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Who controls glibc?

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Re: Who controls glibc?

#341

Post by young_unixer »

matthewbauer wrote: post #117
Jasper_ wrote: post #94

Earlier 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…

>GNU & FSF are left wing projects

What?. You'll have to explain to me how you've come to such a conclussion.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#342

Post by _b8r0 »

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/generational gap here: https://lobste.rs/s/ei9fcf/who_controls_glibc#c_lfucpv - but the bottom line is that RMS' values are very different to those of the project, and he's not going to change them. GNU's values were founded in the counterculture movements of the 70s, and the social issues of those times, which are different to those commonly adopted today.

As always, the Simpsons did it best: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMqZ2PPOLik

Re: Who controls glibc?

#343

Post by sandov »

dfox wrote: post #178
djsumdog wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not that hardcore about it, but I still agree this really shouldn't be in the official docs. Maybe in a tutorial or a set of slides. I do agree with some professionalism in things that want to be taken seriously. I don't even really like the "Apt with super cow powers." I do agree this isn't about political correctness. At one time GNU tools were just a bunch of devs trying to write open source tooling for fun or…

My feeling is that most of GNU manuals in texinfo format are borderline useless because the structure is simply wrong, the random jokes are somewhat tangential issue.

I Don't know if we're talking about the same thing but I've found the format of man pages to be absolutely useless for me. Maybe I'm too dumb/noob to understand them, but then what's left for the folk who just switched to linux and wamts to learn about commands.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#344

Post by grzm »

sandov wrote: post #343
dfox wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My feeling is that most of GNU manuals in texinfo format are borderline useless because the structure is simply wrong, the random jokes are somewhat tangential issue.

I Don't know if we're talking about the same thing but I've found the format of man pages to be absolutely useless for me. Maybe I'm too dumb/noob to understand them, but then what's left for the folk who just switched to linux and wamts to learn about commands.

Texinfo and man are different.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texinfo

> "Notably, man is not available as an output format from the standard Texinfo tools. While Texinfo is used for writing the documentation of GNU software, which typically is used in Unix-like environments such as GNU/Linux, where man pages are the traditional format for documentation, the rationale for this is that man pages have a strict conventional format, used traditionally as quick reference guides, whereas typical Texinfo applications are for tutorials as well as reference manuals. As such, no benefit is seen in expressing Texinfo content in man page format. Moreover, many GNU projects eschew man pages almost completely, referring the reader of the provided man page (which often describes itself as seldom maintained) to the Info document."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_page

They can take some getting used to if you're not familiar with them, but given how much documentation is available in these formats, it's worth taking a few hours to become accustomed to them. A lot of it is duplicated online as well, so you can often use your favorite search engine.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#345

Post by sandov »

ubernostrum wrote: post #330
bhhaskin wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should practice what you preach, because your statement doesn't make me feel very welcome or safe right now. You seem to make a lot of assumptions about me and the world I live in. I just said I agree with RMS on this, and you straight up attacked me personally.

I just said I agree with RMS on this, and you straight up attacked me personally. The worst thing I would wish on you is for you to live a while in a world run according to your own espoused values. If you feel that's an attack, it's a problem with your values. (at least, that's how I think I'm supposed to respond here, since people aren't supposed to "feel attacked" or "get offended" by such things, apparently)

You're basically saying his values are wrong without any explanation of how you came to such a conclusion. You're also making wild statements about how he would react to some imaginary world.

Probably not the right way to have a discussion.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#346

Post by mcbits »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #215
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…

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?

If forced to choose, I would actually prefer touchy political jokes in the documentation over non-political easter eggs baked into the code, because IAGNI.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#347

Post by eesmith »

peterwwillis wrote: post #221
chris_wot wrote: post #195

Though I can’t stand Ulrich Drepper, what he said in the glibc 2.2.4 release notes is true: “The morale of this is that people will hopefully realize what a control freak and raging manic Stallman is. Don't trust him. As soon as something isn't in line with his view he'll stab you in the back. NEVER voluntarily put a project you work on under the GNU umbrella since this means in Stallman's opinion that he has the rig…

This part has a morale, too, and it is almost the same: don't trust this person. Read the licenses carefully and rip out parts which give Stallman any possibility to influence your future. Phrases like [...] GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. just invites him to screw you when it pleases him. Rip out…

It was what enabled the compatibility with the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license that the Wikimedia Foundation used.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Free_Documentation_License...

It could seemingly be used for malice, eg, if there's a hostile takeover of the FSF and the new owners change the license.

However, the copyright contribution agreement that people make with the FSF essentially contractually promises that the contributions will only be used for free software, making that scenario impossible.

Re: Who controls glibc?

#348

Post by coldtea »

>1. It's fair to say that the joke is unprofessional, and doesn't have a place in documentation.

Every time I read something such as this, I want to get out of software and into farming or something...

Re: Who controls glibc?

#350

Post by koala_man »

_8j50 wrote: post #163

Rms was in the clear wrong. This is a professional setting,that joke wasn't professional. If you wouldn't say it at a work meeting then it's probably not a good idea to say the same in a commit or a serious thread of a foss project. Although I don't like the joke,it's not so much the content of the joke but rather where the joke was spoken that seemed inappropriate. I am not offended. much like a coworker coming to w…

Stallman's from the hippie generation and a project like GNU must have had a strong "stick it to The Man" element. He basically dedicated his life to rejecting the IBM era corporate culture and "professionalism".

I guess I can see where he's coming from, even though I totally disagree and find this view as irrelevant and dated as the dumb joke.

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