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Who controls glibc?

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Re: Who controls glibc?

#101

Post by favorited »

readme wrote: post #89
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.

You realize it's the current version of glibc which has the political joke? The patch that RMS is opposing here removed a political reference from the docs.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#102

Post by RIMR »

bhhaskin wrote: post #97
matthewbauer wrote: post #87

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 peo…

I agree with RMS on this. People need to grow up. It's ok to be offended, but not ok to try and correct everyone just because you are offended. A line needs to be drawn somewhere and this is harmless.

I agree with RMS's pro-choice opinion, but I honestly see no reason a 20-something year old joke about abortion needed to remain in the documentation.

The consensus was that it be removed. It was removed. Just because HMS is a FOSS legend doesn't make him God.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#103

Post by briandear »

nxc18 wrote: post #84
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…

Thank you. The FOSS world seems like a fraternity to which I clearly don’t belong. But to the folks that write FOSS — thank you. I admire the fortitude it must take to put up with this petty nonsense.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#104

Post by geofft »

RIMR wrote: post #96
geofft wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a little interesting to me that the joke in question is making fun of a US-right-wing political position, so the fact that it's clear to everyone that this atmosphere disagrees with the joke would seem to remove some credence from the "FOSS is turning into a liberal echo chamber" argument that's been getting popular. There is a political shift / push happening, but "liberal echo chamber" isn't it.

I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that the consensus is that the joke is disagreeable, but that it is not an appropriate joke for the documentation. I am a staunchly pro-choice, but this joke is out-of-date and out-of-place. I would personally vote for it to go. I really don't want to see the political divide fragment the GNU/Linux community because people are determined to inject their opinions into code. If you run…

Oh yes - I was unclear about disagreeing with the joke. I don't think anyone is openly disagreeing with the politics of the joke per se, they seem to be saying that it's not meaningful technical documentation and they empathize with those who might disagree with the politics (which might be themselves or might not). So yes, I don't think there's a left/right political divide either here, or elsewhere.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#105

Post by matthewbauer »

RIMR wrote: post #102
bhhaskin wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with RMS on this. People need to grow up. It's ok to be offended, but not ok to try and correct everyone just because you are offended. A line needs to be drawn somewhere and this is harmless.

I agree with RMS's pro-choice opinion, but I honestly see no reason a 20-something year old joke about abortion needed to remain in the documentation. The consensus was that it be removed. It was removed. Just because HMS is a FOSS legend doesn't make him God.

Yes I'm 100% with you on this. I mainly dislike how the LWN article is framed.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#106

Post by noobermin »

_diyu wrote: post #74

Regardless of whether he has the right to veto the consensus vote to remove the joke, by ignoring the general attitude that it’s not in good taste, he’s alienating everyone. That’s not a good position to put himself in, and I wonder if he’ll soon find himself the head of a dead project while a forked one lives in in his spirit but without his name.

This[0] is relevant. He's possibly alienating only a group of vocal people. It isn't clear form the article that it's the consensus more than it is the consensus of people in an email thread.

After clicking around the mailing list, it looks more like what [0] suggests than it being a clear majority of contributors to glibc.

That said, alienating anyone could be problematic.

[0] https://lwn.net/Articles/753720/

Re: Who controls glibc?

#107

Post by scrollaway »

_sdegutis wrote: post #86
scrollaway wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Yeah precisely.

drb91's feigned confusion at how people are not ignoring an arrogant approach at argumentation may simply be an attempt at focusing on the "meat" of the argument rather than the wrapping. Noble, but ultimately incorrect. The argument isn't made to only one person, it's meant to be spread to the general population, and almost nothing from Stallman can really be shared with the general population because his ideas are wrapped really, really badly.

I just want to make it clear: acknowledging the reality of this doesn't mean you endorse it.

One of the most magical things on the internet is the meritocratic aspect of it. It just doesn't translate to real life. I know a lot of my guildmates from the very early WoW days would have been baffled to learn their raids were led by a 14 year old child. I also know I've seen similar experiences reflected on this forum (people recounting being treated as equal peers by others, despite their very young age, different genders, different religions etc). All this is possible because those differences don't come up in a limited context where you, for example, don't see each other face to face. I love that, and I wish it were like that everywhere. But it's not, and if you want your message to be heard, you can't eat your footstuff in public.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#108

Post by motohagiography »

The discussion is a proxy for how executive decisions are made for glibc, and in particular by whom.

The merit of a stale joke from the 90s is meaningless, and posturing about its appropriateness is disingenuous. Open source principals have always been eccentric (Torvalds, Raymond(!), etc.), and the FOSS community tolerated it not only because of their technical contributions, but because the open source community itself is an expression of tolerance based on shared objectives.

Of course others would like to wield their influence in the generation of the DNA of the internet, and there is a tremendous amount to be gained by scandalizing, discrediting, and isolating its core maintainers.

Perhaps eventually RMS will come around and remove the joke himself, after finding it does not stand the test of time. But it would go a long way to resolving this if they could demonstrate they aren't just using the joke as a pretext for scandal to undermine the decision making structure of a project.

It's clearly not about the joke.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#109

Post by geofft »

bhhaskin wrote: post #97
matthewbauer wrote: post #87

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 peo…

I agree with RMS on this. People need to grow up. It's ok to be offended, but not ok to try and correct everyone just because you are offended. A line needs to be drawn somewhere and this is harmless.

Nobody who removed the joke said they were offended by it, they just said that they didn't believe it was the sort of thing that belonged in technical documentation. If anyone is offended, it is RMS, in the sense that he seems personally affronted that he doesn't carry the line-item veto power he thinks he had over all of GNU and people did not ask him before removing something he added 25 years ago.

Not everyone who disagrees with something is offended by the thing they disagree with. Shall I say that someone who prefers writing documentation in man pages instead of Markdown is offended by Markdown? Is Project Zero offended by buffer overflows?

Re: Who controls glibc?

#110

Post by komali2 »

bhhaskin wrote: post #97
matthewbauer wrote: post #87

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 peo…

I agree with RMS on this. People need to grow up. It's ok to be offended, but not ok to try and correct everyone just because you are offended. A line needs to be drawn somewhere and this is harmless.

I disagree with RMS because I don't think the joke adds to my ability to understand the usage of the function.
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