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Who controls glibc?

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Re: Who controls glibc?

#401

Post by humanrebar »

geofft wrote: post #398
jonhendry18 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Technical documentation isn't the place for a joke full stop" This is a bad take. When wading through dry technical documentation a little humor can make it much less laborious. As long as the humor doesn't result in ambiguity, there's no problem. Something like "You can tune a filesystem, but you can't tune a fish." at the end of a manpage may elicit a chuckle but doesn't reduce understanding.

For what it's worth, at least one member of the glibc steering committee appears to agree: "I agree with removing this joke. A bit of humor is fine - indeed, the manual could use a bit more than it has - but this attempt at humor does not work. The manual should be high-quality, and that includes high-quality jokes." https://sourceware.org/ml/libc-alpha/2018-04/msg00604.html

For what it's worth, that only high quality jokes bit made me laugh more than Stallman's joke.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#402

Post by alex_hitchins »

djsumdog wrote: post #233
jsmthrowaway wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m much more concerned about him playing the “childbirth is far more traumatic than having an abortion” card in the discussion about the patch. Until this moment, I wasn’t even aware that was a card. It’s difficult to fathom the logic that would arrive at that statement making sense to someone typing it, particularly a person who will never experience the situations upon which he’s speaking conclusively. You’re righ…

> Immediate future prediction: -4 on this comment Commenting on downvotes is discouraged in the HN guidelines. It's boring, it's trite and this isn't Reddit/Voat.

It is discouraged yes, but also it's human nature to want to understand why ones opinion isn't popular. I have seen previously my own posts be downvoted with no comments given and no clear idea of what I was doing to displease the hive mind.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#403

Post by crististm »

smsm42 wrote: post #331
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?

I thought the whole point of Free Software idea is that contributing to a software project does not make you its exclusive owner (after you released it under Free Software license) and its users subject to your whims. It is ironic that at the top of this project is a person who would very much like to subject the project to his whims, and for quite a trivial reason at that.

No. Free software is about respecting the four freedoms not about what you say above. If it counts to anything, you get the choice to fork the project at any time.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#404

Post by concrete-faucet »

If RMS thinks that dumb jokes in documentation are worth having, I say we wholeheartedly embrace it. For example:

* GNU/Hurd - almost as traumatic as childbirth.

or

* childbirth - if it takes as long as it takes to write GNU/Hurd, may God have mercy on your soul.

or

* RMS - I know how to program computers (maybe), so obviously I am an expert on female reproductive issues.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#405

Post by 2FC00C733A55 »

sanxiyn wrote: post #286
Jerry2 wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And you are sure that any code of conduct violations will not include anything out of the official Rust project space, like an unrelated twitter post?

Re: Who controls glibc?

#406

Post by eesmith »

wiz21c wrote: post #365
eesmith wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

I've been trying to figure out an answer which was more concrete than "I disagree", and ran into the problem that I can't figure out what "dictator" is supposed to mean, other than "person in authority whom I disagree with."

I mean, people called Obama a dictator (https://www.marketwatch.com/story/americans-newly-see-obama-... ), Jeremy Corby (http://www.livetradingnews.com/jeremy-corbyn-turns-dictator-... ), a teacher's union (https://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-stieber/i-am-a-dictator-... ), and more.

When I wrote that, I was thinking specifically of how a union could override a CEO's demands demands, eg, by (threat of) lawsuit over breaking an employment agreement, or by collective action.

Then again, a dictator also has to worry about a mass uprising.

Then again again, so does a president - the US president is the chief of the executive branch of the US.

Do you think a CEO is dictator by definition, or that there is no way for a CEO to be anything other than a dictator? If so, what do you mean by dictator?

Re: Who controls glibc?

#407

Post by djpowell »

I'm reminded of the old comment at the bottom of the man page for 'su', where rms argues for why the implementation is deliberately less secure:

"Sometimes a few of the users try to hold total power over all the rest. For example, in 1984, a few users at the MIT AI lab decided to seize power by changing the operator password on the Twenex system and keep- ing it secret from everyone else. (I was able to thwart this coup and give power back to the users by patching the kernel, but I wouldn't know how to do that in Unix.)

However, occasionally the rulers do tell someone. Under the usual su mechanism, once someone learns the root password who sympathizes with the ordinary users, he can tell the rest. The "wheel group" feature would make this impossible, and thus cement the power of the rulers.

I'm on the side of the masses, not that of the rulers. If you are used to supporting the bosses and sysadmins in whatever they do, you might find this idea strange at first."

Re: Who controls glibc?

#408

Post by scrollaway »

GyYZTfWBfQw wrote: post #374
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…

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…

Just to elaborate on my earlier point:

As I said elsewhere in the thread, I don't particularly condone the requirement of modern society to care about superficial things. I find Stallman gross, and it's distracting, but I'll still listen.

However, what I care about more than Stallman is the causes he supposedly stands for. And Stallman hurts those causes because we're not in this fantasy world where almost nobody cares about appearances and those that don't "don't matter". 99+% of people care about form and appearances. Stallman hurts the cause with the current vibes he gives off, and the tone he takes.

I want to stress this point: There's always a lot of people in these threads who pop up, feeling superior that they "don't care" about Stallman's vibes. Good for you. But your inability to understand why it matters across people who aren't you is a failure, not a success.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#409

Post by mikekchar »

labster wrote: post #364
shub wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 gre…

Case in point: In Japan Prime Minister Abe wanted to change the constitution to allow Japan to engage in external conflicts if allies were in danger. The emperor of Japan suddenly said, "I'm old, you know. I think I want to retire, but there is no constitutional law that will allow me to abdicate. Please write this law ASAP". Prime Minister Abe does not have resources to do both constitutional changes at the same time...

The emperor of Japan is really awesome.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#410

Post by aepiepaey »

_b8r0 wrote: post #342
tptacek wrote: post #173

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…

This isn't the first time he's pulled this. I remember the hostile takeover attempt against Ulrich Drepper back in the early 2000s. Bottom line: Don't make your project a GNU project if you want control of it. Benevolent dictators aren't always benevolent. The good news is that the devs can fork Glibc, which has happened at least twice before IIRC. I've gone into a bit of detail on my view of the cultural/generationa…

Drepper's take on that takeover attempt: https://sourceware.org/ml/libc-announce/2001/msg00000.html

Starts at "And now for some not so nice things".

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