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."

Comments

The tiniest dick swinging possible

[Anonymous Coward]

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)

Re:The tiniest dick swinging possible

[Tablizer]

Did I wander into a Politics forum?

Re:The tiniest dick swinging possible

[Marxist Hacker 42]

I am socially pro-life and I consider this joke to be not only perfectly reasonable, but as a programmer who knows that calling abort() may kill a program without doing proper garbage collection and thus create memory leaks, the point of it being an unacceptable way to terminate a program is quite reasonable as well.

Opinion

[thegreatbob]

I, personally, thought to the joke was funny enough, albeit off-color. Black humor is still humor, and I personally recommend its persistence if only as a defense against the professionally offended. That being said, I can sympathize a bit with folks who are legitimately offended by something like this (primarily because death as a whole is a subject that requires concern/consideration when talking about it in certain contexts), in contrast to those who are essentially allowing themselves to be offended on behalf of some other entity/group. As a final note, if someone has read this comment, and assumed that they are a target of my labeling as a professional offense taker, some soul-searching is recommended, as that was basically my intention.

Re:Opinion

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm offended at the suggestion I have a soul! How dare you! I demand you take that back!

- Soulless professional offense taker

Re:Opinion

[JaredOfEuropa]

Meh. They are both right and both wrong. May I suggest that they simply fork libc...

Re: Opinion

[jd]

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.

Re: Opinion

[ArmoredDragon]

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.

Re:Opinion

[pots]

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."

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.

... Come to think of it, does "professionalism" have any other meaning?

Re: Opinion

[ArmoredDragon]

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.

Re: Opinion

[war4peace]

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.

Do they fuck their own assholes or other people's assholes? I lean towards the latter.

Re:Opinion

[Swave An deBwoner]

No reason to fork the library, just rename the function. Instead of "abort()", which is clearly upsetting to some on the committee, call it "terminate_with_extreme_prejudice()"; which has no such unpleasant connotations.

Re: Opinion

[bingoUV]

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.

Re:Opinion

[CAPSLOCK2000]

Actually "Professionalism" is highly subjective, AND changes over time and varies from group to group and organization to organization, because it is a cultural concept.

I disagree. A professional is someone who gets paid to do something. Unfortunately it doesn't guarantee any level of quality, especially in the software-industry where there is very little accountability for failure nor a generally accepted standard for quality.

Version

[ghoul]

Will this be added only to versions .1,.2,.3 or will it be allowed all the way upto version .9 of the documentation?

glibc?

[TWX]

or just glib?

Makes sense...

[Anonymous Coward]

After all, OSS documentation itself is one big joke.

We are not all american

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Aren't jokes supposed to be funny?

[Balial]

Offensive or not, that deserves to be removed based on it being just plain lame.

Re: Aren't jokes supposed to be funny?

[jd]

You've just eliminated 50% of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and 95% of American comedy.

Re: Aren't jokes supposed to be funny?

[Dynedain]

And there was much rejoicing.

it's not that funny

[perlstar]

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.

My favorite programming joke is a MySQL flag

[Anonymous Coward]

mysql --i-am-a-dummy

                      Permit only those UPDATE and DELETE statements that specify which rows to modify by using key values. If you have set this option in
                      an option file, you can override it by using --safe-updates on the command line. See the section called “MYSQL TIPS”, for more
                      information about this option

We All Need Jokes

[lsllll]

One thing that pulls me through my day (and life for that matter) is humor. It belong everywhere, even at some funerals. It lightens life. As a programmer, I have many comments that would amount to jokes. Hell, for many of my stored procedures, the first parameter is called @fiscal_year and right at the top when I'm explaining the parameters, the comment for that one says "Duh!"

Nobody's ever complained about humor peppered in the comments. Never in the output, but comments are fair game.

Re:We All Need Jokes

[lsllll]

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.

Re:We All Need Jokes

[Anonymous Coward]

Here here. I agree. Can not remember how it went but the comment describing a math function required you to sole a math problem, the only text in that comment said if you could not solve it then you were lacking in the education required to modify the function and should leave it alone.
It was not a joke per se but that complicated function were left untouched for many years. Some did ignore the comment and tried to modify it which resulted in the boss ripping them a new one. It was a glorious blood bath many of us enjoyed to watch. Each time when we saw that commit notification, the office would go completely dead silent. No typing, talking or music. Then you would see some eyes over the section walls looking at the person that did it. Like a last look before the execution. Someone kept the "kills" on a white board in a corner. The bosses name followed by "Kills: (Number)" like in an fps game.

We had so much fun in that office with jokes, pranks, quest stories and whatever else we could come up with. We got the job done but we had fun doing it. The boss did not see any issues with it.. Now that is a good boss. The commit log on Monday after an office party were a horror story from a professional standpoint. Those were the days.
Now people are too uptight, stressed out and focused on efficiency and performance reports. The formula for how to make people burn out. The boss is an uneducated asshole with a silver-spoon in mouth. Sigh.

Re:We All Need Jokes

[lsllll]

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.

Good move!

[Murdoch5]

Well I don't find the joke funny, mostly because it's a lame joke, censorship should always be fought.

Incoming radical idea

[Anonymous Coward]

How about: No jokes and no political commentary in the documentation and source code, period?

Does the OSS community work overtime to invent controversies that make them look like a bunch of kids working in their parents' basement?

Re:Clueless

[110010001000]

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.

Re:No good guys to cheer for

[Anonymous Coward]

The workplace is for work, not for crude humor or for politics.

Some of us are old enough to remember a time when Free Software wasn't just about work - when it was something that people did because it was fun.

Re:Huh?

[Archangel Michael]

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.

Re:Huh?

[bobbied]

Some people consider this a joke? I think I can see the real problem here - it's not even funny.

I'm solidly pro-life and I see the humor in it even though it's making fun of laws I would support. I'm not saying it's funny, but I see how some would find it amusing so it has merit and should stay for historical reasons.

I also don't consider personal offense valid criteria for censorship of any kind. Being offended to demand censoring something has become a cottage industry of late. Such foolishness needs to stop.

Re:No good guys to cheer for

[WaffleMonster]

Freedom comes with responsibility to not ruin freedom for others.

Freedom comes with responsibility to tolerate the sensibilities of others.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

>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."

Re:Clueless

[110010001000]

I just wonder what it is like to go through life getting offended by every little thing. It must be exhausting.

Re:Clueless

[bobbied]

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...

Bugless

[jd]

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.

Re:Clueless

[DogDude]

Who said GNU needs to be "professional"? It originated and is still maintained by hobbyists. Keep it weird.

Re:Why do people care about Stallman?

[Guybrush_T]

I prefer no idiocy at all. Reading this kind of jokes in the libc documentation could be confusing for many non-english speakers and really is out of place.

I'm not talking about people sensibility or SJW anything, just trying to have the documentation do what it's supposed to do in the most efficient way.

That was fun for some times and persons, I smiled reading it, but really it seems childish .. and even more from RMS to now oppose the removal.

Re:Huh?

[Cajun Hell]

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:

Carlos O'Donnell, a senior software engineer at Red Hat, suggested that trying to wring humor out of abortion "could be a trigger for certain individuals causing them to relive a traumatic memory. I cannot condone that we add triggers like these to a technical manual, particularly when individuals would not expect such jokes in the manual."

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.

Re:We don't want abortion in open source.

[OYAHHH]

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.

Re:Clueless

[Archangel Michael]

I'm not offended. I was merely pointing out that "get over it" is offensive to a large part of the Politically Correct Crowd, as they use it as example of whatever "oppression" they are experiencing at the moment.

Re:Why do people care about Stallman?

[Anonymous Coward]

stallman started Free Software not Open Source
He started it because he wanted freedom
Not at all suprised to see him take a stance against political correctness ... So he should, and so should we all

Other jokes

[SkOink]

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

It's a joke...

[meerling]

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.)

Why not jokes?

[Locke2005]

Many years ago, I worked as a consultant at HP. The HP Linux distro had default screen savers, one of which simulated an old green monochrome terminal and typed out entries from the fortune files. One of the fortune files was of Zippy the Pinhead quotes, in particular one that said, "I want to kill everyone with a cute, colorful hydrogen bomb!" I'd never seen it, but at 3am one morning the night security guard walks by my cubicle, sees this message on my computer, shouts "Terrorist!" -- and reports me to HR. They call me into a meeting with HR a couple days later, start asking me questions about hydrogen bombs, and suspend me because "That message was on YOUR computer, therefore YOU are responsible for it!" It took a week for one of my coworkers to examine the computer and explain to them exactly where the message came from (I had no idea). Stupidly enough, they had suspended me with pay, but I was now a week behind on my project and had taken the week off to interview for other jobs since I did not expect to be coming back, so I left a few weeks after they let me come back anyway.

Long story short: sometimes cute little jokes have unintended consequences.

Re:Why not jokes?

[guruevi]

So it ended up being a good thing for you. You moved out of a bad environment and look at what happened to HP

Re: Why not jokes?

[phantomfive]

Take that as a lesson: if you ever work with locke2005 don't fire him lest your company collapse.

His complaint is itself gold

[MMC Monster]

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.

Re:Huh?

[slinches]

If the pro-choice advocates would treat the decision with the weight it deserves, I'd be more amenable to their position. But they treat it like the expectant mother is weighing the ethics of removing a benign mole rather than whether they should separate conjoined twins when one will die because of it.

Sure, there are some cases where sacrificing one life to save the other is the least terrible solution. So I do not want laws that proscribe the outcome without considering the circumstances. But those that promote abortion as simply a choice of whether a woman wants a baby or not deserve the "pro-baby-murder" label.

No. (See Luke 10:7) More valuable than money.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

May I suggest that they simply fork libc...

You're welcome to suggest it. I suggest anyone considering such a thing reject the proposal, or only continue using and developing on the un-forked version.

Contributors to open source projects (ESPECIALY the seminal projects and the pioneers like Stallman) are giving us their work. But it's not for free. They still expect to be paid - but in things far more valuable than money.

Removing this joke is stealing part of Stallman's pay for his work. And it's a piece of his pay that he values enough to raise a stink about it.

For thousands of years the prescription of essentially every moral code has been "pay the worker what you promised". Example: "... the labourer is worthy of his hire." (Luke 10:7, King James Version).

Let's not succumb to the censor's tactic of punishing people who don't totally conform to the current group-think prescription by stealing their stuff - starting with those things they value the most, and with those most connected to denying them free speech.

first they came for the jokes...

[DrewFish]

and I said nothing...

Re:Ignorant Children? Yeah, funny in a tragic way.

[DogDude]

You should learn to think. That link just lists a bunch of lawsuits against PP. None of the stuff on that page has been verified by any authority, as far as I can tell.

My commented joke caused a major outage

[raymorris]

> Have even put my own jokes into code and docs. Not sorry.

I've done that myself. One particular case stands out in my mind. As I recall it was in a comment, or perhaps within an "if false" statement, something that couldn't possibly affect how the program runs. However, the file ended up being used in a way that I didn't intend or predict, and the presence of the joke caused a significant outage.

I will never put jokes in production code again.

Double down

[Brockmire]

Not only do you restore the joke, you add at least another one.

Re: Huh?

[Junta]

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?

Re: Huh?

[phantomfive]

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.

Do NOT Remove!

[SysEngineer]

Do not remove! libc is more than just code it is a philosophy.

Re:Huh?

[ruir]

RMS is just not let himself go with the political nonsense herd mentality other projects are currently going.
It is called having a backbone, which is rare nowadays.
Sad that RMS is the only having the wisdom to do that.

Re:Huh?

[another_twilight]

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.

Re: Huh?

[another_twilight]

there are a lot of people who now don't exist

There are even more people who don't exist because of all the people who have failed to have children with me. Some of them I've never even met.

Re:Huh?

[another_twilight]

And if the pro-life advocates, like you, would stop insisting that the 'weight' that they attribute to the decision is the only valid one, then I'd probably be more amenable to their position.

The essence of the pro-choice movement is that it is the choice of the individual. That they should be allowed to make that choice based on their own evaluation of the 'weight' of that choice and that other people, like yourself, imposing what _you_ think is an appropriate 'weight' is an imposition on their right to self-determination.

Some people will treat it with every bit as much 'weight' as you ask. Others will treat it as you characterise all pro-choicer advocates.

Personally, I think more harm has been done by righteous do-gooders, certain of their morally superior position and unable to admit that their position might be an opinion and not a fact than just about any other single source in human history.

Re:Why do people care about Stallman?

[Pseudonym]

Perhaps it is childish (to you), to most sensible people it's a comment on the political climate in the US, [...]

It isn't childish to me, but it is parochial. You (and by "you" I mean a generic "you") are welcome to comment on your own politics, but it puzzles me as to why you think the whole world needs to see it. What makes your political in-jokes so much more important than everyone else's?

Good. He did not bow to the SJWs negativity

[gweihir]

It really does not matter what you think about the joke. There is no good reason to remove it and removing it validates a horribly wrong stance that some people fantasize would make the world better. (Even the Nazis though they were making the world better. Good intentions are not at all ensuring good deeds.) Hence it is quite refreshing that a high-profile person does not bow to this nonsense and just states "you have no say in this".