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Who controls glibc?

lwn.net

231–240 of 528 posts

Re: Who controls glibc?

#231

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 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.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#233

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…

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.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#234

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 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…

It seems like a really silly hill to die on, but then this whole debate seems like a boring pissing match. My only thought on finishing the article was, “what a waste of my time this was,” and that was just reading it, not living it. Maybe there’s some strategic value to making a big deal of something trivial like this, but I don’t see it. I just come away from this thinking Stallman is a controlling, thin-skinned, dick. If that was his plan, then as they say, mission accomplished. I couldn’t care less about the politics, it’s the personality that’s offensive.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#235
post #19
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is it [0]? Has it been changed since this discussion, or was it not removed? I honestly don't get the joke. [0] https://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node/Aborting-...

That's it. It's a stupid joke.

Exactly! That is literally the best reason to remove it and nobody is talking about how lame this joke is. It's not even like a European wrote it and so an awkward translation makes it land weird. It's just stupid.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#236
post #196
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people that flag that sort of thing don't actually want diversity and inclusiveness, these are newspeak terms that mean the opposite. If they actually wanted diversity then they would have to recognize that the majority of the world (and the diversity in it) has some very non-PC beliefs and their policies are excluding those people.

I always find these discussions weird, as a Christian who believes in the literal reality of hell. (I hope it will be empty, but I have no reason to believe that other than hope, and I must realistically admit that plenty of people appear to die in a state of mortal sin.) Being respectful of others , even in a codified way, is in no way an affront to my non-PC beliefs. I'm not going to start having opinions about whe…

I think you're ignoring that witch hunting that has been going on in recent years. As a hypothetical, let's say that you believe all homosexuals will go to hell. Of course in a project or a workplace their will never be a need to bring this up and being respectful of others you never bring it up in those environments. But what about other environments? Should you be able to express your belief on your personal twitter? At your church?

The answer lately is that you aren't free to express that opinion anywhere, by doing so you could lose your job or be kicked out of a project. Being respectful to others will not save you, you have to keep your opinion completely to yourself.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#237

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 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…

How is moo related to political correctness? Doesn't it just ask if you've mooed today? That's an innocent joke that you never need to stumble upon.

Joking about social/religious/political topics in deep technical docs is something else entirely, unless I'm missing something about moo.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#238

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.

I know. Good thing it was neither part of a point nor sprinkled within many other substantive points, or we might be talking about it. HN needs Wikipedia-style acronyms for the guidelines, and yes, I’m making multiple points with the comparison. HN:NODV, with a dash of HN:IRONY, the lament of boring, trite comments in a comment solely about guideline violations. In a thread about a mailing list argument. On the Internet.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The politics of GNU is not only completely separate from the politics of abortion debate, but we're also talking about technical documentation here, which is an apolitical thing. Someone reading technical documentation is not doing so because they're trying to be involved in the politics, they're doing so because they're looking for, you guessed it, technical documentation .

"talking about technical documentation here, which is an apolitical thing" There's no requirement of that, just like there's no requirement that technical documentation be stab-your-eyes-out dry and boring rather than having an occasional bit of humor. Apolitical technical documentation is a style choice, saying that you want to emulate a certain style of documentation.

I didn't say the technical documentation has to be completely dry and devoid of any humor. But when you're putting humor into technical documentation, you need to avoid any kind of divisive or political topic. The worst response to the humor you put in there should a groan.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#240
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…

>It's literally the C library reference manual. That's true of the whole thing! You have to know about the global gag rule prohibiting health providers that receive federal funds from discussing abortion with their patients to understand the entire C library reference manual? News to me.

No, the manual is a dry retelling of software capabilities without tutorial content, so its readers might reasonably be expected to be familiar with the idea of a section or two requiring some external context to interpret.

All you're telling me is that you'd prefer to be googling for strftime() examples on StackOverflow than reading an explainer on US abortion rights policy. Which is fine. But it's not like it would hurt you to learn a little extra stuff along the way, and RMS thinks it would be good for you. And he wrote the manual.

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