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

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

[JaredOfEuropa]

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

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

[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.

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.

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.

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: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...

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

[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: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.