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Who controls glibc?

lwn.net

281–290 of 528 posts

Re: Who controls glibc?

#281

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.

One thing that may not be well-appreciated: This is walking very close to the line of outright political advocacy. If you read the entire email thread, one of the examples [1] clearly crosses that threshold. Once that threshold is crossed, it is illegal for a government employee to contribute to glibc in an official capacity, or even a private employee contracted by the government. This includes things like people wh…

Most worthwhile things are political. If there really is such a rule in some country, it should not condemn organisations to self censorship & apathy.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that may not be well-appreciated: This is walking very close to the line of outright political advocacy. If you read the entire email thread, one of the examples [1] clearly crosses that threshold. Once that threshold is crossed, it is illegal for a government employee to contribute to glibc in an official capacity, or even a private employee contracted by the government. This includes things like people wh…

Actually, GNU is a 501(c)(3) organisation. They can’t really be politically active and maintain such a status.

501(c)(3) can support issues but not people in election for office.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#283
post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It absolutely does matter. The notion that making mockery of law that prohibits one's freedom of choice being the same as mockery of the said choice itself is astoundingly absurd. The first, mockery of law-- specially one that imposes restrictions on citizens is a political consideration, while mockery of a personal subject outside the context of politics is an ideological concern. To make it more clear, please consi…

This isn't about "freedom of choice", and the fact that you're even suggesting that means you've missed the point. This is about the fact that a joke that has anything to do with a sensitive topic like abortion is wildly inappropriate to have in technical documentation. Even if you ignore the abortion angle, this is still a political joke, which is also inappropriate for this context. In fact, most jokes are fairly i…

As others have said, the glibc is part of a political organization. If the Chinese government had forbid GNU from speaking on forks and required the exclusive use of chopsticks, you'd see a similar joke on the page for fork. Nobody is trying to deny that abortion is a sensitive topic, politics is always about sensitive topics, and it's sensitivity might have something to do with why the US government legislated on it.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#284
post #151
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technical documentation isn't the place for a joke full stop. Documentation is for people who are typically busy, uncertain and potentially dealing with something that is going wrong. They want clear, concise and accessible help. They don't want or need tasteless jokes. It is disrespectful to their time to include random garbage. This is supposed to be read by people who need it, not people who know what is going on…

Yeah, Python docs need to stop using variable names like 'spam' & 'eggs', Monty Python's too jokey, no room for it in docs

Not the same thing. "spam" & "eggs" are very neutral. If they used politically charged terms, and inserted example code like "if brains(republicans) == 0 # always true!" then the situation would be similar. The difference is between neutral light-heartedness and non-neutral political message.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#285
post #94

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…

And yet, you're now aware of the gag rule and GNUs opposition. So, on that level, it's succeeding.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#286
post #263
post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I want to defend Rust project here. You should realize that Rust CoC is scoped to official Rust project space.

> 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".

As far as I know, the member you are referring to never advocated violence in the official Rust project space. That's enough for Rust.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#287
post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

The benefits of the doc is purely subjective (obviously) so asking what purpose it serves is a dick move.

And it specifically says not to remove. RMS only objected when they tried to introduce a change he specifically said not to remove. Calling this an unwarranted exercise in authority is also a dick move.

It isn't even a code change. Let's talk priorities: glibc could see improvements preventing y2038 bugs and fuzzing, but we fret over a joke.

Also there is no evidence that the joke could be traumatic to anyone.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#288

Lots of people seem to be rooting around like truffle hogs looking for the partisan politics embedded in this story, but you won't find any. The conflict happening here is between maintainers, who don't want a dated left-leaning joke embedded in the glibc documentation, and Stallman, who does. If there's "political correctness" involved, it's right-leaning. But, as a left-leaning pro-choice person: there's no "politi…

It's just RMS continuing to be an authoritarian, as he's always been. He's always been unwilling to compromise on big things, he's still unwilling to compromise on small things.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#289
post #288

Lots of people seem to be rooting around like truffle hogs looking for the partisan politics embedded in this story, but you won't find any. The conflict happening here is between maintainers, who don't want a dated left-leaning joke embedded in the glibc documentation, and Stallman, who does. If there's "political correctness" involved, it's right-leaning. But, as a left-leaning pro-choice person: there's no "politi…

It's just RMS continuing to be an authoritarian, as he's always been. He's always been unwilling to compromise on big things, he's still unwilling to compromise on small things.

Being uncompromising in your politics and values is hardly authoritarian. RMS runs the ship and these people knew it when they started working on a GNU project, especially since it's well known RMS has shot down things he didn't like before.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#290

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 wish I could make RMS, and you, and everyone who agrees with you, live in a sort of reverse-Kantian world, where whatever you advocate for as acceptable behavior when you do it becomes a universal law of conduct for other people to use when interacting with you. No matter how much of a "thick skin" you may think you have, I'd lay money that in a world which truly worked this way, you'd last under an hour before aba…

You should practice what you preach, because your statement doesn't make me feel very welcome or safe right now. You seem to make a lot of assumptions about me and the world I live in.

I just said I agree with RMS on this, and you straight up attacked me personally.

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