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Who controls glibc?

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Re: Who controls glibc?

#371

Post by geofft »

zeth___ wrote: post #324
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.

In the new spirit of 'liberalism', or the tumblr version of it, mentioning a traumatic event is as bad as causing the traumatic event. You can't mention rape because it might trigger someone, it doesn't matter if you are excusing it, or demanding harsher punishments for it. Unless you've been on a collage campus in the last 10 years you don't know how insane the movement is. Calling it 'liberal' is complete wrong bec…

I've been on a college campus within the last 10 years and I can only assume the people who genuinely think this either haven't or have their careers depend on pretending it's true (e.g. Turning Point USA).

Re: Who controls glibc?

#372

Post by icebraining »

pasabagi wrote: post #358
scottie_m wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

Really? To be honest, Linus also comes across as an egomaniac. Sometimes, he says what must be said. Mostly, he's just extremely abusive. The problem with BDFL positions is it removes the sort of checks and bounds that people need, to stop them growing into assholes. The advantage is, for better or worse, they tend to have the kind of vision and consistency that allows a project to thrive. I think it'd be nice if the…

I don't think Torvalds grew into anything; the Tanenbaum–Torvalds debate from '92 already had quotes like:

your job is being a professor and researcher: That's one hell of a good excuse for some of the brain-damages of minix. I can only hope (and assume) that Amoeba doesn't suck like minix does.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#373

Post by esrauch »

da_chicken wrote: post #269
mycall wrote: 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…

What is the point of the project? What goal does it achieve?

There was a gcc frontend/backend clean architecture dispute: some wanted it so that gcc could be used for more things that clang is being used for. RMS argued against it, on the basis that GCC technical architecture should deliberately avoid it working with proprietary non-GPL backends.

The official story is that a technically worse compiler than loses market share is still superior for the FSF goals of pushing free software: they are willing to accept people moving to clang to avoid GCC from being the front half of a non-free compiler.

That goal is inherently political. It isn't obvious whether drawing attention to harmful suppression of information by the government is also in the projects mandate, but it is obvious that the projects mandate isn't just to make the best technical and professional result.

https://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2014-01/msg00209.html

https://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2014-01/msg00178.html

Re: Who controls glibc?

#374

Post by GyYZTfWBfQw »

scrollaway wrote: post #68
drb91 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I follow. What's wrong with his term? Either people get what he's writing, and the term is irrelevant, or they don't get what he's writing, 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. So you just don't like the term. This is fine! But you've failed to make any point.

> 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…

I get your perspective, but just because someone has a red hair, it doesn't render their claims incorrect, or doesn't invalidate anything they say.

I have seen many people being dismissed by others merely because of their voice, which I find funny because they were supposed to focus on the content. It's the content that matters. If the presentation is not to your liking, that doesn't mean that person is wrong. On top of that, you don't need to be factually correct if you are convincing enough; sophistry anyone? Apparently people don't seek for the truth, it's enough if you put a pretty face on stage who has some charisma and you are all falling for it. Be skeptical. Focus on the actual content and ignore the irrelevant things, because they are, well, irrelevant. If you are easily distracted by the speaker's fly being open, that's on you, and yes, the outcome might be detrimental from the perspective of the speaker given the majority of the audience is easily distracted and ignores the actual argument because of the speaker's fly being open, or because he used the word "Micro$oft".

For the same reason we wouldn't need defamation laws if people had better critical thinking skills, as they wouldn't have mindlessly believed the defamation, and the person's life would not have been ruined.

Ultimately, it is your choice. Personally, I am not going to care about the irrelevancies because I focus on what is being said, and not how it is being said. I'm not going to dismiss you because I find your tone offensive, in fact, somehow I manage to not get offended nor care about the tone.

I respect Linus and Theo for their contributions, and I'm not going to judge their quality of code based on their actions unrelated to the code. Surely you, too, care about the quality of code and you won't disregard it when you find out it's been written by a transgender person, right?

If you genuinely care about the argument, you won't disregard it merely because of its irrelevancies, e.g. appearance or behavior you find obnoxious. If you do, then you certainly need to improve your ability to ignore those irrelevant things and focus on the argument.

P.S. I don't deny that presentation matters, but only because there are too many people who are way too keen on dismissing someone's argument because, for example, they find their hair funny. It sounds ridiculous to me, but that's just my opinion I guess.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#375

Post by ryanlol »

dralley wrote: post #204
ajross wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is one of those spots where RMS is stubbornly and stupidly standing up for principle in a context where the rest of us just clearly see that it shouldn't matter and he's just being a jerk. But... damn if he's not right about this. The joke has meaning. It still means what he meant when he wrote it. The issue is an important one (to RMS, at least). And no one else has a real argument here other than "it's u…

>The joke has meaning Only if you're American and also have the requisite background knowledge to understand it, which many don't. If you don't know the context, it's meaningless. Which is not a good thing to have in technical documentation.

I'm European and we learned about the global gag rule in HS.

You really have to be clueless to not get the joke.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#376

Post by craigsmansion »

smsm42 wrote: post #336
ajross wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is one of those spots where RMS is stubbornly and stupidly standing up for principle in a context where the rest of us just clearly see that it shouldn't matter and he's just being a jerk. But... damn if he's not right about this. The joke has meaning. It still means what he meant when he wrote it. The issue is an important one (to RMS, at least). And no one else has a real argument here other than "it's u…

> And no one else has a real argument here other than "it's unprofessional and embarassing and we want it gone". No one needs any better argument. It's unprofessional, and it's embarrassing (both as poorly executed joke and as political advocacy bolted onto the technical manual). RMS has a perfectly good personal site and lots of speaking engagements where he is very welcome to advocate whatever he likes and people a…

> No one needs any better argument. It's unprofessional

I do. If you want professional, there are plenty of professional proprietary vendors out there. Or if you insist on Free Software, probably the BSDs are more professional.

GNU is a social project first, with quality and professionalism being secondary considerations.

The whole argument is about the removal of a statement against censorship (interpreted by some as an "abortion joke"). Of course a GNU project shouldn't remove such a thing for reasons of "being professional". I agree with rms here.

On the other side is the scope. Why is rms being so difficult here? Even though I think he's right, why not shrug it off? Why even bother?

I would disagree with rms here, were it not that in the past he's often been ridiculed for being quirky and irrational about minutiae, and yet here we are, with Facebook and Google controlling the internet, each one of us carrying a personal tracking device and loving it, and e-books being deleted remotely from devices we thought we owned.

So maybe this silly, trivial disagreement about some documentation is more important than I give it credit for at this moment.

rms is known for being difficult, not for being wrong.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#377

Post by cowsandmilk »

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?

Glibc spent over a decade under Ulrich Drepper, who many viewed as a dictator. This resulted in forks and major linux distributions no longer using glibc. About 6 years ago, Drepper was removed and glibc moved to "cooperative community development"[0].

The community spoke and said they did not like dictators in development of glibc. Since Drepper's removal, many would agree that the quality of glibc has increased significantly. RMS is well aware of this and the delicate political situation. He should recognize that coming in and declaring himself in charge would not play well with a community that stated about their maintainers following Drepper: "This does not confer any extra ability to make decisions for the project; community consensus is what matters there."

[0] https://sourceware.org/ml/libc-alpha/2012-03/msg01040.html

Re: Who controls glibc?

#378

Post by Tepix »

DandyDev wrote: post #335
rurban wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He might not be the maintainer, but he is the BDFL. It's about respect. See what happened to Drepper who violated his respect. I like the joke, and I sympathize with RMS to let it in. In any case he opposed it so there is now a power struggle about the control of his project. I would love to see a better maintained glibc btw. Too much politics, not enough competence.

The dictator in question certainly doesn't seem Benevolent to me in this case.

It's not like he is not benevolent either.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#379

Post by bigleagueposter »

RIMR wrote: post #38
lsh wrote: post #28

To call it a joke is a bit of a stretch, more like a turn of phrase or wink to the reader. As far as explicitly inserting one's politics into communal tools, this case is so mild it's hard to fathom any grounded person wasting time on it. However, there is a case at the moment of the author of the BFG tool for git adding a paragraph of text about fighting trump at the end of his tool's output. He won't get rid of it…

Or, if you're going to be subtly political (as GNU often is), at least be current. That joke was 20-something years old. It ran its course. Also, as far as calling LGBT rainbows "political", I would have to disagree. You either view LBGT people as equal, or you can be a hateful person. There's no good reason to pander to the latter, but plenty of reasons to stand up in unity with the former. There are some concepts t…

Nope

Re: Who controls glibc?

#380

Post by dingaling »

ryanlol wrote: post #375
dralley wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The joke has meaning Only if you're American and also have the requisite background knowledge to understand it, which many don't. If you don't know the context, it's meaningless. Which is not a good thing to have in technical documentation.

I'm European and we learned about the global gag rule in HS. You really have to be clueless to not get the joke.

'Clueless' is an offensively derogatory word in this context. An incredibly niche piece of legislation that applies to 5% of the World's population?

I had no idea it related to abortion . I have no knowledge of or interest in abortion laws. I assumed it was something related to US munitions export laws.

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