a while - an obvious example being the IETF's "rough consensus and running code".

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