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Who controls glibc?

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Re: Who controls glibc?

#261

Post by tempz »

The ideological control - via identity politics and associated infantile concepts of safe spaces, trigger words and the 'right not to be offended' - has finally landed on the mainstream open source software development, after preparatory excursions into gaming, Tor and few other 'fringish' niches.

This ideological carpet bombing was neccessary because there is no other way to control the open source community - there is no simple corporate hierarchy and money by itself is too slow and doesn't always work.

It serves the purpose - the servility is rewarded, and the opposition is punished. The end result is more pliable "open source workforce" - yes, there is such a thing, and the assurance that it will not engage in controversial developments, for the simple reason that personal servility to political correctness is highly correlated to personal servility to the prevailing power.

In this particular case, it is about Orwellian purging of the inconvenient history. This comment was document of its time, several decades ago. Software has history. Everything humans do has history. The abort() itself is a history, as someone thought of it few decades ago. Are they going to change it to freedom() now? Why do manual pages have to look 'nice' to victims of arrested development?

What is next?

Re: Who controls glibc?

#262

Post by scottie_m »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #250
scottie_m wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like a really silly hill to die on, but then this whole debate seems like a boring pissing match. My only thought on finishing the article was, “what a waste of my time this was,” and that was just reading it, not living it. Maybe there’s some strategic value to making a big deal of something trivial like this, but I don’t see it. I just come away from this thinking Stallman is a controlling, thin-skinned, d…

* I couldn’t care less about the politics, it’s the personality that’s offensive.* Fair enough, though for me the personality is what I like. It's the same way I feel about ESR, even if I don't agree with whatever point is being made, I enjoy intelligent outspoken brashness.

I enjoy that when the intelligence and brashness has a point other than stroking its own ego. Linus for example, is an example of the positive (imo) face of what you’re talking about, because it’s not about something petty from nearly 30 years ago and his desire to be in some kind of control. You know that even when he’s harsh and outspoken, odds are he’s making a really good and relevant point.

I’m not seeing that here, just a lot of heat and no light.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#263

Post by Jerry2 »

cwyers wrote: post #241
Jerry2 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something more recent... CoC caused one of the top 5 LLVM developers to leave: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16980841 Unfortunately, this got censored heavily on HN. Also, Rust-lang has CoC "cops": https://www.rust-lang.org/en-US/team.html (scroll down to "moderation team"). > Responsibility: helping uphold the code of conduct That's pretty crazy!

The whole point of a code of conduct is to promote good conduct and dissuade bad conduct. What's crazy about having moderators or having their moderation standards be the code of conduct?

Problem is selective enforcement. They have a member on their core team who has advocated violence in the past. It's just that it's violence against white people so it's "OK". They also have another person who is advocating violence against men. But again, their 'thought police' cops haven't done a thing.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#264

Post by djur »

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…

Regarding standing the test of time, one of Donald Trump's first acts in office was to reinstate and expand the global gag rule:

https://www.apnews.com/868c8211b4f948d8b7f7ce58ab08a78b

That isn't a comment on whether the joke should be removed or retained, but it's worth noting that this "stale joke from the '90s" is actually very relevant to contemporary politics.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#265

Post by tpstone »

cwyers wrote: post #241
Jerry2 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something more recent... CoC caused one of the top 5 LLVM developers to leave: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16980841 Unfortunately, this got censored heavily on HN. Also, Rust-lang has CoC "cops": https://www.rust-lang.org/en-US/team.html (scroll down to "moderation team"). > Responsibility: helping uphold the code of conduct That's pretty crazy!

The whole point of a code of conduct is to promote good conduct and dissuade bad conduct. What's crazy about having moderators or having their moderation standards be the code of conduct?

Have you read "Animal Farm"?

Re: Who controls glibc?

#266

Post by tptacek »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #258
jsmthrowaway wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counter to your glorious Fahrenheit 451 perception of either contemporary society or our future one, it’s just as dystopian to permit humor to be used as suppression of a marginalized subset of people. It is perfectly acceptable to expect that people not discriminate against others that are unlike them, in any way, lest that be a possibility. The key to humor that is actually funny is understanding that, particularly…

Isn't it a little hyperbolic to imply that an offhanded joke is suppressing a marginalized subset of people? Or that it was discriminatory? Here's his full reply in context: https://lwn.net/Articles/753654/

You guys both seem to really want there to be high-stakes politics implicated in this story, but there aren't, and pretending that there are looks pretty dumb. It is unlikely in the extreme that the maintainers who want to remove Stallman's dated, unfunny joke are pro-lifers. Presumably, they just think it's a cringey distraction, like this subthread.

The issue is whether Stallman gets veto rights on glibc commits. The maintainers say he doesn't. Since Stallman doesn't do much glibc work, and the maintainers do, presumably Stallman is going to lose this, unless they let him save face out of affection.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#267

Post by jsmthrowaway »

tptacek wrote: post #266
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it a little hyperbolic to imply that an offhanded joke is suppressing a marginalized subset of people? Or that it was discriminatory? Here's his full reply in context: https://lwn.net/Articles/753654/

You guys both seem to really want there to be high-stakes politics implicated in this story, but there aren't, and pretending that there are looks pretty dumb. It is unlikely in the extreme that the maintainers who want to remove Stallman's dated, unfunny joke are pro-lifers. Presumably, they just think it's a cringey distraction, like this subthread. The issue is whether Stallman gets veto rights on glibc commits. T…

The disengaging prophecy is fulfilled! For my next trick, I shall make this subthread disappear!

(Focus, people. Stallman’s commit bit. Stay on target and let’s figure this thing out. Did we get closure on the apt-get cow, or are we tabling that?)

Re: Who controls glibc?

#269

Post by da_chicken »

mycall wrote: post #253
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spot on. At the end of the day, nobody really cares about the joke, and nobody in the conversation indicated they actually were offended or upset by it, as far as I can tell. The joke will not be the downfall of glibc whether it stays or goes. But RMS' order may be. He just reminded everyone working on that project that their authority ends on any given issue wherever RMS' whims begin.

Lets think how many hours RMS has put into GNU over the years. That should count for something, no?

Alright, so where is that line drawn? RMS is the project lead, but it's a community project and at some point the consensus will be that he is just wrong. Clearly that line must exist somewhere, or eglibc would never have been. But the existence of a fork isn't the minimum point since that takes quite a lot to overcome the inertia of forming a new project.

The point I keep coming back to is: What is the purpose of the documentation? What goal does it achieve?

Re: Who controls glibc?

#270

Post by ocdtrekkie »

mycall wrote: post #253
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spot on. At the end of the day, nobody really cares about the joke, and nobody in the conversation indicated they actually were offended or upset by it, as far as I can tell. The joke will not be the downfall of glibc whether it stays or goes. But RMS' order may be. He just reminded everyone working on that project that their authority ends on any given issue wherever RMS' whims begin.

Lets think how many hours RMS has put into GNU over the years. That should count for something, no?

Count for what? Should it excuse his behavior? Should we excuse the behavior of famous and notable people because of their accomplishments?
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