Who controls glibc? [LWN.net]

Who controls glibc?

Posted May 7, 2018 19:47 UTC (Mon) by ami (guest, #5280)
Parent article: Who controls glibc?

I don't think the issue is about the quality of the joke.

IMHO:

1. It's fair to say that the joke is unprofessional, and doesn't have a place in documentation.

2. It's also fair to say that gnu isn't IBM or some other sterile corporate environment, and there's some scope for individual developers to add a bit of personality to the projects they contribute to.

In this case, I would probably favor keeping the joke as a historical artifact, but not adding more like it.

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Who controls glibc?

Posted May 7, 2018 20:30 UTC (Mon) by jmanig (guest, #120108) [Link] (3 responses)

It seems to be a political statement disguised as a joke, and that it's why Stallman want to keep it around to begin with. Not to go too 2018 on everyone here, but I'd be leery of large projects employing people from electic walks of life embarking on potentially divisive topics such as this one.

I don't even know how to feel about this one. On one hand, you could argue there's already precedent, such as Ulrich Drepper's character assassination of Stallman in the glibc 2.2.4 release notes.

On the other, well... Stallman is kind of proving Drepper's point here.

Who controls glibc?

Posted May 7, 2018 23:48 UTC (Mon) by ploxiln (subscriber, #58395) [Link] (1 responses)

Wow, I didn't know about that, link for others: https://sourceware.org/ml/libc-announce/2001/msg00000.html

Who controls glibc?

Posted May 8, 2018 2:59 UTC (Tue) by unixbhaskar (guest, #44758) [Link]

Thanks a bunch for the pointer, I didn't know it either.

Who controls glibc?

Posted May 8, 2018 13:33 UTC (Tue) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link]

I'd say Drepper himself is prior art for glibc shedding tasteless, needlessly offensive jokes that harm the project's public image. If they can do that, they can get rid of this too. There is plenty more work to be done in this area (a few other nasty pieces of work need the boot), but maintaining the positive momentum would be a start.

This joke came from the toilet humour culture of 90s America and should have stayed there, like all other offense-driven development. Even Microsoft grew up. It's time for GNU to do the same.

Who controls glibc?

Posted May 7, 2018 22:34 UTC (Mon) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link] (9 responses)

I think "unprofessional" is a kind of conversation killer. It's often used in such a way that it conveys very little about what is perceieved, but implies that discussion should not occur.

Personally, I view the joke as pretty awkward. It comes off (to me) as implying that anti-abortion viewpoints are not valid, while trying to aim at anti-abortion government censorship. And while I think this is a serious political issue, making a polemic claim dressed up as a joke always strikes me as less than forthright. It's a tricky thing because expressing a political view as a real zingy joke can please me, sometimes even when I don't agree with the point of view. However, a really hamfisted joke placed in a context where it has almost no relevance comes across as unwanted and unpleasant. And I agree with both political views embedded in the comment.

So that's why I don't much like it.

Of course, my views are not particularly important, but I wanted to present what I think is a useful alternative to "this is unprofessional".

Who controls glibc?

Posted May 8, 2018 12:18 UTC (Tue) by Karellen (subscriber, #67644) [Link] (3 responses)

It comes off (to me) as implying that anti-abortion viewpoints are not valid,

Wait, isn't that backwards? The Global Gag Rule is the US Government's policy of censoring/stifling pro-abortion viewpoints, and this joke to me comes off as simply pointing out that pro-abortion viewpoints are valid topics for discussion/documentation.

How do read the joke as being in any way about anti-abortion viewpoints? I don't ever recall seeing any pro-choice campaign suggest that anti-abortion viewpoints should be censored or banned.

Who controls glibc?

Posted May 8, 2018 14:28 UTC (Tue) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link] (2 responses)

You are construing my comments about "unprofessional" as applying to the joke content. That's rather uncharitable as I clearly didn't mean that.

Who controls glibc?

Posted May 9, 2018 8:11 UTC (Wed) by Karellen (subscriber, #67644) [Link] (1 responses)

Huh?

Sorry, I wasn't trying to take issue with whether you thought the joke was unprofessional or not. I think it's an interesting point, and probably worth discussing.

I was just surprised with how you read the joke itself. Yeah, it's a tangent from your main point, so sorry about that, but I'm not taking you out of context when I quote:

Personally, I view the joke as pretty awkward. It comes off (to me) as implying that anti-abortion viewpoints are not valid,

am I? You do effectively say "The joke comes off as implying that anti-abortion viewpoints are not valid", don't you?

And I just didn't understand how you read that from the joke. So, I was a bit confused there. I'm also not entirely sure how I'm being uncharitable by asking how you got the meaning you did? I am genuinely curious about that.

Anyway, sorry if I came across as attacking you, or anything like that. That was totally not my intent. I just had a "wait, what?" moment and wanted to clear it up.

Peace

Who controls glibc?

Posted May 9, 2018 20:35 UTC (Wed) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link]

I think I misread your response.

The implications of the joke as implying anti-abortion views are invalid are probably a bit Americentric.

It's *very* hard in US politics to imagine someone injecting their views in this hamfisted way in the wrong forum as believing anything except that the opposing views are fundamentally invalid. This is because these views are so often extremely strident and because one who was more interested in discussion of the topic would not intrude in such a way.

This is not to say that I personally believe RMS feels this way. I have no real idea. But I do think it's how it reads, which makes it pretty derailing.

Who controls glibc?

Posted May 8, 2018 23:13 UTC (Tue) by nilsmeyer (guest, #122604) [Link] (4 responses)

I think the term "unprofessional" should really only be applied in a professional context - meaning you are actually getting paid to do the work. It's not a standard that should apply to a free software project.

It would probably have been best to just leave it alone in the first place since it's really not productive which I would see as a better standard. I'm not implying the original author of the commit wanted to "stir to the pot" so to speak, but often it's very easy to under-estimate the waves this makes. I'd say this debate may end up hurting a lot more than the joke.

Who controls glibc?

Posted May 9, 2018 8:46 UTC (Wed) by smcv (subscriber, #53363) [Link] (3 responses)

"Professional" is a shorthand for the behavioural norms you'd (hope to) find in professional employment. The reason for those norms is that in contexts where individuals are perceived to be representing a group, the behaviour of the individual affects outsiders' perception of the group, even if the individual doesn't intend it to. The group might be their employer, but it might also be their profession in general (for instance software engineers), or the Free Software movement, or the glibc team, or GNU, or whatever other group they seem to be representing at the time.

Not all aspects of "professional" behaviour are necessarily required or appropriate everywhere, but the general concept seems transferrable. For instance, if I'm interacting with someone on behalf of Debian, I should be polite, so that they won't go away thinking "Debian people are rude".

There's a time and a place to draw attention to US government policies, but I don't think the glibc reference manual is it. If GNU manuals make political points about Free Software, that's at least a relevant topic (although reference documentation about particular functions wouldn't seem like a great place for that, and indeed the political parts of GNU manuals tend to be in their own section), but political points about topics unrelated to software seem like something that should be elsewhere - both for the benefit of the glibc manual (a greater proportion of relevant text) and for the benefit of the political point being made (more visible to people who don't routinely read the glibc manual).

Having pseudo-legalistic disclaimers in a reference manual for the sake of political satire also seems inadvisable if the writer wants readers to take *actual* legal disclaimers seriously. (See also Firefox's "This might void your warranty!" warning on entering about:config in the en_US locale, which has been criticized for undermining the rather important point that Firefox specifically doesn't have a warranty; the en_GB localization to "Here be dragons!" seems a lot better, since it's more obviously a whimsical phrasing of a general admonition to be careful.)

Who controls glibc?

Posted May 9, 2018 18:03 UTC (Wed) by Tet (subscriber, #5433) [Link] (2 responses)

"Professional" is a shorthand for the behavioural norms you'd (hope to) find in professional employment.

The problem is, those norms vary wildly depending on your location and environment. What is acceptable in my workplace is almost certainly very different to what is acceptable in yours.

Who controls glibc?

Posted May 9, 2018 20:28 UTC (Wed) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link]

The problem I encounter very often is that this term is frequently poorly. Often, I hear it when the real complaint is very unclear, or when the complainant is really using it as a form of proxy bullying in situations where it's easy to imply unreasonable intent. Even when used in totally reasonable situations, it doesn't get to the point of saying what's wrong specifically, so the target of the complaint may not have any chance to learn from it.

It's not so much that the term is fundamentally bad, but it's often better to dig down one layer to more specifically what norm or expectation has been transgressed. It skips opportunity for misunderstanding, and limits space for crypto-bullying.

Who controls glibc?

Posted May 19, 2018 4:17 UTC (Sat) by gus3 (guest, #61103) [Link]

But another meaning of "professional" is that someone has put a thing on their résumé, looking for "professional" employment. That thing could be a major or minor contribution to a GNU project, something that a prospective employer might look up in Google, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, or any number of sites that do background checks.

In that sense, the abort() commentary won't exactly look nice to someone looking for "professional" IT/sysadmin employment.

Who controls glibc?

Posted May 10, 2018 7:18 UTC (Thu) by gfernandes (subscriber, #119910) [Link] (1 responses)

If you don't like a manual, go write your own. What you can't do, is change what someone else wrote, no matter how long ago.

Also don't forget that someone else is the reason the library even exists, to begin with.

Who controls glibc?

Posted May 10, 2018 12:39 UTC (Thu) by foom (subscriber, #14868) [Link]

You surely can, if you're the current maintainer. In fact it is your _duty_ to do so.

It's a manual -- a living document, constantly modified -- not a work fixed in stone as of it's original publishing.