271–280 of 528 posts
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The TexBook was a technical documentation for TeX written by Donald Knuth. The book had a lot of jokes, and I enjoyed reading it.
Knuth is actually funny.
I am one of those people who subscribe to some of Stallman's crazier ideas, and one of those people who thinks trigger warnings are often misused[1]. That being said, I am really for professionalism in code and documentation. This might have been a fun joke for a pet project at one point in time, but I totally agree it should be removed. I really feel like Stallman is lacking some serious maturity here as well. It no…
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Manuals used to be fun too - except for IBM's, those were never fun.
Jokes may be fun to write. But when you're scouring a manual for a needed function, and you're confronted with a smarmy joke, it probably won't be as fun (especially if you're reading the manual to troubleshoot something.)
Back then manuals were also far more important, you couldn't operate the machine at all without one. Yet the jokes never managed to stop people from getting the information they needed.
I think the real difference when it comes to manuals is most modern ones are not comprehensive. I could see being upset if there was a joke but no information on my actual problem.
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…
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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.
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…
Why is the joke dated? It refers to a current (and recently expanded) US government policy.
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This is harmless - probably true, nobody would die or suffer harm from having irrelevant content in the manual. We could splice full seven books of Harry Potter into it, and provided it is clearly marked up, it won't cause any serious harm. But glibc technical manuals are not exactly the place for RMS - or anybody else - to wage political advocacy campaigns, criticize US federal government or joke on the topics unrel…
I doubt anyone cares hugely about political messages in commit comments.
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This is harmless - probably true, nobody would die or suffer harm from having irrelevant content in the manual. We could splice full seven books of Harry Potter into it, and provided it is clearly marked up, it won't cause any serious harm. But glibc technical manuals are not exactly the place for RMS - or anybody else - to wage political advocacy campaigns, criticize US federal government or joke on the topics unrel…
Try reading GPL license... is a political statement itself. Is joke in documentation useful? Probably not...
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What's the global gag rule you are referring to?
The US government does not fund overseas organizations that provide or promote abortion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico_City_policy (The fact that this reference is so unclear is probably a reason that, everything else aside, the joke is not very good . The glibc maintainers have offered to replace it with some clear text about censorship in the US.)
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Lets think how many hours RMS has put into GNU over the years. That should count for something, no?
I'm a big fan of RMS, but I've got to say "No". He's not a maintainer. He doesn't get a vote. If he wants to work his way back into that project, then I've got no problem with it. But he doesn't. It's like the CEO telling you that he wants a joke in the technical documentation for one of your libraries. They might get away with it because of their position, but it's an abuse of that position even if the CEO used to b…
RMS is a CEO and he ultimately controls the project goals. If you think otherwise you fork.