Reminds me of some previous glibc governance weirdness (back in 2001)…
In the glibc-2.2.4 release announcement, Ulrich Drepper (the glibc maintainer at the time) said:
And now for some not so nice things.
Stallman recently tried what I would call a hostile takeover of the
glibc development. He tried to conspire behind my back and persuade
the other main developers to take control so that in the end he is in
control and can dictate whatever pleases him. This attempt failed but
he kept on pressuring people everywhere and it got really ugly. In
the end I agreed to the creation of a so-called “steering committee”
(SC). The SC is different from the SC in projects like gcc in that it
does not make decisions. On this front nothing changed. The only
difference is that Stallman now has no right to complain anymore since
the SC he wanted acknowledged the status quo. I hope he will now shut
up forever.
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.
Ulrich Drepper is no saint in his management of the glibc project either, and has had multiple conflicts in which he asserted his ultimate control over glibc as well. For a while, Debian switched away from glibc to avoid dealing with Drepper all together.
I think RMS and Drepper are very similar, in the sense that they want the ultimate control over projects they are involved with, and the conflict between Drepper and RMS is simply caused by the fact that they both wanted to control the same project.
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.
Well, while I think that Stallman veto is coherent with the GNU philosophy this time, I consider Drepper’s suggestion a good one.
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.
The GNU project is a political movement, not a safe and clean firm from Silicon Valley.
As such, the GNU documentation must be NSFW.
Everybody can fork the documentation (or even the library) so if you don’t like the joke you can remove it yourself. But I think that his veto, this time, is perfectly coherent with the GNU philosophy.
The free in “free software” is not just a matter of price. And censorship fights freedom.
It’s also very unclear to anyone not living in the US that it’s even a joke. To people coming from other countries or cultural backgrounds it just seems like a bizarre disclaimer and maybe a warning against actually using that functionality.
Oh it’s very simple.
I wrote: “The GNU project is a political movement […] As such, the GNU documentation must be NSFW.”
Now the point is: what does NSFW means?
NSFW (Not Safe For Work) adj.
Initially intendeded as a warning for porn, NSFW is a conventional marker for contents that might affect, in any way, the productivity of a working group, by moving the focus of people from the profit of a company. Not to be confused with NSFC (Not Safe For Children).
Now imagine the concern of your boss, when she realizes that you are reading a political joke against censorship in software documentation! She might feel unsafe. She might feel the urge to argue that censorship does not affect software, that censorship does not affect developers or even that technical documents have no reason to be censored.
Worse, the political joke might infect you, and you might infect others collegues in turn. How many hours would you subtract from company profit by thinking about freedom?
Huh? Not being a company in SV…
Suppose this was happened in a SV company: a developer paid in the six figure finds a similarly political joke in documentation: “After blocking all signals, the slave will keep working until killed. A good worker indeed.”
Git says that the CEO put the joke in. He don’t want it to be removed. Do you think we would be arguing now?
Many people raised in such culture argues that “political jokes should not be in the code or manual in any way”.
I argue that it’s a perfect place for a gentle reminder about the moral responsibilities of programming.
Indeed the title of the thread is wrong. It should ask: Who protects GNU values?
You are using Free Software. It’s not safe for Capitalism. By design!
If that’s your actual goal, I’m surprised you support this joke being in the documentation. There seems to be a reasonable large group of people that just don’t know what to make of a joke they interpret as being about abortion in documentation, another group that think an abortion joke is inappropriate, and at least one more group that think this joke represents some set of meaningful values. If the goal is to communicate something that helps people think question capitalism, this joke doesn’t seem to accomplish that for a lot of people.
Most of what I’ve read in this thread is not about capitalism, it’s about if an abortion joke is stupid or not. I don’t know how that furthers the FSF agenda.
Currently I count 15 occurences of “censorship” and just 9 occurences “abortion” (some of them claiming that the joke is not about it).
We are talking about censorship, freedom, governance, accountability and ethics.
Tangentially, the fact that people have strong feelings against a political joke in GNU documentation, show how much they unconsciously align to the capitalist view of work: something solely oriented and completely devoted to profit.
That’s not the vision of hackers, and for sure not the vision behind Free Software.
It’s sad to see people against politics in the GNU manual of a GNU project.
It’s like if you say: “Please FSF, give us the code and shut up!”
If you prefer carefully hidden politics, you should definitely go for corporate open source.
Instead of jokes, you’ll get subtle manipulations that won’t force you to think.
So, this has already sparked a discussion about taste, freedom of speech, the whole thing.
The joke in question is bad, very bad. It’s plain unfitting, and it isn’t even remotely funny. It’s US-centric. RMS, the person making and subsequently claiming it, has a history of making sexual and other inappropriate commentary (e.g. arguing eugenics). His quoted comment about child birth is another example of RMS speaking about things he probably doesn’t have a very qualified opinion on. Most (all?) of the people mentioned in the article discussing the issue will never be affected by this in the real world. Seriously, I expect one of those people to stand up and say “You know what? We aren’t even the right group to discuss that in!”.
And this is the issue he pulls his authority card? Seriously? For a bad joke that was already shit in the 90s? That - even ignoring the punchline being terrible - just plain isn’t funny? Which boundary does that cross? Probably his egos.
Seriously, this is a tech manual. This is the place where you can finally have your “let’s just talk tech her”. And there, this discussion comes up?
The thing I find weird is the clear generational gap in Internet users that mean that people end up talking past each other.
For older people who grew up thinking that Sendmail m4 macros were somehow intuitive, and that C was the new hotness, this is not a joke about abortion. It’s about censorship. That’s the hill RMS thinks he’s dying on. Removing the joke is at the risk of putting words in his mouth, censoring the manual.
Of course, the younger people who live in a world where Javascript isn’t ridiculous to use on a server, where everything-as-a-service is the norm demand takedowns of things outside of their overton window. To them, it’s a matter of not having a frankly disgusting joke about the very real problems of abortion in the US in a technical manual that has nothing to do with those problems. They don’t understand the culture in which GNU was founded, they believe that it is RMS’ job to change to fit with their culture.
This is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. I’m just not sure who plays which part here. There is a reasonable answer, and the good news for the kids is that this has happened before several times: fork glibc. Fork it to remove RMS’ influence from the project and fork it to remove the offending text (for people that want it removed).
Stallman is pretty freaking oblique at the best of times when it comes to his sense of humour. Saying that GNU is full of inefficient crap is like saying that water is wet, or that the Linux kernel is a bug-ridden dumpster fire.
If every GNU inefficiency was removed, it’d be BSD.
It should be removed on the technical grounds that it’s inefficient GNU crap.
Nobody force you to use GNU crap.
But GNU is and have always been openly political.
You are free to use software that is apparently neutral. if you don’t like it.
And you have plenty of choice on the market: Microsoft, Apple, Google… all are pretty ready to serve your needs (and collect your data for whatever purpose, and lobbying for DRM and so on../)
But “as a commentary about censorship”, that joke is perfectly fine.
I’m fine with GNU being a political project. Indeed, I actively advocate for projects to make their mind up.
But “as a commentary about censorship”, that joke is perfectly fine.
A lot of the project itself does not seem to agree, especially in the context of having it in the documentation. Except RMS, who pulls rank over a joke that he himself made. Which makes the GNU project his personal opinion/joke vehicle.
Except RMS, who pulls rank over a joke that he himself made. Which makes the GNU project his personal opinion/joke vehicle.
I don’t see the point you’re making here? The GNU project was always an expression of political views that were, originally, personal to RMS. If the project ran by majority consensus it would have given up on the whole free software thing a long time ago.
Using your “Rust Community Team” hat here is crass, and only reinforces some people’s beliefs (myself included) about these types of thought police organizations.
I sure hope the non-“Rust Community Team” people show less virtue signalling. It puts your project under a terrible spotlight.
FWIW, I find the use of the hat inappropriate here as well.
That being said, as discussed below, I think it depends on what you think the hat means, exactly. It seems Florian uses the hat differently than many here might expect.
Be that as it may, when the people who have written the code (glibc was originally written by someone else (not RMS), and Ulrich Drepper is now responsible for something like 70% of the code) and make it all work ask you to back off, it’s a stupid hill to die on. Yeah, you might win the battle, but you’ll lose the war.
Last time something like this happened, everyone switched to using eglibc and it wasn’t until the RMS-mandated steering committee was dissolved that people switched back to glibc. If RMS decides to be a jerk about things, watch everyone fork it again or sink their resources into musl.
There’s being right, and there’s being so egotistical that you burn down the house because you didn’t get your way.
He has veto power for precisely these cases where “everyone else” disagrees, so I don’t think it’s a stupid hill to die on. In any case, I agree with you, RMS will lose this war, this is just the beginning.
Vetoing the removal of a little-used architecture with heavy maintenance burden because they want to support those few users is a good hill to die on. Vetoing the removal of a joke that everyone else wants to remove from the manual and doesn’t in any way affect the operation of the library is a stupid hill to die on.
As a participant in Rust Community and a proponent of eugenics, your use of Rust Community Team hat makes me uncomfortable. Was it necessary? Are you really speaking for Rust Community Team here? I hope my eugenics advocacy won’t affect my Rust participation.
As for the joke, the joke is clearly about censorship and not about abortion. I think attempt to censor the joke makes it more relevant.
As for the joke, the joke is clearly about censorship and not about abortion.
Jokes, by their nature, are not clear and subject to cultural background and education. In my opinion, it’s a bit condescending to claim that it has universal understanding and appeal.
I think attempt to censor the joke makes it more relevant.
The origin of the patch seems to be the person just didn’t think it relayed any meaningful information to a user of the function. I don’t think that falls into common usage of “censorship”.
On FOSS social issues, I generally put the hat on here. As my work for the Rust project is social, judging which of these issues I should put the hat on would only lead to problems. I’m fine with people knowing my affiliation and I think it’s more honest for people to know it. I don’t speak for the team, but I am a member of the team.
On Eugenics: it’s, in my view, an only thinly veiled form of Ableism, and as such opposed to the goal of being inclusive, especially also to people with disability. Many forms fundamentally attack the right to live of people with disabilities, for example by arguing for their abortion.
Just to be clear on which comment by RMS I’m referring to (on people with Trisomy 21):
If you’d like to love and care for a pet that doesn’t have normal human mental capacity, don’t create a handicapped human being to be your pet. Get a dog or a parrot…
I support the idea behind the comment. Given medical acceptance of prenatal screening of trisomy 21, this is one of less extreme among RMS’s positions.
I agree the expression of the idea in the comment you quoted leaves a lot to be desired.
Prenatal screening of trisomy 21 are generally accepted as a way to increase survival chances for the fetus.
Trisomy 21 increases the risk of heart issues at birth, that can be handled in the proper structure, but would lead to secure death if not addressed promptly.
Some people use it for eugenetics (usually with amniocentesis, that kills 1 healthy children out of 200 if I remember correctly).
Now, IMO what RMS means is horrible, disgusting and plain dangerous.
But it’s not related to freedom. And he has the right to think (and say) it.
Prenatal screening of trisomy 21 are generally accepted as a way to increase survival chances for the fetus.
Do you have a citation for your “generally accepted” claim? There appears to be at least some evidence to the contrary:
About 92% of pregnancies in Europe with a diagnosis of Down syndrome are terminated.[14] In the United States, termination rates are around 67%, but this rate varied from 61% to 93% among different populations.[13] Rates are lower among women who are younger and have decreased over time.[13] When nonpregnant people are asked if they would have a termination if their fetus tested positive, 23–33% said yes, when high-risk pregnant women were asked, 46–86% said yes, and when women who screened positive are asked, 89–97% say yes.[75]
This is entirely offtopic here, but I don’t want to flee the question.
My source is my doctor, that incidentally is also my wife.
When the prenatal screening of our second daughter established 1/350 probability of a Down syndrome, she explained me about amniocentesis, about the risks for the fetus and about the implications and the medical reasoning beyond it. It’s a complex topic and I’m not competent enough to expose it here deeply, but the relevant point was that, while several doctors object to abortion as a murder in contrast with their oath and ethics, prenatal screening is designed to increase the survival of the fetus, so every doctor is fine with it.
On FOSS social issues, I generally put the hat on here. As my work for the Rust project is social, judging which of these issues I should put the hat on would only lead to problems. I’m fine with people knowing my affiliation and I think it’s more honest for people to know it. I don’t speak for the team, but I am a member of the team.
While I do not agree with you on the “joke on documentation” issue, I really support this approach.
I hope my eugenics advocacy won’t affect my Rust participation.
If that’s what you think that means, and you advocate for any intelligence-based eugenics, you might want to reconsider your position on eugenics.
This obviously would only affect you if you attempted to add eugenics commentary to the Rust project itself in some way. Same as if you attempted to add any other irrelevant polarizing commentary.
Fine. But the consensus of the primary maintainers is that it’s off-topic. Therefore it’s off-topic for whatever fork of glibc everyone ends up using. Because if we get another eglibc situation, everyone will use the fork maintained by the maintainers, and no one will use the fork “maintained” by rms.
It’s de facto off-topic for those who accept reality.
Anyone who “accepts reality” in that sense wouldn’t be contributing to GNU in the first place. The project has always been about RMS telling the rest of the world they’re wrong.
See eglibc. A non-GNU fork already happened, and was reintegrated when the issue was dropped.
I don’t see how you can say that those kind of people wouldn’t be contributing to GNU, when they clearly are and that’s what this is all about. If those kind of people wouldn’t be contributing to GNU, then why is there any debate?
There is debate precisely because the people contributing don’t subscribe to your notion that the primary maintainer consensus is all that matters. glibc contributors do care about GNU and RMS, otherwise the eglibc-style fork would already have happened and the project would now be being maintained outside the GNU umbrella.
I think politics and code don’t mesh well. Jokes like these are political and should not be in the code or manual in any way. No matter if I disagree or agree with the politics the joke references.
I don’t think the joke is problematic. It’s certainly US-centric, many people, especially with english as second language like me, won’t get it (though I found it mildly amusing without context, I can have rather crude humor if that is the right expression)
I’m not a particular fan of RMS but I also think he’s the one that should be calling the shots at GNU. If he says someone should jump for a project, they should ask “how high?”. But I’m also a fan of BDFL so I’m not sure how much that counts as objective argument in this case.
Needeless to say it’s a rather annoying cognitive dissonance tho I’m feeling a bias towards “don’t remove it”.
He left out the verse that says he is the authoritarian leader of all things GNU I guess? A bit misleading…
Join us now and share the software;
You'll be free, hackers, you'll be free.
Join us now and share the software;
You'll be free, hackers, you'll be free.
Hoarders can get piles of money,
That is true, hackers, that is true.
But they cannot help their neighbors;
That's not good, hackers, that's not good.
When we have enough free software
At our call, hackers, at our call,
We'll kick out those dirty licenses
Ever more, hackers, ever more.
Join us now and share the software;
You'll be free, hackers, you'll be free.
Join us now and share the software;
You'll be free, hackers, you'll be free.
Reminds me of some previous glibc governance weirdness (back in 2001)…
In the glibc-2.2.4 release announcement, Ulrich Drepper (the glibc maintainer at the time) said:
Some additional background.
Ulrich Drepper is no saint in his management of the glibc project either, and has had multiple conflicts in which he asserted his ultimate control over glibc as well. For a while, Debian switched away from glibc to avoid dealing with Drepper all together.
I think RMS and Drepper are very similar, in the sense that they want the ultimate control over projects they are involved with, and the conflict between Drepper and RMS is simply caused by the fact that they both wanted to control the same project.
One difference was that Drepper was actually the maintainer of glibc. That said, I do agree with you.
Well, while I think that Stallman veto is coherent with the GNU philosophy this time, I consider Drepper’s suggestion a good one.
The joke in question is not about abortion, it’s about censorship.
The GNU project is a political movement, not a safe and clean firm from Silicon Valley.
As such, the GNU documentation must be NSFW.
Everybody can fork the documentation (or even the library) so if you don’t like the joke you can remove it yourself. But I think that his veto, this time, is perfectly coherent with the GNU philosophy.
The free in “free software” is not just a matter of price. And censorship fights freedom.
It’s also very unclear to anyone not living in the US that it’s even a joke. To people coming from other countries or cultural backgrounds it just seems like a bizarre disclaimer and maybe a warning against actually using that functionality.
I am not from the US and it’s obvious to me that it is indeed a joke. A very funny one in fact.
Huh? Not being a company in SV means you must have NSFW content in your documentation? Could you walk me through the logic of that?
Oh it’s very simple.
I wrote: “The GNU project is a political movement […] As such, the GNU documentation must be NSFW.”
Now the point is: what does NSFW means?
Now imagine the concern of your boss, when she realizes that you are reading a political joke against censorship in software documentation! She might feel unsafe. She might feel the urge to argue that censorship does not affect software, that censorship does not affect developers or even that technical documents have no reason to be censored.
Worse, the political joke might infect you, and you might infect others collegues in turn.
How many hours would you subtract from company profit by thinking about freedom?
Suppose this was happened in a SV company: a developer paid in the six figure finds a similarly political joke in documentation: “After blocking all signals, the slave will keep working until killed. A good worker indeed.”
Git says that the CEO put the joke in. He don’t want it to be removed. Do you think we would be arguing now?
Many people raised in such culture argues that “political jokes should not be in the code or manual in any way”.
I argue that it’s a perfect place for a gentle reminder about the moral responsibilities of programming.
Indeed the title of the thread is wrong. It should ask: Who protects GNU values?
You are using Free Software. It’s not safe for Capitalism. By design!
If that’s your actual goal, I’m surprised you support this joke being in the documentation. There seems to be a reasonable large group of people that just don’t know what to make of a joke they interpret as being about abortion in documentation, another group that think an abortion joke is inappropriate, and at least one more group that think this joke represents some set of meaningful values. If the goal is to communicate something that helps people think question capitalism, this joke doesn’t seem to accomplish that for a lot of people.
Aren’t we doing exactly that?
Most of what I’ve read in this thread is not about capitalism, it’s about if an abortion joke is stupid or not. I don’t know how that furthers the FSF agenda.
Currently I count 15 occurences of “censorship” and just 9 occurences “abortion” (some of them claiming that the joke is not about it).
We are talking about censorship, freedom, governance, accountability and ethics.
Tangentially, the fact that people have strong feelings against a political joke in GNU documentation, show how much they unconsciously align to the capitalist view of work: something solely oriented and completely devoted to profit.
That’s not the vision of hackers, and for sure not the vision behind Free Software.
It’s sad to see people against politics in the GNU manual of a GNU project.
It’s like if you say: “Please FSF, give us the code and shut up!”
If you prefer carefully hidden politics, you should definitely go for corporate open source.
Instead of jokes, you’ll get subtle manipulations that won’t force you to think.
sigh
So, this has already sparked a discussion about taste, freedom of speech, the whole thing.
The joke in question is bad, very bad. It’s plain unfitting, and it isn’t even remotely funny. It’s US-centric. RMS, the person making and subsequently claiming it, has a history of making sexual and other inappropriate commentary (e.g. arguing eugenics). His quoted comment about child birth is another example of RMS speaking about things he probably doesn’t have a very qualified opinion on. Most (all?) of the people mentioned in the article discussing the issue will never be affected by this in the real world. Seriously, I expect one of those people to stand up and say “You know what? We aren’t even the right group to discuss that in!”.
And this is the issue he pulls his authority card? Seriously? For a bad joke that was already shit in the 90s? That - even ignoring the punchline being terrible - just plain isn’t funny? Which boundary does that cross? Probably his egos.
Seriously, this is a tech manual. This is the place where you can finally have your “let’s just talk tech her”. And there, this discussion comes up?
The thing I find weird is the clear generational gap in Internet users that mean that people end up talking past each other.
For older people who grew up thinking that Sendmail m4 macros were somehow intuitive, and that C was the new hotness, this is not a joke about abortion. It’s about censorship. That’s the hill RMS thinks he’s dying on. Removing the joke is at the risk of putting words in his mouth, censoring the manual.
Of course, the younger people who live in a world where Javascript isn’t ridiculous to use on a server, where everything-as-a-service is the norm demand takedowns of things outside of their overton window. To them, it’s a matter of not having a frankly disgusting joke about the very real problems of abortion in the US in a technical manual that has nothing to do with those problems. They don’t understand the culture in which GNU was founded, they believe that it is RMS’ job to change to fit with their culture.
This is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. I’m just not sure who plays which part here. There is a reasonable answer, and the good news for the kids is that this has happened before several times: fork glibc. Fork it to remove RMS’ influence from the project and fork it to remove the offending text (for people that want it removed).
Even as a commentary about censorship, it’s pretty freaking oblique. It should be removed on the technical grounds that it’s inefficient GNU crap.
Stallman is pretty freaking oblique at the best of times when it comes to his sense of humour. Saying that GNU is full of inefficient crap is like saying that water is wet, or that the Linux kernel is a bug-ridden dumpster fire.
If every GNU inefficiency was removed, it’d be BSD.
Nobody force you to use GNU crap.
But GNU is and have always been openly political.
You are free to use software that is apparently neutral. if you don’t like it.
And you have plenty of choice on the market: Microsoft, Apple, Google… all are pretty ready to serve your needs (and collect your data for whatever purpose, and lobbying for DRM and so on../)
But “as a commentary about censorship”, that joke is perfectly fine.
The fact that you are saying this to tedu (an OpenBSD developer) is kind of funny.
I’m fine with GNU being a political project. Indeed, I actively advocate for projects to make their mind up.
A lot of the project itself does not seem to agree, especially in the context of having it in the documentation. Except RMS, who pulls rank over a joke that he himself made. Which makes the GNU project his personal opinion/joke vehicle.
I don’t see the point you’re making here? The GNU project was always an expression of political views that were, originally, personal to RMS. If the project ran by majority consensus it would have given up on the whole free software thing a long time ago.
Using your “Rust Community Team” hat here is crass, and only reinforces some people’s beliefs (myself included) about these types of thought police organizations.
I sure hope the non-“Rust Community Team” people show less virtue signalling. It puts your project under a terrible spotlight.
FWIW, I find the use of the hat inappropriate here as well.
That being said, as discussed below, I think it depends on what you think the hat means, exactly. It seems Florian uses the hat differently than many here might expect.
Be that as it may, when the people who have written the code (glibc was originally written by someone else (not RMS), and Ulrich Drepper is now responsible for something like 70% of the code) and make it all work ask you to back off, it’s a stupid hill to die on. Yeah, you might win the battle, but you’ll lose the war.
Last time something like this happened, everyone switched to using eglibc and it wasn’t until the RMS-mandated steering committee was dissolved that people switched back to glibc. If RMS decides to be a jerk about things, watch everyone fork it again or sink their resources into musl.
There’s being right, and there’s being so egotistical that you burn down the house because you didn’t get your way.
He has veto power for precisely these cases where “everyone else” disagrees, so I don’t think it’s a stupid hill to die on. In any case, I agree with you, RMS will lose this war, this is just the beginning.
Vetoing the removal of a little-used architecture with heavy maintenance burden because they want to support those few users is a good hill to die on. Vetoing the removal of a joke that everyone else wants to remove from the manual and doesn’t in any way affect the operation of the library is a stupid hill to die on.
That’s in your opinion. If you care the culture of your project not taking itself so seriously, I think it’s a good hill to die on.
As a participant in Rust Community and a proponent of eugenics, your use of Rust Community Team hat makes me uncomfortable. Was it necessary? Are you really speaking for Rust Community Team here? I hope my eugenics advocacy won’t affect my Rust participation.
As for the joke, the joke is clearly about censorship and not about abortion. I think attempt to censor the joke makes it more relevant.
Jokes, by their nature, are not clear and subject to cultural background and education. In my opinion, it’s a bit condescending to claim that it has universal understanding and appeal.
The origin of the patch seems to be the person just didn’t think it relayed any meaningful information to a user of the function. I don’t think that falls into common usage of “censorship”.
Yes, and I have yet to see a documentation patch forced on a project by a state.
Censorship exists only when done by the state??
On FOSS social issues, I generally put the hat on here. As my work for the Rust project is social, judging which of these issues I should put the hat on would only lead to problems. I’m fine with people knowing my affiliation and I think it’s more honest for people to know it. I don’t speak for the team, but I am a member of the team.
On Eugenics: it’s, in my view, an only thinly veiled form of Ableism, and as such opposed to the goal of being inclusive, especially also to people with disability. Many forms fundamentally attack the right to live of people with disabilities, for example by arguing for their abortion.
Just to be clear on which comment by RMS I’m referring to (on people with Trisomy 21):
If you want to support that comment, go ahead.
I support the idea behind the comment. Given medical acceptance of prenatal screening of trisomy 21, this is one of less extreme among RMS’s positions.
I agree the expression of the idea in the comment you quoted leaves a lot to be desired.
Prenatal screening of trisomy 21 are generally accepted as a way to increase survival chances for the fetus.
Trisomy 21 increases the risk of heart issues at birth, that can be handled in the proper structure, but would lead to secure death if not addressed promptly.
Some people use it for eugenetics (usually with amniocentesis, that kills 1 healthy children out of 200 if I remember correctly).
Now, IMO what RMS means is horrible, disgusting and plain dangerous.
But it’s not related to freedom. And he has the right to think (and say) it.
Do you have a citation for your “generally accepted” claim? There appears to be at least some evidence to the contrary:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_syndrome#Abortion_rates
This is entirely offtopic here, but I don’t want to flee the question.
My source is my doctor, that incidentally is also my wife.
When the prenatal screening of our second daughter established 1/350 probability of a Down syndrome, she explained me about amniocentesis, about the risks for the fetus and about the implications and the medical reasoning beyond it. It’s a complex topic and I’m not competent enough to expose it here deeply, but the relevant point was that, while several doctors object to abortion as a murder in contrast with their oath and ethics, prenatal screening is designed to increase the survival of the fetus, so every doctor is fine with it.
While I do not agree with you on the “joke on documentation” issue, I really support this approach.
Hacking is a ethical and political action.
If that’s what you think that means, and you advocate for any intelligence-based eugenics, you might want to reconsider your position on eugenics.
This obviously would only affect you if you attempted to add eugenics commentary to the Rust project itself in some way. Same as if you attempted to add any other irrelevant polarizing commentary.
I don’t talk eugenics on Rust space. Not because eugenics is wrong (it isn’t), but because it’s off-topic.
Yes. And it’s also off-topic for glibc.
No, it isn’t. By definition.
You might not agree with GNU or with rms here, or you might prefer that glibc would not be a GNU project, but it is.
Fine. But the consensus of the primary maintainers is that it’s off-topic. Therefore it’s off-topic for whatever fork of glibc everyone ends up using. Because if we get another eglibc situation, everyone will use the fork maintained by the maintainers, and no one will use the fork “maintained” by rms.
It’s de facto off-topic for those who accept reality.
Anyone who “accepts reality” in that sense wouldn’t be contributing to GNU in the first place. The project has always been about RMS telling the rest of the world they’re wrong.
See eglibc. A non-GNU fork already happened, and was reintegrated when the issue was dropped.
I don’t see how you can say that those kind of people wouldn’t be contributing to GNU, when they clearly are and that’s what this is all about. If those kind of people wouldn’t be contributing to GNU, then why is there any debate?
There is debate precisely because the people contributing don’t subscribe to your notion that the primary maintainer consensus is all that matters. glibc contributors do care about GNU and RMS, otherwise the eglibc-style fork would already have happened and the project would now be being maintained outside the GNU umbrella.
I’m torn about this issue.
I think politics and code don’t mesh well. Jokes like these are political and should not be in the code or manual in any way. No matter if I disagree or agree with the politics the joke references.
I don’t think the joke is problematic. It’s certainly US-centric, many people, especially with english as second language like me, won’t get it (though I found it mildly amusing without context, I can have rather crude humor if that is the right expression)
I’m not a particular fan of RMS but I also think he’s the one that should be calling the shots at GNU. If he says someone should jump for a project, they should ask “how high?”. But I’m also a fan of BDFL so I’m not sure how much that counts as objective argument in this case.
Needeless to say it’s a rather annoying cognitive dissonance tho I’m feeling a bias towards “don’t remove it”.
He left out the verse that says he is the authoritarian leader of all things GNU I guess? A bit misleading…