Who controls glibc?

https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/753646/a6ebb50040c5862c/

by CJefferson • 8 years ago

339 500 8 years ago

wyldfire2• 8 years ago

What an unexpected schism!

"As the head of the GNU Project, I am in charge of what we publish in GNU manuals. I decide the criteria to decide by, too"

Interesting. Sounds decidedly authoritarian to cite (sole?) control of the content and criteria.

"I exercise my authority over Glibc very rarely -- and when I have done so, I have talked with the official maintainers. So rarely that some of you thought that you are entirely autonomous."

That sounds puzzling. "It turns out my rank actually supersedes yours and always has, I've just never exercised it until now."

In general I've always thought that Stallman is to be admired. He's made a fantastic contribution to society. I don't really have a position on the issue at the heart of this manpage content debate, but on the meta-issue of what his role is/should be, his position seems like an odd one.

Ultimately, the copyright holders for the source code (and to some extent the manuals) have the real power regarding "who controls glibc?". I suspect that no one will care strongly enough about this particular issue in order to drive a real fork.

LinuxBender• 8 years ago

I know of one distro that uses muslc [0] vs. glibc and they have a wrapper that allows most build tools to work (mostly) as expected. Are there any other options?

[0] https://www.musl-libc.org/faq.html

wyldfire2• 8 years ago

For open source libc? musl, glibc, dietlibc, bionic are the only I know of. The supported targets vary widely among these, though.

quotemstr4• 8 years ago

Last time I checked, musl didn't support random important things. Consider dlclose: unsupported due to an unfounded (IMHO) assertion that it's not possible to implement such a thing safely. Nevertheless, people _have_ been unloading shared libraries for decades, so musl asserting that it's impossible makes me question musl's other technical decisions.

gus_massa• 8 years ago

the copyright holders for the source code

FWIW from https://sourceware.org/glibc/wiki/Contribution%20checklist#F...

The Free Software Foundation (holder of the glibc copyrights) requires copyright assignment for all legally significant changes by a particular author (read not a company). [...]

djsumdog5• 8 years ago

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 nothing to even do with being offended about the joke, it's just a basic idea of professionalism around documentation.

It'd be different if the joke was in a comment, or even in a tutorial on how to use a library (if it wasn't an official tutorial or was intended to have a humorous tone).

To be clear, I don't even like the stupid "Apt has super cow powers" at the bottom of apt-get. If you want to make jokes, put them in your blog, or your YouTube screencast, or at most in the comments.

[1]: Trigger warnings came from the idea of post traumatic stress. But you don't know what can trigger memories of trauma. A rainbow could invoke a PTSD episode for someone who associates that with a loved one that was killed. I think a better approach is the old TV saying, "Viewer/Listener discretion is advised" if something might be offensive.

djur3• 8 years ago

I don't see the difference between "viewer discretion is advised" and trigger warnings. "This show contains scenes of domestic violence, viewer discretion is advised" and "Trigger warning: domestic violence" are just different ways of saying the same thing. A lot of people are using "content warning" or "content advisory" these days anyway, partially to avoid the impression that it's strictly about PTSD.

ww520• 8 years ago

Actually it has nothing to do with joke or professionalism, it's pure political power play through and through.

modbait2• 8 years ago

RMS has been arguing for technical freedom for decades. Ironically, all the technical freedom in the world won't save us from political correctness.

SEJeff5• 8 years ago

Email thread: https://sourceware.org/ml/libc-alpha/2018-05/msg00001.html

That gets a bit whacky when RMS asserts control over glibc as the GNU project maintainer and asks them to add it back:

https://sourceware.org/ml/libc-alpha/2018-05/msg00149.html

ocdtrekkie6• 8 years ago

The email thread is far more interesting/informative. I would argue it would be a better link for the main headline.

SEJeff5• 8 years ago

HN won't let me edit the URL. I guess only a mod can do that.

@dang, can you do the honors sir^

bagels• 8 years ago

I disagree. Neither one of those links actually show the 'joke' that was removed.

xxpor• 8 years ago

Is there a mirror somewhere? Sourceware seems to be getting HN'd

runarb• 8 years ago

The documentation for the glibc abort() function had this entry, that was removed:

  @c Put in by rms.  Don't remove.
  @cartouche
  @strong{Future Change Warning:} Proposed Federal censorship regulations
  may prohibit us from giving you information about the possibility of
  calling this function.  We would be required to say that this is not an
  acceptable way of terminating a program.
  @end cartouche

LeoPanthera2• 8 years ago

"If you would like me to change it, it is up to you to convince me to change my decision."

Was he convinced? Or was the change made against his wishes?

adamwong246• 8 years ago

I don't get it

laken2• 8 years ago

If additional context is needed: this was in the documentation for the `abort()` function

xur172• 8 years ago

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-...

LeoPanthera2• 8 years ago

Calling it an "abortion joke" is a politicized headline.

It's a political/protest joke, maybe.

Either way, the glibc documentation is not the ideal place for it.

MBCook3• 8 years ago

It’s a political joke. About abortion.

Seems fitting enough.

jonhendry187• 8 years ago

It's a political joke. About free speech. About abortion.

loeg3• 8 years ago

LWN covers the topic: "Who controls glibc?"[0] (accessible to non-subscribers in two weeks).

[0] https://lwn.net/Articles/753646/

_wmd2• 8 years ago

subscriber link via lobste.rs: https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/753646/c869537af7d612a6/

loeg3• 8 years ago

Obligatory if you find LWN valuable (check out their backcatalog of weekly issues), consider subscribing! (I do.)

slededit5• 8 years ago

I don't really get this "joke" but man do I hate the trend of removing any personality from code. Programming used to be FUN and a way to express yourself. Easter eggs exemplified this. Now its cold and business only.

GW150914• 8 years ago

Everyone who decided they’d rather have a giant paycheck than have fun made it happen. This site is full of people who make and made that choice, who chase VC money, and consequently have little right to complain about how corporate their working lives are.

slededit5• 8 years ago

Money has always been around, but even "corporate" was not nearly as stifling. 90s era Microsoft code is quite colorful - as I'm sure it would have been at most other companies of the era.

jkFeiwi3• 8 years ago

This isn't an easter egg, nor a comment in the code. It's dab smack in the manual. Could distract or confuse someone just trying to look up a function. I say we keep the fun expression stuff in places where it won't get in the user's way of doing their job.

slededit5• 8 years ago

Manuals used to be fun too - except for IBM's, those were never fun.

supergirl• 8 years ago

it's a cringey joke but the PC police trying to convince RMS to remove it is equally cringey. with this trend soon we won't allow ourselves to say anything because words lead to feelings and we can't have that, for some reason.

lsh5• 8 years ago

To call it a joke is a bit of a stretch, more like a turn of phrase or wink to the reader.

As far as explicitly inserting one's politics into communal tools, this case is so mild it's hard to fathom any grounded person wasting time on it.

However, there is a case at the moment of the author of the BFG tool for git adding a paragraph of text about fighting trump at the end of his tool's output. He won't get rid of it until he's out of office.

Another case where Atlassian was putting in LGBT rainbow stuff into the output of a successful push.

Really obnoxious stuff. I don't mind devs having a personality but develop a sense of decorum.

As weak as the RMS line was, best keep any snifter of politics out of your tools. It's just lame at the end of the day.

RIMR6• 8 years ago

Or, if you're going to be subtly political (as GNU often is), at least be current.

That joke was 20-something years old. It ran its course.

Also, as far as calling LGBT rainbows "political", I would have to disagree. You either view LBGT people as equal, or you can be a hateful person. There's no good reason to pander to the latter, but plenty of reasons to stand up in unity with the former.

There are some concepts that need to be aggressively viewed as truths rather than opinions. The civil rights movement was won by people standing up and putting their own enrichment aside to say "You are wrong and we stand up in unity with the people you view as subhuman". No reason to shame anyone from doing that again today.

dragonwriter8• 8 years ago

It's kinda evergreen, as the global gag rule is, to notable controversy, retracted or reinstated with each change in Presidential party since Reagan, most recently reinstated last year by the Trump Administration.

Of course, it's still inappropriate for glibc docs.

lsh5• 8 years ago

LGBT* is most definitely political - I think you just proved that.

d1zzy• 8 years ago

I don't understand your logic. You say that putting LGTB rainbows in a tool is not a political act and then go on to compare it with the civil rights movement, one of the major political storms of its time. Is it political or is it not?

As to political activism in computer tools... there is a time and place for everything (almost?) and I personally disagree that a computer tool is a place for some random political activism.

derefr• 8 years ago

There's no good reason to pander to the latter

"Pander", no. Avoid offending when "offending" would require active effort and "not offending" would just require doing nothing, yes.

Let me talk about professionalism for a moment. The whole concept of "professionalism" is that it's a set of artificial etiquette that allows people who absolutely detest one-another to get along for long enough to complete a joint venture.

I think we forget what professionalism is; a relatively-isolationist country like the US (in terms of where its citizens go on holiday, not in terms of its foreign policy) has little need of it. For most countries through most of history, though, professionalism is the thing that you're expected to show when your country decides to ally with that country you were just at war with, and you have to work with people who had just been shooting friends of yours.

We expect—and depend on—our tooling enabling professionalism in this sense. That means obvious things like not having insults toward the French in ARM ISA references; but it also means not using religious iconography in a country with multiple religions; not including the Battle Hymn of the Republic as a default ringtone on phones; etc. We want to ensure that we don't accidentally, through coincidences of technology, destroy a negotiation or cause a diplomatic crisis.

vbezhenar• 8 years ago

I was raised in a country with very hateful views against LGBT. While I, personally, developed a tolerance against LGBT, a lot of people around me did not and those people often work as developers. Showing them any sign of LGBT propaganda is a great offence to them. I'm not lawyer, but I suspect that LGBT propaganda might even be against a law.

I guess, the same could be said about abortion jokes. Some people might take them too personal.

bigleagueposter• 8 years ago

Nope

jcranmer2• 8 years ago

The joke is confusing if you're not well-acquainted with US abortion politics, and, if you read the entire email thread, there were actually quite a few people who didn't get the joke properly (you can include myself in that list as another example).

RMS's stance is quite galling here. First, he's making it very adamant that the entire purpose of the joke is political commentary. Second, he's resisting any mechanism to actually make it clear that it is political commentary. Finally, he's effectively trying to use dictatorial powers to make his views go through over the strident objections of the consensus view of the maintainers.

hermitdev2• 8 years ago

Except, I don't think RMS intended this as a "joke". I honestly think he was dead serious, but worried that other people would interpret it as a joke and thus be inclined to remove it, hence his "do not remove" comment.

Technical documentation and reference is really not the place for political commentary. It adds nothing and is distracting. Technical documentation should be just that: documentation; not political diatribe. The politics would be better left to a blog post or something of the sorts.

andmarios• 8 years ago

I am with RMS on this one. It is not an abortion joke, it is a censorship joke. He doesn't take a stance on abortion (a sensitive matter) but on whether they (FSF or a foreign NGO for example) are allowed to talk about abortion.

modbait2• 8 years ago

Indeed. The irony of censoring a censorship joke is probably lost on the censors.

uryga• 8 years ago

This isn't censorship...

lsh5• 8 years ago

Conversation about the "old joke" that was removed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17017037

pvg• 8 years ago

Which was quite sensibly flagged. This is better written but equally silly.

lsh5• 8 years ago

The whole thing is silly. A storm in a teacup.

zeth___8• 8 years ago

Fork if you don't like it.

That's the whole point of free software.

Edit: I find it disturbing that so many people want to erase hacker culture from the internet. Consensus is a Bay Area idea, one that came quite late to the world of computers, and one that many of us disagree with.

MBCook3• 8 years ago

That’s the really odd thing in this situation. The maintainers all seem to want to remove it, and the project governance says the maintainers are supposed to decide based on the quorum.

RMS just over ruled that. Because it was his joke and he felt like it.

Which seems like it goes against the whole “community“ thing.

zeth___8• 8 years ago

If you read the waiver you have to sign before contributing anything to the fsf you surrender all your copyrights to them. This is so they can keep moving software into newer GPL versions.

The maintainers are just mechanics working on someone else's car and have as much say in choosing the interior decor.

The beauty of the system is that if they get sick of that state of affairs they get an identical copy of the car for free and can then do whatever they want to it.

gpm• 8 years ago

The maintainers don't own the project though, GNU (RMS) does. If the maintainers want to control the project they are maintaining it does seem that they need to fork it and continue under a new name.

(Or at least that's what I got from this thread. Certainly it's possible that GNU/RMS/Whoever originally had rights has passed those rights to the maintainers, but it doesn't happen simply by virtue of them maintaining it.)

lsh5• 8 years ago

No, that's just another option when it comes to free software. Why not make an effort to cohere rather than disperse? Stronger together and all that.

RMS is pulling the authority card, which is always a dodgy thing to do, and people want an egalitarian project rather than an authoritarian one. Both sides need to learn when to pick a fight and when to let something pass.

zeth___8• 8 years ago

Because GNU has always worked that way and given us some of the best software ever written.

t3soro• 8 years ago

some people want an egalitarian project rather than an authoritarian one

Plenty of us prefer the authoritarian model, rather than the chaotic model of arbitrary consensus.

sneak• 8 years ago

Forking out any vestigal rms authority would benefit everyone.

They’re bikeshedding over whether or not to include a comment on a controversial topic. It is not relevant to the functioning of the library and is just a distraction. Rip it out and ban rms for perpetuating such idiotic drama.

danmg2• 8 years ago

RMS isn't the one bikeshedding it.

justizin• 8 years ago

Consensus is a Bay Area idea

  [citation needed]

Merriam-Webster says the first known use was 1843, at https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/consensus.

An SCM change, by very nature, doesn't "erase" anything, it only creates a record of change. The repository will always have the history.

readme• 8 years ago

Excellent idea! Just rename it political-libc for all the people who want politics mixed in with their C library.

favorited4• 8 years ago

You realize it's the current version of glibc which has the political joke? The patch that RMS is opposing here removed a political reference from the docs.

johannes12343212• 8 years ago

The FSF and its GNU project are a political endeavor. For a less-political (non-political doesn't exist) libc one might fork into linux-libc or similar.

(I'm not saying that's appropriate thing to do, as I'm just a lurker enjoying the free work by others in glibc's regard, but wanted to make the point)

geofft21• 8 years ago

"Hacker culture" is a myth - not in the sense that it's false, but in the sense that it's a set of stories that people like because of their storytelling power, and its exact historical truth is not particularly relevant. As a myth, it tends towards better remembering things that make better stories, like great men inventing things through sheer force of will. And as a myth, it's a story about our origins, which were no doubt messier than we would like to remember. That our present does not seem as awesome as the myth is an unavoidable effect of myths.

But there a few historically true things that are relevant here: first, that an important part of "hacker culture" unequivocally originated in the Bay Area (Fairchild Semiconductor, Homebrew Computer Club, BSD, etc.), and second, that "consensus" has been an important idea in this culture for a while - an obvious example being the IETF's "rough consensus and running code".

bitwize2• 8 years ago

Given his penchant for offensive, inappropriate humor, and how little tolerance the modern FOSS community has for such in the prevailing political atmosphere, this is not a hill RMS wants to die on. Save the rank pulls for something really important, Richard.

zeth___8• 8 years ago

If Stallman cared for what hill the mainstream thought he should die on he'd still be hacking lisp/emacs at MIT.

Him being completely irrational about pet causes is the reason why we have an opensource community today. I trust him a whole lot more than anyone else in FOSS, including all the glibc developers put together.

jimmies• 8 years ago

in FOSS

He isn't "in FOSS" though. I used the word FOSS with him once and he said I shouldn't use it, lol.

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.en.html#FOSS

geofft21• 8 years ago

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.

RIMR6• 8 years ago

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 a small repo and the development community agrees with political interjections in the software, then go for it. If the community doesn't like it, they can fork it.

But maybe, if the both the developers and the users of a major piece of software found on hundreds of millions of machines think your political joke should go, that's just not a hill worth dying on...

bitwize2• 8 years ago

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.

_emacsomancer_• 8 years ago

It's a joke making fun of censorship, which doesn't seem to inherently position it as either left- or right-wing.

zeth___8• 8 years ago

In the new spirit of 'liberalism', or the tumblr version of it, mentioning a traumatic event is as bad as causing the traumatic event. You can't mention rape because it might trigger someone, it doesn't matter if you are excusing it, or demanding harsher punishments for it.

Unless you've been on a collage campus in the last 10 years you don't know how insane the movement is. Calling it 'liberal' is complete wrong because it is illiberal in the extreme and makes people take the side of authoritarians who want to remove all wrong think from the world.

In short: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQ5YU_spBw0

thsowers• 8 years ago

While RMS has undoubtedly contributed much to the FOSS community, he seems to undermine some of his core points with trivial matters.

For example, his piece "Reasons not to use Facebook"[0] contains some great points, but I find them undermined by the unnecessary usage of the word "useds"

Similarly, this seems like an extremely trival case to "exercise my authority over Glibc very rarely" as he puts it.

[0] https://stallman.org/facebook.html

drb913• 8 years ago

I'm not sure I follow. What's wrong with his term?

Either people get what he's writing, and the term is irrelevant, or they don't get what he's writing, 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.

So you just don't like the term. This is fine! But you've failed to make any point.

Jasper_4• 8 years ago

Writing an essay to persuade someone means talking to them on their terms. If you start off with the "Micro$oft"s and the "Windoze"s you're going to lose the people you want to reach, especially when it reeks of childish namecalling.

vkou• 8 years ago

Either people get what he's writing, and the term is irrelevant, or they don't get what he's writing

People are emotional animals. When trying to persuade them, disregard this fact at your peril.

scrollaway5• 8 years ago

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 with your fly open. Your fly being open is technically irrelevant to the entire talk you're giving, but that's still going to distract people from the content. (Or, in the case of Richard Stallman, eating stuff from your foot. No I'm not making this up; google it, I won't link it here.)

I hugely respect what Stallman has done, in the past, for free software in general but I have a hard time believing that he is a net positive today. Between "free software champions" being associated with someone who's extremely antisocial, and his refusal of pragmatism, it's hard not to be grossed out. I know that the "Stallman attitude" has been a serious roadblock to getting people to adopt free software in general: I've very often seen people get turned off from talking about open source, for fear of dealing with someone who insists on prefixing GNU/ to everything, and scoffs at any license that isn't GPLv2.

RIMR6• 8 years ago

It's kind of like when someone tries to talk politics, but they can't stop using terms like "libtards" or "conservatards" to belittle their ideological opponents. They can't effectively communicate their actual message to you because they're too busy denigrating everyone who hypothetically disagrees with them.

By referring to Facebook users as "Useds", he's trying to belittle anyone who happily uses Facebook by suggesting that they're just a hapless pawn of a megacorp. That is a terrible way to convince someone that they ought to rethink their Facebook use - it just makes anyone currently using Facebook without worry ignore you because you're being condescending to them.

And just because RMS is massively influential on the world of FOSS doesn't mean that his political musings get a pass for being childish and one-sided.

smsm4212• 8 years ago

The wrong is an obnoxious manner of redefining communication protocols (in this case, language) in order to support the premise that the author is always right. In this example, the premise is that Facebook users (standard and accepted term) do not derive any benefit from Facebook but are only exploited by it. This is obviously false, since if people did not derive any benefit from it, they would not voluntarily flock to it in millions. But by refusing to even admit this possibility and constantly hammering this mistake into the reader, Stallman tries to reinforce his (weak) point by repetition, not relying on cognitive facilities of the reader being enough to get this point without it being repeated 60 times. I don't know about you, but for me it's annoying and obnoxious when even true point is repeated to me 60 times through a short text. Even more annoying if the point itself is so trivially weak.

zeth___8• 8 years ago

Here is a mantra every programmer should repeat every morning:

RMS was right.

It doesn't matter what the topic, or how insane what he says sounds. He is always right and you're just not developed enough to understand why that's the case.

komali25• 8 years ago

I'm pretty sure this is sarcasm.

I really hope it is anyway, because otherwise it stinks of "long live the king"

lovich• 8 years ago

There is no god but FOSS and rms is his prophet? This sounds like a religious argument on your end

RIMR6• 8 years ago

I bet RMS would have something really heated to say about blindly following a leader's every word.

Unless of course that leader is him, in which case his narcissistic side will gladly welcome it

yongjik• 8 years ago

Poe was right!

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law

geofft21• 8 years ago

A couple of questions for you:

1. What OS / distro do you use?

2. Do you have automatic updates enabled?

3. Do you use info pages in preference to man?

4. Do you use LibreJS?

5. Why did you link me to a YouTube video elsewhere in the thread? Did you wish for me to run non-free JavaScript?

timb07• 8 years ago

"While RMS has undoubtedly contributed much to the FOSS community"

RMS would vehemently disagree with you: he founded the Free Software community, and has nothing to do with Open Source Software.

briandear2• 8 years ago

Maybe I just don’t have the sophistication to “get” it, but what the heck is this all about. At first glance this just seems like something childish. Someone educate me.

NeoBasilisk• 8 years ago

I believe it is in reference to the US government's (or possibly some states') policies concerning abortions.

tzs• 8 years ago

Specifically it probably refers to the "Mexico City policy", which is a US government rule that has been in effect under Republican presidents and rescinded under Democratic presidents going back to Reagan.

For most of its existence, it basically said that no foreign NGO could receive US funding for family planning if that NGO performed or promoted abortion for family planning.

President Trump has expanded it to say that no foreign NGO can receive any US global health assistance if it performs or promotes abortions.

Providing accurate medical information about abortion is interpreted by some as falling under the Mexico City policy.

jrochkind1• 8 years ago

you are missing nothing.

nxc18• 8 years ago

It's juicy gossip about RMS with sprinklings of information about how the glibc org works and how that fits into the bigger open source picture.

Some people are into gossip and accept it, other people are into gossip and deny it. I've met very few people who don't love gossip, especially high-quality gossip like this. (Note: I'm sure there are many exceptions, but as a generalization, this one's about as good as they get)

briandear2• 8 years ago

Thank you. The FOSS world seems like a fraternity to which I clearly don’t belong. But to the folks that write FOSS — thank you. I admire the fortitude it must take to put up with this petty nonsense.

jacquesm• 8 years ago

Hilarious that they would censor the lines that refer to censorship and miss that entirely.

caio1982• 8 years ago

At the same time I think the change was overzealousness and that still it's a fair debate to have and why not remove it if they eventually reach consensus (as per their own official definition of consensus [linked somewhere in those e-mails])? It's only to show glibc still have governance problems after the Ulrich Drepper era, it has nothing to do with abort() and its possible meanings in a manual.

komali25• 8 years ago

Stallman, however, replied that "a GNU manual, like a course in history, is not meant to be a 'safe space'". He suggested the possibility of adding a trigger warning about functions that create child processes, since childbirth is "far more traumatic than having an abortion"

"It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool, than to talk and remove all doubt of it."

-Michael Scott

zeth___8• 8 years ago

RMS is pro voluntary pedophilia:

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2006-may-aug.html#05%20Jun...

If you don't know what libertarian means you're going to have a bad time trying to apply liberal labels to people who were around the internet before tumblr.

komali25• 8 years ago

Wonder why the above is being downvoted... verbatim from Stallman's website:

I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren't voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing.

I guess context is needed here. Does he mean... like.. 16 year olds? Younger? Having sexual encounters with someone from their school that happens to be 18, or older adults?

jwilk• 8 years ago

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/17/remain-silent/

DannyBee• 8 years ago

Today we discover why EGCS required a way to appeal Stallman decisions as a condition of reunification

ocdtrekkie6• 8 years ago

It is sometimes a bit stunning to me that people look up to someone who is constantly willing to place his own opinion (and in this case, his own sense of humor) above everyone else. Perhaps RMS is the original real world House M.D., but I don't really think so.

IMHO, if he places his own joke over the views of all of the developers doing the actual work on glibc, those developers should leave/fork. If RMS was, indeed, right, then GNU's version will win.

bjt2n39043• 8 years ago

Never been a big fan of the "Code of Conduct" wars that seem to be going on. On the surface, yeah, it seems great. Everyone be nice and get along. But for some odd reason, the enforcement always tends to favor one side.

Case in point, the pointless NodeJS TSC drama [1] from yesteryear. I don't like JS to begin with, but that makes me want to avoid the project like the plague.

The problem with letting thin skinned people decide what you can and can't say, is they have a very long (and often contradictory) list. Suddenly, you find yourself in the middle of a kangaroo court facing charges of high treason, guilty until proven innocent. The sentence? Public crucifixion.

Stallman made the right call.

https://www.reddit.com/r/node/comments/6whs2e/multiple_coc_v...

geofft21• 8 years ago

One, there was no public crucifixion here, no court, no treason, even as an analogy. Had Stallman not replied on the list to insist on his own personal veto over glibc changes, the project would have moved on, nobody would have asked about whether that veto makes sense, and if he showed up on some technical thing two months later people would have absolutely listened to him with extra weight. And even so, nobody is questioning him as a person, nor attempting to care about what he says or police his project participation based on his views - multiple people in favor of the removal have quite clearly said that he can say what he likes on stallman.org and nobody cares. They're just questioning his veto.

Two, what is the "one side" being favored here? It's not aligned on political axes - Stallman is a left-leaning person making fun of a right-wing policy, which is the opposite of many accusations I hear about codes of conduct. If it is aligned in favor of the consensus of the active maintainers of a project and against individuals, no matter how important, that seems like a very good thing that projects should be aligned on.

Three, I don't know what "thin-skinned" means here. I'd call the project maintainers who are holding to a consensus decision in the face of threats by their own project leader thick-skinned, and the man who can't admit that his irrelevant, unfunny joke from 25 years ago is irrelevant and unfunny thin-skinned.

bjt2n39043• 8 years ago

there was no public crucifixion here, no court, no treason

Yes, you're correct. In this instance, there was no crucifixion, because the CoC/inclusivity crowd didn't have enough political capital.

See the NodeJS TSC drama I referenced. That's the "one side" being favored. That's the end result of pandering to people who take offense at the drop of the hat. This is simply Stallman refusing to concede to the notion that everything must be unoffensive.

Jerry22• 8 years ago

Something more recent... CoC caused one of the top 5 LLVM developers to leave:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16980841

Unfortunately, this got censored heavily on HN.

Also, Rust-lang has CoC "cops": https://www.rust-lang.org/en-US/team.html (scroll down to "moderation team").

Responsibility: helping uphold the code of conduct

That's pretty crazy!

bjt2n39043• 8 years ago

I mean, I understand that. HN usually weights controversial things down to focus on the tech aspects. It keeps the place fun to browse.

This is something I'm particularly interested in, so it's a little frustrating that it lasted all of 20 minutes on the front page. Ah well.

cwyers• 8 years ago

The whole point of a code of conduct is to promote good conduct and dissuade bad conduct. What's crazy about having moderators or having their moderation standards be the code of conduct?

ubernostrum5• 8 years ago

I don't get this. And by "this" I mean probably your entire worldview, but also whatever led you to make that comment. Here's how I see this situation:

People who actively maintain a project, and have done so with success for many years, notice something in the documentation that they think is outdated and perhaps a bit tasteless, hold a reasonable discussion about it like adults, and make a decision.

Someone who's at best an inactive emeritus contributor sees this and gets so worked up about it that he decides to risk severely alienating the actual technical contributors in order to override their decision in favor of his personal politics, and when asked to participate in the project's usual decision-making process pulls a Louis XIV ("le projet, c'est moi!") and invokes absolute authority while expressing an unwillingness to listen to any contrary opinions or arguments, resorting to clichéd insults about "trigger warnings" and such.

If you really feel you must argue that one of the parties involved here has "thin skin" (and I don't understand that, either) I do not see how you can, with any rational basis, come to the conclusion that it's the first group. I also do not see how there's anything admirable in the second person's response or actions.

_diyu• 8 years ago

Regardless of whether he has the right to veto the consensus vote to remove the joke, by ignoring the general attitude that it’s not in good taste, he’s alienating everyone. That’s not a good position to put himself in, and I wonder if he’ll soon find himself the head of a dead project while a forked one lives in in his spirit but without his name.

noobermin3• 8 years ago

This[0] is relevant. He's possibly alienating only a group of vocal people. It isn't clear form the article that it's the consensus more than it is the consensus of people in an email thread.

After clicking around the mailing list, it looks more like what [0] suggests than it being a clear majority of contributors to glibc.

That said, alienating anyone could be problematic.

[0] https://lwn.net/Articles/753720/

olliej2• 8 years ago

That group being the maintainers?

adrianratnapala• 8 years ago

That said, alienating anyone could be problematic.

Heckler's vetoes are also bad for the public.

dragonwriter8• 8 years ago

It doesn't seem to be about good taste, but the purpose of technical documentation.

And, further, about project governance.

madrox2• 8 years ago

It’s certainly poor leadership. If you aren’t taking an active hand in shaping culture or driving norms in a team, you’re going to end up surprised when they don’t make the same choices you would. Once surprised, don’t try to right the ship with a mandate.

For the maintainers, this may be a proxy for how decisions are made. For RMS, this may be about realizing the world has changed around him.

matthewbauer4• 8 years ago

So what annoys me about this discussion is that both sides are not being very honest. Calling it an "abortion joke" is to me highly misleading. It's an "abortion law joke" & has nothing to do with the procedure of abortion! The people arguing against it seem to be implying its much more inappropriate than it is.

Anyway, no where in the article is the actual "joke" mentioned. So I'd like to include it here just so people can judge for themselves.

"Proposed Federal censorship regulations may prohibit us from giving you information about the possibility of calling this function. We would be required to say that this is not an acceptable way of terminating a program."

Jasper_4• 8 years ago

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 make people aware of, it reads like a clunky abortion joke, and one that isn't very funny.

matthewbauer4• 8 years ago

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 abortion rights. I think in other countries like Latin America & Catholic Europe the "left" generally favors restrictions on abortion. Lots of people that have become involved in the free software movement recently are from Latin America & RMS probably doesn't pick up on what his core audience believes on these things.

will42742• 8 years ago

And yet, you're now aware of the gag rule and GNUs opposition. So, on that level, it's succeeding.

humanrebar3• 8 years ago

Even the term "gag rule" is a political position. The law was originally intended to keep national policy out of abortion, so consciences of abortion objectors won't be violated. It's commonly referred to as the Mexico City Policy. Similar rules have been in effect in the past on other highly controversial subjects like slavery.

bhhaskin2• 8 years ago

I agree with RMS on this. People need to grow up. It's ok to be offended, but not ok to try and correct everyone just because you are offended. A line needs to be drawn somewhere and this is harmless.

RIMR6• 8 years ago

I agree with RMS's pro-choice opinion, but I honestly see no reason a 20-something year old joke about abortion needed to remain in the documentation.

The consensus was that it be removed. It was removed. Just because HMS is a FOSS legend doesn't make him God.

geofft21• 8 years ago

Nobody who removed the joke said they were offended by it, they just said that they didn't believe it was the sort of thing that belonged in technical documentation. If anyone is offended, it is RMS, in the sense that he seems personally affronted that he doesn't carry the line-item veto power he thinks he had over all of GNU and people did not ask him before removing something he added 25 years ago.

Not everyone who disagrees with something is offended by the thing they disagree with. Shall I say that someone who prefers writing documentation in man pages instead of Markdown is offended by Markdown? Is Project Zero offended by buffer overflows?

komali25• 8 years ago

I disagree with RMS because I don't think the joke adds to my ability to understand the usage of the function.

smsm4212• 8 years ago

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 unrelated to the technical content. It's not harmful (which is a very high bar), but it's also not appropriate. Do we want to see political debate and advocacy in glibc manuals, commit messages, code comments and other places? Probably not. There are ample venues for this - and especially for a person with the name recognition RMS deservedly enjoys - to advocate anything he likes. He doesn't need the venue of glibc manuals for that, and shouldn't use it.

ubernostrum5• 8 years ago

I wish I could make RMS, and you, and everyone who agrees with you, live in a sort of reverse-Kantian world, where whatever you advocate for as acceptable behavior when you do it becomes a universal law of conduct for other people to use when interacting with you.

No matter how much of a "thick skin" you may think you have, I'd lay money that in a world which truly worked this way, you'd last under an hour before abandoning your position and calling for stronger social norms against being an ass to people.

jcranmer2• 8 years ago

One thing that may not be well-appreciated:

This is walking very close to the line of outright political advocacy. If you read the entire email thread, one of the examples [1] clearly crosses that threshold. Once that threshold is crossed, it is illegal for a government employee to contribute to glibc in an official capacity, or even a private employee contracted by the government. This includes things like people who need to modify glibc to get them to run on government supercomputers.

[1] Someone suggests blocking out code with #ifdef REPUBLICANS.

ajross3• 8 years ago

Yeah, this is one of those spots where RMS is stubbornly and stupidly standing up for principle in a context where the rest of us just clearly see that it shouldn't matter and he's just being a jerk.

But... damn if he's not right about this. The joke has meaning. It still means what he meant when he wrote it. The issue is an important one (to RMS, at least). And no one else has a real argument here other than "it's unprofessional and embarassing and we want it gone".

Same old, same old. The crusty bearded guy is a jerk, but he's right.

keiyakins9• 8 years ago

I read it the other way around, with RMS being the one offended and trying to correct everyone: the people maintaining glibc agreed to change part of the documentation because it wasn't serving a useful purpose, either as technical material, core philosophical material, or as material reinforcing one of those two (which can include a carefully-crafted joke, don't get me wrong). RMS got offended and tried to force them to keep it.

eridius4• 8 years ago

This is absolutely an abortion joke, in that it's taking a function that has nothing to do with human reproduction at all and treating it as the same thing as having an abortion. The object of mockery of the joke itself is in fact law, not the act of abortion, but that doesn't really matter.

omeid22• 8 years ago

It absolutely does matter.

The notion that making mockery of law that prohibits one's freedom of choice being the same as mockery of the said choice itself is astoundingly absurd.

The first, mockery of law-- specially one that imposes restrictions on citizens is a political consideration, while mockery of a personal subject outside the context of politics is an ideological concern.

To make it more clear, please consider that it is possible to be against prohibition of any choice while simultaneously find said choice unfavorable.

antocv• 8 years ago

'abort' as word is more offensive/triggering than the joke.

coliveira• 8 years ago

Stallman is completely right. A patch that removes jokes is not making any technical contribution, it is just trying to deface a political instance taken the authors of the code. This is the opposite of contributing.

motohagiography3• 8 years ago

The discussion is a proxy for how executive decisions are made for glibc, and in particular by whom.

The merit of a stale joke from the 90s is meaningless, and posturing about its appropriateness is disingenuous. Open source principals have always been eccentric (Torvalds, Raymond(!), etc.), and the FOSS community tolerated it not only because of their technical contributions, but because the open source community itself is an expression of tolerance based on shared objectives.

Of course others would like to wield their influence in the generation of the DNA of the internet, and there is a tremendous amount to be gained by scandalizing, discrediting, and isolating its core maintainers.

Perhaps eventually RMS will come around and remove the joke himself, after finding it does not stand the test of time. But it would go a long way to resolving this if they could demonstrate they aren't just using the joke as a pretext for scandal to undermine the decision making structure of a project.

It's clearly not about the joke.

geofft21• 8 years ago

This seems to ascribe a high amount of ill will to glibc maintainers who have been faithful and productive GNU maintainers for many years, and I don't believe there's any other evidence that they wish to undermine RMS' authority.

However, if those maintainers find that their faithfulness is rewarded by being told that they don't actually maintain the project, they're just tending it while RMS is busy, it seems entirely reasonable to me that they would become upset at RMS trying to undermine the decision-making structure of glibc. The principals here, the people making the technical contributions, are the glibc maintainers.

motohagiography3• 8 years ago

Except that perhaps RMS's approval and veto are no longer legitimate?

It's not ascribing ill will at all. They've stumbled on a canary or a "brown M&M," where regardless of how good they think they are, they've transgressed a boundary of the implicit agreement of who has final say.

They would have to be good and faithful to have contributions approved to glibc, so I would argue that's not the point. As the principals age, the question of succession and governance in key open source projects will become more explicit. Seems they walked into this one.

Pyxl101• 8 years ago

However, if those maintainers find that their faithfulness is rewarded by being told that they don't actually maintain the project, they're just tending it while RMS is busy

Someone or some group/process has to be in charge, be the final decision-maker for a group. In the case of the GNU Project, the Free Software Foundation is likely that decision-maker as the owner of the trademark for "GNU". The FSF as a non-profit organization has articles of incorporation and bylaws [1] describing its process for making decisions - but it is a corporation, just like any corporation, and its decisions concerning its assets are binding in the same way as if Google made a decision about one of its products.

I haven't read the FSF bylaws in detail, but it sounds like RMS believes that he has decision-making authority over the FSF and GNU Project, which he probably does. Someone has to - what's the alternative? In organizations like the FSF and Wikipedia, someone or some process has to have the authority to make decisions. There is no way to delegate actual decision-making to the "community" at large. A person has to have it, either individually or as the executor of a process.

I suppose the alternative is having no trademark nor legal organization in charge of a project, but in that case, a disagreement could result in two different projects contending for the same name. Besides, someone or some organization ultimately has to be in control of properties such as domain names and source control accounts. The moment that a project manages any properties like this, there has to be a formal decision-making process or the project is at risk of chaos. The person who has legal control over project properties like the project domain name, or IP like its trademark, is in de facto final control over the project itself.

There are undoubtedly options for going over RMS's head, such as convincing the directors of the FSF [2] to take a vote on the issue, or take a vote to remove him as president or as a director. Alternatively, people who feel passionately about this issue could lobby the FSF directors to put pressure on RMS to reverse this decision or delegate it, without using the mechanics of a formal vote, such as by threatening resignation. Furthermore, donors of the FSF could threaten to pull their funding over the issue.

Alternatively, project maintainers can fork the codebase and carry on under a new name, managed by a new organization, which is their right to do since the code is open source and free software. To the extent that an open source project or any project is operating under a specific name, managed by a corporation, we should all understand that someone is always "in charge", though that person or group may act with a light touch or operate largely behind the scenes.

[1] https://www.fsf.org/about/financial

[2] https://www.fsf.org/about/people/board

P.S. This comment is not an endorsement of either side of the issue in a normative sense. It is intended to be a positive comment concerning the expectations we should have in working with corporations.

djsumdog5• 8 years ago

I just finished reading The Dictators Handbook and it's crazy how these same principals seem to apply to OSS organizations.

This is more about politics than anything else, and hopefully everyone involved will learn it shouldn't be.

jancsika2• 8 years ago

Open source principals have always been eccentric (Torvalds, Raymond(!), etc.), and the FOSS community tolerated it not only because of their technical contributions, but because the open source community itself is an expression of tolerance based on shared objectives.

I think you're confusing two separate issues.

Torvalds' acidic method of communication is certainly eccentric. But from my casual reading of LKML what he communicates is not. Like:

* some patch is prone to bugginess and not suitable to merge

* some patch shows that the submitter doesn't understand some fundamental aspect of C and thus isn't suitable to merge as written

* some patchset looks similar to some previous subsystem that caused massive problems and should therefore be avoided

* the patch was measured to break things or perform poorly

* the patch is shoehorning in a feature that doesn't belong in the kernel

* some non-technical proposal would cause future problems for Kernel devs and should be avoided

In the case of Stallman's joke, we can certainly say his method of communication-- popping in to make a surprise decision by fiat-- is eccentric. But we can also say the content of what he is communicating is also eccentric. What possible rationale could there be to tying up volunteer glibc maintainers' time for a bike-shedding session about a decades-old joke?

It's the difference between someone with a Penguin fetish favoring Penguin-based metaphors, and someone with a Gnu fetish forcing you to sit through 125 "funny" videos of Gnus.

Scratch that-- there are 10 more "Abortion Joke" messages from April. So make that 126 "funny" videos about Gnus.

djur3• 8 years ago

Regarding standing the test of time, one of Donald Trump's first acts in office was to reinstate and expand the global gag rule:

https://www.apnews.com/868c8211b4f948d8b7f7ce58ab08a78b

That isn't a comment on whether the joke should be removed or retained, but it's worth noting that this "stale joke from the '90s" is actually very relevant to contemporary politics.

tomtimtall2• 8 years ago

Should they also faithfully maintain the pretense of every damn pointer he initiated? Their the ones doing the work of maintaining the project, removing no-value jokes in the documentation should not warrant this amount of weight throwing nomatter who put them there.

ezoe• 8 years ago

I agree with RMS on this one too. Another reason not to set foot on US soil for I cannot trust the US law at all.

erik_seaberg2• 8 years ago

This particular policy is only in effect outside the US.

rdiddly• 8 years ago

I could get behind keeping the joke in there, if it were actually funny. I object to it on grounds of joke-craftsmanship and economy. It wastes space being insufficiently funny. And by the way, it's not unfunny because it's about abortion; abortion, death, Nazis, murder, child molestation and other taboo topics are precisely the things we should laugh at. (If possible. Obviously don't do it around someone recently traumatized. But laughter is how humans cope and heal, so if you can laugh you know you've got whatever-it-is licked.)

As for Stallman's supposed authority: Anyone who believes in acquiescing to the wishes of a central authority obviously hasn't been listening to Richard Stallman.

Zopieux• 8 years ago

I like the fact this joke is 100% US-centric and this alone never came forward as a reasonable argument for its removal. Glibc is used worldwide, people outside the US (they exist!) would have no clue what this joke is about: civilized countries do not have this terrible gag rule.

tptacek5• 8 years ago

The US doesn't have this gag rule either; I think pretty much everyone is scratching their heads about what it is RMS is on about here.

favorited4• 8 years ago

It is, in fact, a US policy[0]. Proponents call it the "Mexico City policy," and opponents usually refer to it as the "Global Gag Rule." It tends to be rescinded whenever a Democrat is elected President, then reinstated whenever a Republican is elected.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico_City_policy

badrabbit2• 8 years ago

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 work topless in shorts won't offend me;I'd just think that attire is best for outdoors or the beach instead of an office.

eesmith8• 8 years ago

I have tried, but failed, to understand what "wasn't professional" means. As far as I can tell, it is a synonym for "doesn't upset the status quo."

Clearly there are work meetings where this sort of joke/commentary would be voiced. For example, the writers' room at the various satirical news shows. There are, after all, professional comedians, including those which work blue.

I've heard people say that children in the workplace isn't professional. Then I think about professional teachers and pediatricians who have children at a workplace. As a child I sometimes went with my father to his job. I don't think he was considered unprofessional for that.

I've heard people say that drinking alcohol on the job isn't professional, and that one should follow a dress code. Then I see people on the job at a conference, drinking, and at one Python conference dressed up in unicorn costume.

It's therefore very context dependent, which is why I don't think "professional" is a useful way to think about the topic.

FWIW, I had a co-worker who was topless in shorts at the office. We were coming back from lunch in a downpour one summer. He wasn't prepared for it, his shirt was sopping wet, and keeping it on was a problem in the A/C'ed room. Having his shirt off wasn't a problem, and he wasn't considered unprofessional for doing so.

That's because it didn't upset the status quo.

badrabbit2• 8 years ago

You have to consider who your coworkers are. It's all about being considerate of the other people that work alongside you.

In a small group everyone might know each other well enough to make that sort of a joke. But when your coworkers could be literally anyone, from a guy in his undies coding as a hobby to someone at a fortune 100 working in a cubicle farm sporting a tuxedo.

It seems like the goal is to not offend anyone because that exactly is the goal -- anyone can work on it. There is no way to get to know every participant of a large foss project on a personal level so much so that you understand what jokes they find acceptable or not. So, simply don't make comment irrelevant to the work at hand.

Some foss groups specifically dedicate mailing lists and chat rooms for the purpose of socializing where similar jokes and possibly offensive content might be tolerated. When it comes to commits,dev lists,posts or threads it isn't professional to insert irrelevant commentary (at least for a public foss project,one can always have their own company culture and rules for intra-company or private projects)

koala_man• 8 years ago

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.

Sacho3• 8 years ago

How dated is the joke? Is it not about current US policy?

davexunit2• 8 years ago

RMS needs to be removed from his dictator position in GNU. This is just one of many times that he has hurt a GNU project. He has held many projects back because he is so behind the times and stubborn, not to mention holding the FSF back. This behavior isn't limited to mailing lists, either. He breaks LibrePlanet conference rules every year to interject and rant during talks he disagrees with. I appreciate him for founding the free software movement and writing so much great software in the early days, but it's no longer the RMS show.

TeMPOraL8• 8 years ago

Basically, he started a political project that produces software furthering his political views. You like the software, but dislike the politics, so you want to take the software and get rid of politics.

The more I read the views like that, the more I understand GNU's insistence on GPL and copyright sign-offs for contributions. For instance, GPL's whole point is to prevent you from taking the software and removing the politics.

davexunit2• 8 years ago

I like the software and the politics. I have completed FSF copyright assignment paperwork. I contribute to GNU projects. I worked for the FSF. But RMS is toxic to both GNU and the FSF at this point.

jboynyc• 8 years ago

When "the politics" has become an ego show, there's sadly not much of a political project left...

zeveb2• 8 years ago

Basically, he started a political project that produces software furthering his political views.

A political software project that produces software furthering his political views about software.

You like the software, but dislike the politics

I like the software & the software politics. rms's opinion on other political matters is irrelevant to the FSF or GNU. I find some of his non-software political views spot-on, and others completely abhorrent. I have no problem supporting the FSF if it limits itself to its remit; I cannot support it if it exceeds it and ventures into other territory.

tptacek5• 8 years ago

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 "political correctness" here at all.

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.

jsmthrowaway4• 8 years ago

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 right, the conflict is elsewhere. However, something about Richard Stallman making that statement, which marginalizes the intense conflict women often feel over intentional abortion in their own lives, not to mention traumatic abortions brought on by rape or medical issues, really speaks to a yawning gap existing between him and empathy for other people. It seems to imply that he thinks women leveraging their right to choose are pleased or joyful that they can do so, and this distantly makes the joke worth keeping. He might be pro-choice, and keen to defend it, but the way he defends it models an entire cadre of people who look up to him. He’s speaking from a position with multiple layers of privilege, on account of his stature, race, and gender, and basically saying “abortion, no biggie, right?” How does that help us recruit women in tech?

Did my nose find it, or do we care more about who maintains a C runtime?

Immediate future prediction: -4 on this comment, a disengaging reply from you, a barrage of comments below me lining up to defend Stallman (likely calling him Dr. Stallman) or tell me I’m misinterpreting a direct quote and/or its context, and I sign out again and return to dormancy and lament this community’s symptomatic demonstration of this industry’s faults: it’s about who runs glibc! That matters! Ignore everything else, it’s a tizzy! Just look at the top thread. Not an abortion joke, an abortion law joke. That makes it all better.

Edit: Oh good, we are on to the apt-get cow.

lmitchell2• 8 years ago

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.

djsumdog5• 8 years ago

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.

dragonwriter8• 8 years ago

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.

It's a standard talking point in the pro-abortion (I am solidly pro-choice and I use pro-abortion deliberately here) crowd who feel the need not merely to negate but to invert everything the anti-abortion right argues.

kelnos2• 8 years ago

I agree with you. I think it's possible to ignore the content of the joke and examine the interplay between the glibc maintainers and RMS, and I think that's an interesting conflict all of its own.

But... there's also an unnecessary joke in the public documentation of an important free software project involved here, and I think it's also interesting (perhaps even important) to talk about the content of the joke, and if things like that are ok/productive/positive/offensive/bad/exclusionary in our world.

Unfortunately, I wouldn't really expect any discussion of this latter point to be particularly productive on HN. I don't say this with any amount of derision; I just feel that's the way it is.

(For the record, I say good riddance to that particularly unfunny joke, and I think it's worthwhile to remove dreck like that from our projects.)

shub2• 8 years ago

RMS has always struck me as the kind of person you generally avoid, except when you can't because they're family, and when they say things you smile and change the subject. Where he's unusual is that the ranting isn't about minority groups or political parties, it's proprietary software.

eesmith8• 8 years ago

"It’s difficult to fathom the logic that would arrive at that statement making sense to someone typing it"

In https://stallman.org/articles/children.html Stallman describes "Why it is important not to have children."

I can easily see "don't have children because it's a traumatic experience" as fitting on the list.

Among other things, btw, he says that his decision to not have children opened up time to work on GNU and free software.

ocdtrekkie6• 8 years ago

Spot on. At the end of the day, nobody really cares about the joke, and nobody in the conversation indicated they actually were offended or upset by it, as far as I can tell. The joke will not be the downfall of glibc whether it stays or goes.

But RMS' order may be. He just reminded everyone working on that project that their authority ends on any given issue wherever RMS' whims begin.

mycall• 8 years ago

Lets think how many hours RMS has put into GNU over the years. That should count for something, no?

kamaal• 8 years ago

>He just reminded everyone working on that project that their authority ends on any given issue wherever RMS' whims begin.

The tech world is still largely based on prime movers. May be that will stay like that forever in engineering disciplines.

People who make it rain, call the shots. This includes their political positions too. I'm not sure why this is so surprising to people.

dec0dedab0de4• 8 years ago

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?

amluto• 8 years ago

> 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.

scottie_m2• 8 years ago

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.

lakechfoma• 8 years ago

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.

mcbits• 8 years ago

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.

colde• 8 years ago

I think there is a difference. Not so much because of political correctness, but because it is an inherently political joke.

Secondly, the joke is extremely US centric, and might make no sense to somebody now familiar on the US stance on abortion and its political impact.

I think it's misplaced for those reasons, and I am left-leaning and pro-choice. So while i agree with the political viewpoint in the joke, i don't think it should be in the software documentation.

That being said, i think easter eggs are fine, but this feels misplaced to me.

djur3• 8 years ago

Why is the joke dated? It refers to a current (and recently expanded) US government policy.

noobermin3• 8 years ago

In fact that was one of rms' points. The broader story is about the joke. TFA's take is TFA's take, it's part of the story but the joke also matters.

humanrebar3• 8 years ago

Current US poitical debates run in the other direction. Some states like Hawaii and California are mandating that anti-abortion preganacy counseling centers post prominent instructions on where their clients can get abortions.

So there is concern about free speech and abortion but the government is compelling pro-abortion (or at least anti-anti-abortion) speech this time.

p_l4• 8 years ago

It's also horribly written and essentially a bad joke. I don't have anything against Apocrypha in an otherwise serious document, but this is so badly written that I know people who only understood what it was talking about on the third read of it, specifically looking for the meaning.

It's so low quality that I suspect many people simply don't care about keeping it in, especially as it comes out of left field and not, let's say, general snarky tone (which can be great as anyone in the trenches can recall from time to time).

burnte• 8 years ago

It's just RMS continuing to be an authoritarian, as he's always been. He's always been unwilling to compromise on big things, he's still unwilling to compromise on small things.

PirateBay2• 8 years ago

Being uncompromising in your politics and values is hardly authoritarian. RMS runs the ship and these people knew it when they started working on a GNU project, especially since it's well known RMS has shot down things he didn't like before.

rimliu2• 8 years ago

So vendor lock-in, but instead of the evil corp it is RMS this time? The irony.

_b8r0• 8 years ago

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

aepiepaey• 8 years ago

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".

makomk2• 8 years ago

No, even though this seems like exactly the kind of thing which should offend right wingers, the "political correctness" involved isn't right-leaning - that's the most astounding thing about this. The objections to including this are fundamentally feminist, left-leaning ones about how it could be "triggering" to women. This doesn't even seem to be a case of the right adopting feminist language as they sometimes do - its removal is backed mainly by left-wing campaigners like Matthew Garrett, some of whom are implacably opposed to the idea that free software should even be welcoming to people with right-wing views.

Somehow, using the glibc documentation to attack US anti-abortion policy offended not the right wing, but the modern feminist left; ironically enough, the same folks who believe that everything must be political and that any developer who doesn't care about politics is an active enemy of the cause.

tinus_hn• 8 years ago

It’s also a reaction against political correctness culture and social justice warriors.

tptacek5• 8 years ago

No, it isn't. It doesn't even make sense in that light. The "reaction" here was to remove a political statement. This is what I mean people people rooting like truffle hogs for a political faction to cheerlead.

madrox2• 8 years ago

The craziest thing to me about this, from reading the comments, is people are on wildly different sides of this, yet no side thinks this is a big deal.

utahcon• 8 years ago

It's a comment that doesn't actually lend any knowledge on the issue. Striking it makes the documentation clearer to the end user.

Seems like it's time to fork the repo.

chris_wot4• 8 years ago

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 right to make decisions for the project.”

https://sourceware.org/ml/libc-announce/2001/msg00000.html

peterwwillis2• 8 years ago

  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 the "any
  later version" part and make your own decisions when to use a
  different license since otherwise he can potentially do you or your
  work harm.

I never noticed this before. Whether it was intentionally conspiratorial or not, it's certainly an important legal and organizational consideration.

erik_seaberg2• 8 years ago

The legal landscape changes, if slowly. You have to decide up front who has the right to update the license, because otherwise with mixed copyright holders the answer is "nobody, ever".

eesmith8• 8 years ago

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.

ddtaylor• 8 years ago

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.

jaboutboul• 8 years ago

Looks like a new generation just got introduced to RMS.

throw7• 8 years ago

well, in cases like this, i wish drepper was still around. this would have been closed with malice as it should have been.

jkFeiwi3• 8 years ago

I'm not offended by the joke at all. I'm pro choice. But I think it's unprofessional to have these kinds of jokes in an important piece of software. This sort of thing just hurts the free software movement's credibility (though not by much).

anonlastname• 8 years ago

Classic RMS. Love that guy.

gumby• 8 years ago

This is the kind of attitude that lead to forking gcc, the formation of the steering committee etc: https://gcc.gnu.org/news/announcement.html

MichaelMoser123• 8 years ago

i think somebody is bored with maintaining this huge runtime library (its an important, but not the most exciting type of project) and needs a little bit of diversion...

Steeeve• 8 years ago

This discussion has been a complete waste of time since its inception. Everyone with an opinion needs to go stand in the corner and think of better ways to spend their time.

maxlybbert• 8 years ago

GNU info pages have had a few jokes sprinkled around for long enough that I assume it has something to do with the environment at the MIT AI lab (e.g., https://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node/strfry.ht... , https://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node/Error-Cod... ). So I'm not surprised to see RMS push back on the change. I am surprised that he isn't effective at it.

glibc seems to be something that causes non-technical disputes every few years. I'm sure that's because it's central to almost everything but the kernel.

hossbeast• 8 years ago

Mechanically speaking, does RMS have the ability to enforce his will on this issue? Say the maintainers unanimously just refuse to revert the patch; can he "fire" them?

Illniyar• 8 years ago

"a GNU manual, like a course in history, is not meant to be a 'safe space"

That blows my mind. Really? Why? A technical instruction manual should definitely be a safe place.

TeMPOraL8• 8 years ago

Wait, what? A safe space is meant to be a safe space. A technical manual is meant to be whatever the hell the authors want it to be. Some choices may make it worse or better at communicating the technical knowledge, true, but those are choices the authors make.

chx2• 8 years ago

Stallman has his problems. He is like Cassandra, talking, talking, talking for decades about dangers, they come true and still noone listens. Already in 2002 and 2010 he has expressed suicidal thoughts https://www.wired.com/2010/04/ff_hackers/all/1/

I am saying to help understand him not to say he is right here.

dc443• 8 years ago

Cassandra who?

45h34jh53k4j• 8 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassandra_(metaphor)

RMS is typically correct, even if at the time the industry thinks he is being melodramatic. Everything he said has come true. You either listen to his rants and consider the ramifications, or you watch as all your digital rights are eroded.

mdimec4• 8 years ago

I would be polliticaly on the oposite side from RMS on this one. But I also respect a good joke, and I wuldnt try to remove it, especialy of just because it might hurt some feelings.

About the leadersheep I am suprised why this came out only now. I wuld think that they have things sorted out after all this time. I think that RMS is still central figure in FSF

osmala• 8 years ago

Well it is free so people have freedom to edit and have a repository of free software without jokes. But nobody has right to demand what goes to someone else's repository.

If glibc maintainers choose to make their own repository which Stallman has has no right demand anything they are free to do so. And then it becomes distributors freedom to choose who's repository they prefer.

z3t4• 8 years ago

This reminds me of a Facebook story and why they don't want browsers to have "view source". Apparently they get complains now and then after someone has accidentally got into view source. Something about appending and removing childs.

coldtea2• 8 years ago

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...

coldtea2• 8 years ago

Bores and prudes will remake everything in their image.

FundThrowaway• 8 years ago

When did HN get so political? In the last couple of months I've noticed an increasing amount of argumentative political discussion. Both sides seem so convinced of their moral superiority, it was somewhat amusing at first but now I'm tired of it.

I thought this was one of the last places I could come to get away from it but not anymore.

manangatangy• 8 years ago

100% agree

midasz• 8 years ago

Everything is politicized now. /r/soccer used to be my favorite place, but since the whole Russia & Qatar appointment - even that place is not safe.

sigi45• 8 years ago

Interesting to see that a person like Stallman forces a stupid joke into a project.

I'm only 31 and write only stupid / unnecessary things into my code base for fun/home projects. I would love to add more easter eggs and little things into professional code but its unnprofessional.

Especially for someone so eager about GNU and principles.

rootlocus• 8 years ago

"I think that it's extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep fun in computing."

Alan J. Perlis (April 1, 1922-February 7, 1990)

https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/sicp/full-text/...

eadmund• 8 years ago

I exercise my authority over Glibc very rarely -- and when I have done so, I have talked with the official maintainers. So rarely that some of you thought that you are entirely autonomous.

'I'm sorry, did you think you were free?'

Really, the only response to this is to fork the project and start flibc: Free libc.

concrete-faucet• 8 years ago

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.

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

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

jlv2• 8 years ago

My wife and I were at a garden party in the early 90s where RMS was at also. We were talking about various things and somehow the fact that my wife was pregnant with our first child came up. RMS started talking about how maybe people shouldn't just be allowed to have children. In particular, he brought up that some towns require people to have dog licenses before they can own a dog. He pondered that the government maybe should require reproduction licenses before allowing people to have children.

Granted some people can make terrible parents, but I don't think allowing the government a voice in deciding whom can be parents is a better solution.

My son (now 26) is a EFF member and free software advocate.

favorited4• 8 years ago

I remember him complaining when the maintainer of some GNU project (emacs maybe?) was stepping aside to focus on starting a family. Stallman was writing about how being the maintainer of emacs is more important than having children, so this guy was making the wrong move.

If that's his belief, that's fine – I personally don't plan on having children, so I suppose I could empathize with his view – but he came across as a total ass. It seemed inconceivable to him that other people have different priorities in life than he does.

djpowell• 8 years ago

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."

JoachimS• 8 years ago

To me the most interesting aspect of the story is not that RMS has a God card. The interesting aspect is that RMS decided that blocking the change was so important that using the card was warranted. As RMS stated himself, he is using this power so rarely that developers don't know that it exist.

Why was preserving an old joke important enough to do this?

badsectoracula• 8 years ago

My understanding is that RMS doesn't see it as just a joke but a form of protest through a joke relevant to the name of the function in question and that asking him to remove it is seen similarly to asking a protester to only protest in designated protest areas during designated protest hours where they cannot bother anyone. If you see it like that and not just as a harmless old joke, it makes more sense why RMS is riled up.

oblio3• 8 years ago

Kind of late to the party: IMHO Stallman should not be the main decision point for GNU, as it stands. He should be in charge of an NGO which tries to raise awareness about Free Software, but he should not be involved in the day-to-day management of software projects, and definitely not ones with such huge visibility as GCC, Emacs, bash, etc.

Why not? GCC vs EGCS, Emacs vs XEmacs, etc. He has had a ton of huge contributions to the software world, but ask yourself this question: in today's networked world, where internet is widespread and cheap, where it is easy to organize software projects online and Open Source is quite well established, do you think that Richard Stallman would have the same visibility as he has now, as a sort of historical figure?

Also, before you answer, remember the FSF/GNU/Stallman were not the only authors of Open Source back in the day so even without him we'd have Open Source Software (MIT, Berkeley, etc.).

BrandoElFollito• 8 years ago

Can someone explain what the joke is (I am from France and this seems to be a legal discussion in the US ?)

cwmma• 8 years ago

It's a reference to the Mexico City Policy[1]

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico_City_policy

rayascott• 8 years ago

What's tragic and shocking is that RMS actually believes the joke is now more important than before when asking that the joke not be removed.

"The point of this joke is even more important now than it was when I first wrote it. Please do not remove it."

What's next? GnuJoke?

RightMillennial• 8 years ago

So even those with socialist political views can't have their jokes anymore? This is getting interesting. Look, I'm pro-life and anti-abortion but let the man keep his joke. It's not that big of deal.

Who controls glibc?

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