Bitcoin fights over 1MB versus 8MB for 4+ years and glibc fights over a cosmetic joke in the manual page. I often wonder how many man years of labor are wasted with this kind of bike-shedding nonsense.
Who controls glibc?
211–220 of 528 posts
Re: Who controls glibc?
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
He probably owns some root certs. Likely if he were to start exercising such authority without being an active developer, there would be a fork soon enough. Isn't that what happened to emacs?
It happened with GCC. Today's GCC is actually a fork of the original, which became the "blessed" version once the forkers and RMS worked out resolved some issues that led to the fork. The unforked (for lack of a better term) GCC was set aside, and the fork became the official version.
Just for the sake of completeness: the EGCS fork you are talking about was alive 1997-1999.
Re: Who controls glibc?
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know why you say the left in Latin America favors restrictions on abortion. I am a Latin American and can say it's just not so - at least in the countries I know, the left is usually pushing for more sex ed, and more availability of abortion. It'd be interesting to know _where_ in Latin America the left favors the restrictions on abortion - at least to document that perspective and share it around.
I was predominantly thinking of Hugo Chavez & Venezuela. Maybe I am not understanding his positions, but he was extremely left-wing (at least in the American context) on almost every issue except abortion. IIUC all countries in Latin America with the exception of Cuba & Uruguay have really bad abortion rights records. Maybe the left supports abortion rights, but at the least, it's not been enough support to effect ch…
Thanks for explaining.
Cuba & Venezuela are not within the normalcy of LatAm - different economic models, different politics. Mexico has good abortion laws - at least in the capital.
There are awful abortion rights records. Agreed - even in my own country, where we're fighting to have it allowed at least for extreme cases (nonviable fetus, or situations that put the mother at big risk, like ectopic pregnancies). Most LatAm countries at least allow abortion to save the mother's life.
Agreed that there's not been enough support to effect changes to the laws. It's an uphill battle; most of America is historically very right-leaning; military dictatorships and rights infringement were the norm for most of the 20th century in much of the subcontinent, and people who lived - but mostly those who _grew up_ - through that have the lingering effects of those predispositions.
But - yeah, the left is generally out of the circles of power in LatAm, and the laws - in particular abortion and other religion-endorsed observations - are very right leaning.
Re: Who controls glibc?
#214Lots 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…
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…
I guess I understand the downvotes here, but I really do think you've hit on at least an issue. Maybe not the issue, but it's a pretty big problem.
RMS's conduct here is just... pretty inappropriate. Jokes about abortion, rape, race, sexual orientation, etc, etc, are not something you should be touching as the maintainer of a public project, no matter what your opinions are or how strongly you hold them. The glibc maintainers (completely reasonably) decided that the man pages weren't a good place for potentially-charged jokes like this, and removed it. RMS overruled them in a pretty childlike and insensitive fashion, and that's not appropriate when you're the public face of anything.
I don't give a shit about the politics of glibc - but I do care that someone who is a role model and a public figure acts like this.
Re: Who controls glibc?
#215Lots 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 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.
Of course there is, Is anyone trying to remove apt-get moo?
Re: Who controls glibc?
#216Earlier 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.
I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that the consensus is that the joke is disagreeable, but that it is not an appropriate joke for the documentation. I am a staunchly pro-choice, but this joke is out-of-date and out-of-place. I would personally vote for it to go. I really don't want to see the political divide fragment the GNU/Linux community because people are determined to inject their opinions into code. If you run…
"but this joke is out-of-date"
It isn't out of date, it's entirely relevant today.
Re: Who controls glibc?
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Yes, it's vague enough that you can probably find what you want in it. For that reason alone, there probably is a legitimate case to remove it. I think it's interesting how one's background can affect this too. I think everyone agrees that GNU & FSF are left-wing projects but where the "left" falls on different issues depends on where you're from. For RMS & most American lefties, "freedom" includes things like aborti…
You can add Romania to that list even if it's not part of Catholic Europe. It's part of Orthodox Europe. Abortion was outlawed under communism, but after the fall of Iron Curtain it was immediately legalized.
Re: Who controls glibc?
#218Earlier 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…
I guess I understand the downvotes here, but I really do think you've hit on at least an issue. Maybe not the issue, but it's a pretty big problem. RMS's conduct here is just... pretty inappropriate. Jokes about abortion, rape, race, sexual orientation, etc, etc, are not something you should be touching as the maintainer of a public project, no matter what your opinions are or how strongly you hold them. The glibc ma…
I do care that someone who is a role model and a public figure acts like this.
Why? It's fine to be offended. It's his project. Just fork and move on, if necessary.
Re: Who controls glibc?
#219Earlier 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…
I guess I understand the downvotes here, but I really do think you've hit on at least an issue. Maybe not the issue, but it's a pretty big problem. RMS's conduct here is just... pretty inappropriate. Jokes about abortion, rape, race, sexual orientation, etc, etc, are not something you should be touching as the maintainer of a public project, no matter what your opinions are or how strongly you hold them. The glibc ma…
> I guess I understand the downvotes here
You’d be surprised. It bottomed out at -3 and is now oscillating around 0 and -1. That’s a surprisingly encouraging sign.
I agree wholeheartedly with your assessment of a problem. I think the industry’s reaction to it is an even bigger one and it’s right here, in this thread. Or lack thereof.
Re: Who controls glibc?
#220Earlier 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.
You don't have to disagree with Stallman on abortion in order to find his humor tasteless and inappropriate for product documentation. Pulling rank as GNU project leader for the sake of a tasteless joke is squandering your moral authority, I think, and he may need it for a time when, say, a state actor tries to sneak nefarious code into glibc.
Not sure how the joke is "tasteless". Michelle Wolf's "knock em out of there" abortion joke was tasteless. This is just a joke about government censorship and overreach.