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Who controls glibc?

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Re: Who controls glibc?

#111

Post by johannes1234321 »

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.

The FSF and its GNU project are a political endeavor. For a less-political (non-political doesn't exist) libc one might fork into linux-libc or similar.

(I'm not saying that's appropriate thing to do, as I'm just a lurker enjoying the free work by others in glibc's regard, but wanted to make the point)

Re: Who controls glibc?

#112

Post by olliej »

noobermin wrote: post #106
_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/

That group being the maintainers?

Re: Who controls glibc?

#113

Post by bjt2n3904 »

geofft wrote: post #100
bjt2n3904 wrote: post #71

Never been a big fan of the "Code of Conduct" wars that seem to be going on. On the surface, yeah, it seems great. Everyone be nice and get along. But for some odd reason, the enforcement always tends to favor one side. Case in point, the pointless NodeJS TSC drama [1] from yesteryear. I don't like JS to begin with, but that makes me want to avoid the project like the plague. The problem with letting thin skinned peo…

One, there was no public crucifixion here, no court, no treason, even as an analogy . Had Stallman not replied on the list to insist on his own personal veto over glibc changes, the project would have moved on, nobody would have asked about whether that veto makes sense, and if he showed up on some technical thing two months later people would have absolutely listened to him with extra weight. And even so, nobody is…

> there was no public crucifixion here, no court, no treason

Yes, you're correct. In this instance, there was no crucifixion, because the CoC/inclusivity crowd didn't have enough political capital.

See the NodeJS TSC drama I referenced. That's the "one side" being favored. That's the end result of pandering to people who take offense at the drop of the hat. This is simply Stallman refusing to concede to the notion that everything must be unoffensive.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#114

Post by geofft »

motohagiography wrote: post #108

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 it…

This seems to ascribe a high amount of ill will to glibc maintainers who have been faithful and productive GNU maintainers for many years, and I don't believe there's any other evidence that they wish to undermine RMS' authority.

However, if those maintainers find that their faithfulness is rewarded by being told that they don't actually maintain the project, they're just tending it while RMS is busy, it seems entirely reasonable to me that they would become upset at RMS trying to undermine the decision-making structure of glibc. The principals here, the people making the technical contributions, are the glibc maintainers.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#115

Post by geofft »

bjt2n3904 wrote: post #113
geofft wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One, there was no public crucifixion here, no court, no treason, even as an analogy . Had Stallman not replied on the list to insist on his own personal veto over glibc changes, the project would have moved on, nobody would have asked about whether that veto makes sense, and if he showed up on some technical thing two months later people would have absolutely listened to him with extra weight. And even so, nobody is…

> there was no public crucifixion here, no court, no treason Yes, you're correct. In this instance, there was no crucifixion, because the CoC/inclusivity crowd didn't have enough political capital. See the NodeJS TSC drama I referenced. That's the "one side" being favored. That's the end result of pandering to people who take offense at the drop of the hat. This is simply Stallman refusing to concede to the notion th…

OK, the "one side" is the side that believes that open source projects should be offensive?

Re: Who controls glibc?

#116

Post by olliej »

danmg wrote: post #85
sneak wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

he's the one forcing it -- he's not an active member of libc anymore, he's not a maintainer, but he decided that his personal joke from 20 years ago absolutely must remain in the documentation because he's petty.

He sounds like the one in need of a safe space where nothing ever changes

Re: Who controls glibc?

#117

Post by matthewbauer »

Jasper_ wrote: post #94
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…

As someone that was not aware of the gag rule before the mailing list thread brought it up, I thought it was an abortion joke, especially with the "we would be required to say this is not an acceptable way of terminating a program". It is in the man page for abort(). The context clues are there, but the wrong ones. So, on that level, it fails as a joke: if you aren't aware of the policy it's trying to criticize and m…

Yes, it's vague enough that you can probably find what you want in it. For that reason alone, there probably is a legitimate case to remove it.

I think it's interesting how one's background can affect this too. I think everyone agrees that GNU & FSF are left-wing projects but where the "left" falls on different issues depends on where you're from. For RMS & most American lefties, "freedom" includes things like abortion rights. I think in other countries like Latin America & Catholic Europe the "left" generally favors restrictions on abortion. Lots of people that have become involved in the free software movement recently are from Latin America & RMS probably doesn't pick up on what his core audience believes on these things.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#118

Post by dragonwriter »

_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.

It doesn't seem to be about good taste, but the purpose of technical documentation.

And, further, about project governance.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#119

Post by tenken »

_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…

I agree. this paradox would seem to be exemplified with the current trend of "Codes of Conduct" in OSS whereby we seek to have a Open and Predujice free workspace -- yet ostricize segments of the IT workforce simply because by setting conduct boundaries, we create "inclusive doctrines" that by definition _cannot_ be unanimously agreed upon by all parties. And at that point the odd man out is stranded alone with their eccentric opinion waving in the wind.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#120

Post by 8_hours_ago »

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.

> Just because RMS is a FOSS legend doesn't make him God.

According to RMS he does have ultimate authority over all GNU packages, including Glibc: https://lwn.net/Articles/753661/

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