Who controls glibc? [LWN.net]

Who controls glibc?

Posted May 8, 2018 9:25 UTC (Tue) by lordcheeto (guest, #124253)
In reply to: Who controls glibc? by spacemachine
Parent article: Who controls glibc?

This isn't really about the joke anymore. It was removed because a patch was submitted, there were no technical grounds to object to it being applied, and a consensus was reached in accordance with the rules of the community. While there was a comment on the joke from RMS saying not to remove it, the community should not be subject to his iron deference, has been maintained without his input, and this was not in the official Invariant Sections. He is welcome to his opinion, and is on the mailing list should he wish to express it. He did not, no one else did (I'm not counting this joke), and it was removed after 2 days of clear affirmations supporting the patch removing the joke.

This is about RMS pulling rank after the fact, and Alexandre Oliva ignoring the community principles in reverting it. Specifically, "Cases likely to need more review and a longer period before pushing a commit include: changes that have previously been controversial."

The removal was not controversial—no one objected, and AFAIK, this has no historical (much less recent) controversy surrounding it. It had clearly become controversial by the point the reversion was made by Alexandre.

to post comments

Who controls glibc?

Posted May 8, 2018 10:44 UTC (Tue) by spacemachine (guest, #124210) [Link] (22 responses)

My point is that the the existence and check-in of the original patch is evidence that the glibc maintainers and contributors aren't really focusing on important changes to glibc. Someone spent like 30 minutes or likely more preparing this diff and submitting it. I don't know about you but I like to spend my increasingly limited programming time actually, you know, programming and solving hard problems.

That's why it seems like the beginning of the end of glibc. People are spending their time focusing on random things to remove on the basis of it potentially offending someone, instead of focusing on important changes that will solve actual problems. RIP

Who controls glibc?

Posted May 8, 2018 12:02 UTC (Tue) by gevaerts (subscriber, #21521) [Link] (1 responses)

Do *you* never do something that someone might find less important than something else you could be doing?

Who controls glibc?

Posted May 8, 2018 18:31 UTC (Tue) by spacemachine (guest, #124210) [Link]

In shared project... No, I don't.

Who controls glibc?

Posted May 8, 2018 13:42 UTC (Tue) by siddhesh (guest, #64914) [Link] (10 responses)

The patch author is not a maintainer, (s)he was a one-off contributor and the first review didn't even assume that this is going to blow up the way it did, so it must have been a no-brainer that one would get out of their way as they take a sip of their coffee. Heck, if Zack hadn't gotten to it for another day, then maybe I would have installed it.

But please don't let facts get in the way.

Who controls glibc?

Posted May 8, 2018 18:33 UTC (Tue) by spacemachine (guest, #124210) [Link]

None of these facts (of which I was alresdy aware) refute anything I wrote.

Who controls glibc?

Posted May 8, 2018 18:40 UTC (Tue) by spacemachine (guest, #124210) [Link] (8 responses)

Additionally the contributed and committed aren't innocent here. There were clear instructions not to remove the joke in the source code. They were intentionally undermining RMS from the start. It's clear they were maliciously hoping he wouldn't notice.

It's time to stop

Posted May 8, 2018 19:23 UTC (Tue) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (7 responses)

So at this point we understand well that you think little of the glibc project and you are not impressed with the patch. Could I ask that this stuff come to an end at this point? I don't see much value in arguing it further.

It's time to stop

Posted May 8, 2018 20:20 UTC (Tue) by spacemachine (guest, #124210) [Link] (6 responses)

Thanks for the tap (and the article), I'll honor your request. RMS should fire these maintainers, it's clear they don't respect him. Sneaky underhanded behavior kills projects.

It's time to stop

Posted May 9, 2018 8:34 UTC (Wed) by lordcheeto (guest, #124253) [Link] (5 responses)

Calling it sneaky is uncalled-for. This was the removal of a few lines of a non-technical, outdated joke comment that hasn't been touched in 26 years. 2 days passed between when the patch was submitted and when it was installed, with no serious objections. That was plenty of time for a change of this narrow magnitude. There was no reason for Zach to believe that this seemingly innocuous removal would cause such a schism.

It's time to stop

Posted May 12, 2018 14:45 UTC (Sat) by niner (guest, #26151) [Link]

"I'll honor your request". Goes on to completely ignore the request starting with the next sentence...

It's time to stop

Posted May 25, 2018 19:43 UTC (Fri) by shmget (guest, #58347) [Link] (3 responses)

"outdated joke"

not at all.. the Global Gag Rule has been re-instated January 23, 2017.

It's time to stop

Posted May 27, 2018 1:15 UTC (Sun) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (2 responses)

This is something that US presidents do as a matter of course as one of the first things after they've been inaugurated. They can do it by executive order without having to involve Congress, so it's an easy PR win with their voters. Reagan came up with it in the first place in 1984, then Bill Clinton rescinded it in 1993 and George W. Bush put it back on the books in 2001 until Obama got rid of it again in 2009. It is safe to assume that whichever Democrat takes over from Trump in (hopefully) 2021 will immediately throw it out once more, etc., ad infinitum.

In any case, the “joke” can't really be referring to the “global gag rule” because the “global gag rule” has nothing to do with domestic censorship (because 1st amendment) – it says that the USA will only fund NGOs in other countries if they aver that they do not “perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning”. Originally this applied only to family-planning funds; Trump's twist is that now it also extends to other types of health assistance, including HIV assistance.

It's time to stop

Posted Jun 9, 2018 1:39 UTC (Sat) by JanC_ (subscriber, #34940) [Link] (1 responses)

The fact that it gets rescinded & reinstated so often is another reason why it's better removed, I guess, otherwise the release manager (who might not be from the US) has to check the current status of US law before every release…

It's time to stop

Posted Jun 9, 2018 10:39 UTC (Sat) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]

That would only be an actual issue if the FSF was (a) headquartered outside the USA and (b) receiving funds from the US government for its family-planning or other medical work. Since neither of these premises apply, the “global gag rule” has no bearing on the glibc manual.

Who controls glibc?

Posted May 8, 2018 13:56 UTC (Tue) by lordcheeto (guest, #124253) [Link] (8 responses)

Every open source project has small commits that are just typo fixes, documentation updates, etc. from people that happened to stumble upon it. Often from people that have never submitted a patch or pull request before, as appears to be the case here. It gets their feet wet. It introduces them to the community and their contribution guidelines.

This is a good thing.

Who controls glibc?

Posted May 8, 2018 18:36 UTC (Tue) by spacemachine (guest, #124210) [Link] (7 responses)

This was not a typo. This was a clear contradiction of the instructions that were in the source code. Everyone knew they were disobeying a request by RMS. An innocent first time contributor wouldn't do this. The contributor had an agenda from the beginning.

Who controls glibc?

Posted May 8, 2018 18:54 UTC (Tue) by sfeam (subscriber, #2841) [Link] (6 responses)

Now you've gone off the deep end. Every sentence in your last post is untrue (well, except for the "not a typo"). But you know what? It doesn't matter. The issue remains not the fate of a stupid joke but the question of whether RMS does or does not have veto authority over a decision made by the development team. Whether this issue was exposed unintentionally or through deliberate provocation, it's now out in the open.

Who controls glibc?

Posted May 8, 2018 20:17 UTC (Tue) by spacemachine (guest, #124210) [Link] (5 responses)

You can feign ignorance but diff doesn't lie, it was provocation. 1000 things fo fix about glibc but instead the lines with clear instructions to leave alone were targetted. When patches with the purpose of provocation start to surface, it's the beginning of the end. RMS should fire all of them.

Request #2

Posted May 8, 2018 20:18 UTC (Tue) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (4 responses)

I'll repeat: we get it. We know how you feel about all of this. Now would be a good time to stop posting these, please.

Request #2

Posted May 8, 2018 20:50 UTC (Tue) by spacemachine (guest, #124210) [Link] (3 responses)

Separate question, why am I being asked to stop when it's other people that keep responding to me and ignoring my points? Why does it matter how many comments there are?

Request #2

Posted May 8, 2018 21:14 UTC (Tue) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (2 responses)

It is my wish for everybody to stop this particular back-and-forth, not just you. But, of the 111 comments on this article (as of this writing) 22 — a full 20% — were written by you. That suggests that you're the one driving this particular cycle; if you stop, I suspect that most others will as well. Though somebody will inevitably respond to one of your comments; I hope you'll be able to let that slide.

"Number of comments" is not necessarily a problem, but large numbers of repetitive comments can only drown out the signal in the conversation overall.

Calling supporters of this change "malicious" is also heading into personal attack territory, which is not something we want here.

You are not unique in any of the above, but you stood out enough to make you an obvious intervention point when I wanted to calm things down in general. I appreciate your willingness to respect that request.

(Incidentally, I almost didn't write this article at all out of fear for what the comment stream could be. It has not come even close to what we had imagined; for that we are grateful to everybody involved.)

Request #2

Posted May 8, 2018 22:19 UTC (Tue) by andresfreund (subscriber, #69562) [Link]

> (Incidentally, I almost didn't write this article at all out of fear for what the comment stream could be. It has not come even close to what we had imagined; for that we are grateful to everybody involved.)

I think that's a complicating factor. But I still appreciate the article. Sometimes I wonder if this kind of article couldn't stand having comments disabled. Or at least rate-limited to one an hour or such.

Request #2

Posted Nov 8, 2018 17:03 UTC (Thu) by deepfire (guest, #26138) [Link]

Jonathan, I think the topic touches an interesting phenomenon that runs deep in our society.

There are people who abhor the increasing influence that political correctness has on the freedom of expression, and so are extremely sensitive on any infringement -- in a way that is not entirely dissymmetric with how the people representing the political correctness side feel.

This is a profound issue, there is no mistake. And while I appreciate that formally the topic of the article is elsewhere, I'm sure we'll be back to discuss it again and again. I don't think it's really useful to try fighting the wind in this case..

That said, this is your forum, Jonathan, and I appreciate all the work you have put into it over the years!