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Who controls glibc?

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Re: Who controls glibc?

#361

Post by Sacho »

koala_man wrote: post #350
_8j50 wrote: post #163

Rms was in the clear wrong. This is a professional setting,that joke wasn't professional. If you wouldn't say it at a work meeting then it's probably not a good idea to say the same in a commit or a serious thread of a foss project. Although I don't like the joke,it's not so much the content of the joke but rather where the joke was spoken that seemed inappropriate. I am not offended. much like a coworker coming to w…

Stallman's from the hippie generation and a project like GNU must have had a strong "stick it to The Man" element. He basically dedicated his life to rejecting the IBM era corporate culture and "professionalism". I guess I can see where he's coming from, even though I totally disagree and find this view as irrelevant and dated as the dumb joke.

How dated is the joke? Is it not about current US policy?

Re: Who controls glibc?

#362

Post by dragandj »

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #226
ajross wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Only if [you...] have the requisite background knowledge to understand it, which many don't. It's literally the C library reference manual. That's true of the whole thing! The point is that it has meaning, however obscure, and reflects a particular principled intent of the author. And the request to remove it is cosmetic. And you resolve that by holding to the author's intent and not just polishing it to fit your s…

I find your line of reasoning vague and...I don't know the word, it seems very one-sided. what do you mean by the "C library reference manual"? The glibc man or something else? Cause to me glibc is just GNU's implementation of the C standard. RMS can decide what goes in the GNU manual, sure. But you didn't even address the fact that the joke is not understandable unless you're from a very specific background (how man…

> (how many people are familiar with US imperialistic politics and the global gag rule?)

Many of us are, more or less. RMS's intention may be to inform more people about such rule(s), since US politics affects the whole world and it is good to be informed.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#363

Post by sigi45 »

Interesting to see that a person like Stallman forces a stupid joke into a project.

I'm only 31 and write only stupid / unnecessary things into my code base for fun/home projects. I would love to add more easter eggs and little things into professional code but its unnprofessional.

Especially for someone so eager about GNU and principles.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#364

Post by labster »

shub wrote: post #310
llukas wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there is business justification of joke in documentation then maintainer has no authority to say no. RMS is a CEO and he ultimately controls the project goals. If you think otherwise you fork.

Is there really a clear line of authority between the glibc maintainers and RMS? It certainly doesn't seem like it. Authority decays, and RMS's is gone, over glibc at least. Compare with GvR: Guido is involved day-to-day, talks to people, makes decisions. No one questions whether he has power, because he uses it , although they certainly question the way he uses it. I think the monarchy of the United Kingdom is good…

I have a hard time imagining the monarch insisting on a joke. Not just Queen Elizabeth, but any hereditary monarch from the modern age. Monarchs retain authority because they're good at politics... RMS, not so much. That's not to say his political positions are wrong, just that the man is impolitic at times.

Monarchs exert soft power pretty much constantly, with public appearances, knighthoods, and recognition of great deeds. They often end up as the most popular political figures of their republics. So while monarchs are a fossil species in modern governments (since WWI), they retain enough of the royal prerogative to exercise those paper rights it when it actually matters. I think we're all second-guessing RMS here because he's using the perogative in a situation where it truly doesn't matter.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#365

Post by wiz21c »

eesmith wrote: post #302
llukas wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there is business justification of joke in documentation then maintainer has no authority to say no. RMS is a CEO and he ultimately controls the project goals. If you think otherwise you fork.

That's not the way a company works. A CEO is not dictator, and there are more paths to resolution than simply following orders or quitting. Why then should the dictatorial mode be the way a non-profit or volunteer effort works? Moreover, in a company it's the Board of Directors which delegates authority to the CEO. And the shareholders could override even them. So if we interpret glibc as as a cooperative where the s…

>>> A CEO is not dictator

well, he definitely is for those under him (not those besides).

Re: Who controls glibc?

#366

Post by GyYZTfWBfQw »

Illniyar wrote: post #306

"a GNU manual, like a course in history, is not meant to be a 'safe space" That blows my mind. Really? Why? A technical instruction manual should definitely be a safe place.

"technical instruction manual" and "safe place" in one sentence. That blows my mind.

I'm genuinely confused, what is going on with the world? Who cares about a joke here or there? Grep the Linux codebase or the ioquake3 codebase for "fuck" or whatever, too. Does that offend you in any way, too?

But then again, what do you mean by safe place?

Re: Who controls glibc?

#367

Post by [deleted] »

amluto wrote: post #231
dec0dedab0de wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a story because Stallman has played the "I'm the boss, you can't outvote me" card, not because anyone's in a tizzy over the politics. If you're going to pull the "I'm the boss, you can't outvote me" card, the best place to do it is somewhere trivial. Especially when you added it yourself a long time ago. Even though I would prefer some sort of vote for these things. there's no "political correctness" here at all…

>> there's no "political correctness" here at all. > Of course there is, Is anyone trying to remove apt-get moo? If the joke only showed up in some joke manpage, that would be one thing. But the joke was in a real manpage, and I think it seemed out of place regardless of one’s political leanings.

[deleted]

Re: Who controls glibc?

#368

Post by _8j50 »

eesmith wrote: post #339
_8j50 wrote: post #163

Rms was in the clear wrong. This is a professional setting,that joke wasn't professional. If you wouldn't say it at a work meeting then it's probably not a good idea to say the same in a commit or a serious thread of a foss project. Although I don't like the joke,it's not so much the content of the joke but rather where the joke was spoken that seemed inappropriate. I am not offended. much like a coworker coming to w…

I have tried, but failed, to understand what "wasn't professional" means. As far as I can tell, it is a synonym for "doesn't upset the status quo." Clearly there are work meetings where this sort of joke/commentary would be voiced. For example, the writers' room at the various satirical news shows. There are, after all, professional comedians, including those which work blue. I've heard people say that children in th…

You have to consider who your coworkers are. It's all about being considerate of the other people that work alongside you.

In a small group everyone might know each other well enough to make that sort of a joke. But when your coworkers could be literally anyone, from a guy in his undies coding as a hobby to someone at a fortune 100 working in a cubicle farm sporting a tuxedo.

It seems like the goal is to not offend anyone because that exactly is the goal -- anyone can work on it. There is no way to get to know every participant of a large foss project on a personal level so much so that you understand what jokes they find acceptable or not. So, simply don't make comment irrelevant to the work at hand.

Some foss groups specifically dedicate mailing lists and chat rooms for the purpose of socializing where similar jokes and possibly offensive content might be tolerated. When it comes to commits,dev lists,posts or threads it isn't professional to insert irrelevant commentary (at least for a public foss project,one can always have their own company culture and rules for intra-company or private projects)

Re: Who controls glibc?

#369

Post by ubernostrum »

sandov wrote: post #345
ubernostrum wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just said I agree with RMS on this, and you straight up attacked me personally. The worst thing I would wish on you is for you to live a while in a world run according to your own espoused values. If you feel that's an attack, it's a problem with your values. (at least, that's how I think I'm supposed to respond here, since people aren't supposed to "feel attacked" or "get offended" by such things, apparently)

You're basically saying his values are wrong without any explanation of how you came to such a conclusion. You're also making wild statements about how he would react to some imaginary world. Probably not the right way to have a discussion.

The comment was "People need to grow up", accompanied by blaming people for being offended.

I do think that's wrong. And I do think having to live in a world where everyone operated by those values would quickly cure the original commenter of believing this sort of thing. In fact, I think it's a very easy way to communicate what's wrong.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#370

Post by geofft »

pferde wrote: post #355
MrsRobot wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How do you know which words will and will not become politically charged in fourty years?

You update the docs in forty years as needed.

In any case that question seems wildly unrelated to the question at hand, which is about a joke that's intended to be a present-day political reference.

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