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Richard Stallman Demands Return Of Abortion Joke To libc Documentation (theregister.co.uk)
An anonymous reader quotes The Register:
Late last month, open-source contributor Raymond Nicholson proposed a change to the manual for glibc, the GNU implementation of the C programming language's standard library, to remove "the abortion joke," which accompanied the explanation of libc's abort() function... The joke, which has been around since the 1990s and is referred to as a censorship joke by those supporting its inclusion, reads as follows:
25.7.4 Aborting a Program... 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.
On April 30, the proposed change was made, removing the passage from the documentation. That didn't sit well with a number of people involved in the glibc project, including the joke's author, none other than Free Software Foundation president and firebrand Richard Stallman, who argued that the removal of the joke qualified as censorship... Carlos O'Donnell, a senior software engineer at Red Hat, recommended avoiding jokes altogether, a position supported by many of those weighing in on the issue. Among those voicing opinions, a majority appears to favor removal.
But in a post to the project mailing list, Stallman wrote "Please do not remove it. GNU is not a purely technical project, so the fact that this is not strictly and grimly technical is not a reason to remove this." He added later that "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. But that is not the case. On this particular question, I made a decision long ago and stated it where all of you could see it."
The Register reports that "On Monday, the joke was restored by project contributor Alexandre Oliva, having taken Stallman's demand as approval to do so."
25.7.4 Aborting a Program... 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.
On April 30, the proposed change was made, removing the passage from the documentation. That didn't sit well with a number of people involved in the glibc project, including the joke's author, none other than Free Software Foundation president and firebrand Richard Stallman, who argued that the removal of the joke qualified as censorship... Carlos O'Donnell, a senior software engineer at Red Hat, recommended avoiding jokes altogether, a position supported by many of those weighing in on the issue. Among those voicing opinions, a majority appears to favor removal.
But in a post to the project mailing list, Stallman wrote "Please do not remove it. GNU is not a purely technical project, so the fact that this is not strictly and grimly technical is not a reason to remove this." He added later that "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. But that is not the case. On this particular question, I made a decision long ago and stated it where all of you could see it."
The Register reports that "On Monday, the joke was restored by project contributor Alexandre Oliva, having taken Stallman's demand as approval to do so."
I mean not to put too fine a point on it but this kind of nattering over minutiae is almost quaint. A relic from a bygone age of outspoken egotists who Did Shit(tm)
I would rather politics be discussed elsewhere and let's also remember that these docs are read all over the world, including users who may not understand the humour
He was a firebrand that brought a lot of good into the world via his open source push. But in the last decade, at least, he is simply a lunatic with a megaphone that makes the open source community look bad.
A manual for glibc is no place for a joke about abortion, whether you are for or against abortion.
Offensive or not, that deserves to be removed based on it being just plain lame.
It didn't make me laugh, but I have to admit that I find it a clever way to comment on a political issue: not abortion itself, but rather the way anti-abortion proponents try to exert control on abortion clinics by forcing them to talk-down to their patients as if they were ignorant children.
Get over yourself. You guys need to learn to "get over it" and learn that you have no right to NOT be offended. The "professional" thing is no to release software that is riddled with security holes. I'm still waiting for the "professional" software houses to start doing that.
It isn't censorship to remove superfulous information from documentation, joke or not.
What makes me funny, is that RMS is acting like a petty dictator over a "joke" that is no longer funny nor wanted any longer. Some jokes run their course, this was one. Calling it "censorship" is asinine.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
It's less about death than it is about religious extremism in politics denying people access to information and resources.
The joke satirises extremists, which is admittedly more airtime than the extremists deserve.
However, we live in a free() country that was previously malloced.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Freedom comes with responsibility to not ruin freedom for others.
Freedom comes with responsibility to tolerate the sensibilities of others.
>joke isn't funny
was that an echo
>It isn't censorship to remove information
bruh
I don't recommend using a (mediocre) argument Of Triviality, because it easily flips around.
Here, I'll show you: "Demanding the removal of superfluous information is asinine."
I just wonder what it is like to go through life getting offended by every little thing. It must be exhausting.
Of all the people made "uncomfortable" by this joke I'd be chief among them and I'm advocating that we leave it alone. Where I may find reason to be offended, this does not give me the right to demand it be removed. Why? Because something I say or do may offend you and I expect to be afforded the same tolerance. Being offended doesn't actually hurt you, especially if the offending thing is in the comments...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Yeah, those are great until 5 years later when someone like me comes along and has to look through the code to see if you used a 2-digit or 4-digit year before calling the procedure.
Well, by that logic I'd have to write a paragraph just to clarify what the fiscal year actually is, that it runs from 7/1 of previous year to 6/30 of the fiscal year, that we're using the Gregorian calendar and not the Islamic calendar, blah blah. If by the time you're modifying or looking at my code you don't know what the corporation calls their fiscal year, then you have no business in that code to begin with.
Is that a roll of dimes in your pocket or are you happy to see me?
Real software developers, the only ones who matter, are aiming for eliminating bugs. If satire about excessive religion in politics is distracting you from your job, you're in the wrong job.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Who said GNU needs to be "professional"? It originated and is still maintained by hobbyists. Keep it weird.
I don't respond to AC's.
But it's a pretty good reason for deleting it from technical documentation.
You could also write the word "spam" at the bottom of every single function's documentation, and that wouldn't be funny either. It also wouldn't be censorship if someone removed it.
I usually agree with RMS but this is one of those "who the fuck cares?" things.
Then it gets worse:
OMG, we're having a contest to see who can be the most stupid. I'm almost back to joining RMS in "demanding" it be put back again. "Triggered?" really? Holy shit.
Fuck anyone and everyone who pretends they're unable to handle reading a certain word. The "joke" needs to be put back in, just to piss on the drama queens.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Abortion, as exercised by places like the Chinese Government against its' own citizens, i.e., forced abortion, is far from a laughing matter, And in many families there it can be considered an affront to their personal sensibilities. Such as those who are Christian.
I have no doubt that in some context, as spoken by Mr. Stallman: "glibc is not strictly a technical project" is quite true. There most likely have, or are, Chinese citizens who feel they have been personally negatively impacted by horrendous abortion policies.
It appears Mr. Stallman may need to broaden his horizons to understand that not all people live in a free society. What is acceptable in some contexts is not acceptable in other contexts.
I would assert Mr. Stallman is effectively "reverse-censoring" his abortion joke.
You are certainly welcome to disagree with any, or all of the above, that I have noted. And personally I do not care either way, I am simply the messenger that not all jokes are appropriate worldwide.
Have a good day.
Caution: Contents under pressure
The proper term is "professional victim". You know, like feminazis, social justice warriors, and certain minorites that take the mere fact that they're a minority to mean they're entitled to label everything as being racist or sexist, like that lady who attacked the Hugh Mungus guy.
Most of the people here aren't seeing the positive angle here. This is complicated by the fact that this particular joke has a political aspect, but setting that aside most of the criticism boils down to: "It isn't professional."
... Come to think of it, does "professionalism" have any other meaning?
Okay. That is true, but that's also its virtue. Little bits of humanity like this in an otherwise incredibly dry and boring technical manual are a reminder that GNU isn't professional. That has value. It's not easily quantified, but GNU is a passion project that really needs people to care about it in order for it to go on. And professionalism is all about squashing passions.
There are other jokes/easter-eggs in Glibc's documentation. I get a kick out of them every time I run across one.
Should we also go through and strip all of those out? What if I decide that EIEIO is insulting to farmers? Who decides what's a trigger-warning and what isn't?
Should we remove HTTP error 418?
The UNIX/Linux hacker subculture of the 80s and 90s produced a ton of interesting technology, and arguably shaped the internet into what it is today.
I don't want my operating system to be a sterile, soulless entity. I like the in-jokes, the fact that 'fortune' exists, and the recursive acronyms. People have poured their vitality into making tools that are free for the world - the least we can do is let them express a sense of humor if they choose.
UNIX cultureLinux/UNIX is born from a really unique, amazing kind of culture, which
---- I'll take you in a Hunt deathmatch any day.
No one makes a fuss, cries louder, whines about lifestyle or complains about language than a right winger. They use 'projection' more than anyone. ever.
It's a joke about censorship, and it is rather ironic that someone decided to censor it.
It's not even offensive, unless you actually work at trying to be offended.
It's not about aborting a pregnancy, it's about aborting a program.
You people do know that words, especially verbs and adjectives (Or nouns based on such verbs and adjectives) are not exclusively used with one single thing in the universe don't you?
Besides, if independent, or at least non-commercial devs can't have a sense of humor, they should just put on a monkey suit and go work for IBM.
Or a bank.
Stop trying to take the humor out of life and stop trying to turn it into an Orwellian nightmare.
Realize that not everything is an insult.
Think of the uncompiled software, do you want to run them in this environment?
(Yes, that was a weak attempt at a programming joke.)
I, personally, thought to the joke was funny enough, albeit off-color.
I don't care if they keep it in the documentation or not... but it seems like a rather pathetic attempt at humor.
#DeleteChrome
I think he's trying to say I am, but in truth I'm not. In fact, I think the term right and left are kind of dumb because they imply that you sit in one of two camps. I don't sit in any camp, to be honest. For example, it's often said that if you are against gun control, then you're right wing, but if you favor legalization of cannabis, then you're left wing. I sit in both camps, so where does that put me? I'm not libertarian because I like net neutrality, and I'm not centrist or moderate because I have strong opinions on many things.
Perhaps the best word to describe me is independent. As for this topic, I'm against professional victims, mainly because they think they're systematically oppressed, but really it's all in their head. They are in fact narcissists, and they love the attention they get when others believe them, and the media eats it up. Narcissists are fucking assholes, and people should stop feeding them the attention they want, because it just feeds their addiction, which in the end just makes them even bigger assholes.
Exactly. If we lose humor in the next of professionalism, we've lost a major benefit of open source. Open source is not professional, it's a hack that ends up better than professional. If it were professional we'd have a registry and would eschew bsd lsd.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The joke doesn't mention death. It only mentions censorship of speech. To be offended by this takes a special brand of snowflake.
I exercise my authority over glibc very rarely [...]. So rarely that some of you thought that you are entirely autonomous. But that is not the case.
This line should be on a page of greatest quotes of all time.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
That's impossible. I am offended you don't give credit to God for granting us these freedoms. You heathen. In reality, getting offended is an American past time, and being outraged is the natural human state.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
So it ended up being a good thing for you. You moved out of a bad environment and look at what happened to HP
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
You are incurring the mental cost and inconvenience of me having to deal with your horribleness as a person. Should I have the right to choose to end your life because of that? No? Then there's some threshold where someone's life outweighs the temporary inconvenience of another.
By the way, there's a more humane way to avoid the legal and financial liability part. It's called adoption.
Knowledge Brings Fear
I suppose I think of censorship as a bit more dire than removing a decades old joke from versions of documentation. Is it censorship if I propose a change to add that "rather than using abort(), I have a modest proposal for an alternative.." and my change gets denied? Does everyone's submission to add commentary to the documentation have to be allowed, because to do otherwise is to censor that person's speech, even as they have tons of other venues as even their own code tracking system would keep it available for posterity, even if not currently in new downloads?
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Most of your questions can be answered straightforwardly by using an analogy of a library. Does everyone's submission to add a book to a library need to be allowed? No, not really. Is requesting that a book be removed because you don't like what it says censorship? Yeah, it is.
As a general rule of thumb, "I am offended" is not a good reason to remove speech.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
God I hate having to come by and fix code from developers with this attitude after they've fled the company. But at least it pays well.
Hold on a second. All I said was that you should know what the company's fiscal year is and how they refer to it. If you don't know the business of the company at least at a minimal level, like knowing their fiscal year, then surely my stored procedure and its use of tables, however commented, will not be useful. I don't understand the mentality of "code should be written so that ANY coder can pick it up and take off." If you have no knowledge of the business, then that's your starting point. Code is not meant to replace your meeting with the folks at the company to get a basic grasp of the company's operations.
Is that a roll of dimes in your pocket or are you happy to see me?
It isn't censorship to remove superfulous information
Would you like to take a moment to reflect on what you've just said?
Are you really arguing that all I need do to avoid accusation of censorship is to declare something superfluous - literally 'unnecessary'?
RMS is acting like a petty dictator
You say that like it's a bad thing. The _point_ of free speech is that everyone gets to be 'a petty dictator' over what they say or write. You can argue that something is superfluous. You can ask that it be removed for various reasons. But if the author declines, then that is quite literally their right.
His words. He gets to say 'no' when you ask for them to be removed.
nor wanted any longer
Here you go, again. It doesn't matter whether you or anyone else wants this, they are his words. He gets to say what happens to them.
We are only tested on our dedication to the right to free speech when the speech is something we don't like or don't want to hear.
Calling it "censorship" is asinine.
Denying that it is is ignorant.
I'm not libertarian because I like net neutrality
1. First of all Americans (US) are idiots : having unilaterally changed the meanings of meaningful words (or their direct derivatives) like "Democrat" , "Republican" "Libertarian" etc. Anyone half-way educated, even US citizen, has no justification blindly accepting and following such definitions.
Beginning a word with capital letter could give it a distinct meaning - closer to famous proper nouns than the adjectives they otherwise are. But then most people being careless, even omit that distinction. As you did.
This is not to say definitions don't change by usage - but this is a well known way of lying / misrepresenting / misleading by definition hijack.
2. More importantly, libertarian can be any one advocating for overall improvement in liberty of the people. Now liberty, being a complicated subject, is at times overall improved by restricting it in certain manners in the immediate short term.
An important example is GPL or similar licenses. Even while being more restrictive in the immediate short term than other well-known FOSS licenses, they do improve the overall liberty of people in certain contexts.
Support for net neutrality can be completely libertarian in this sense.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.