Who controls glibc? [LWN.net]

Who controls glibc?

Posted May 17, 2018 10:56 UTC (Thu) by Zolko (guest, #99166)
In reply to: Who controls glibc? by dractyl
Parent article: Who controls glibc?

"The distributions' BATNA, as outsiders, is to switch their glibc upstream. I don't imagine that would be especially problematic for them. If they did systemd, they can manage this."

I know I'm late to the party, but I can't let this one sail: if the result of forking glibc is as successful as the catastrophe that systemd is, and considering the Devuan fork, it is quite clear that the oldtimers (including Stallman) are right. Technically speaking a fork is probably possible, but because of copyright issues the nightmare would be huge, in no possible comparison to the small virtual benefit of removing a potential negative emotional effect.

In other words: this is an easter egg, FFS !!! The kind of things that make life funny and enjoyable for must of us. This has provable positive emotional effects on many people: it makes us smile ! And nobody here has actually come out and shown a provable negative effect, only some hypothetical, potential, made-up stuff.

The GNU project had political motives from the beginning, nobody can now come and pretend they didn't know. Reversing that political motive should not be allowed with a one-line diff.

to post comments

Who controls glibc?

Posted May 17, 2018 11:38 UTC (Thu) by excors (subscriber, #95769) [Link] (1 responses)

Excellent, I was worried this article wasn't going to reach 200 comments even with the culture war stuff, so a systemd flamewar is absolutely what we need!

(In other words: Perhaps you should have let this one sail, it's a distraction from the more relevant topic of glibc's governance.)

Who controls glibc?

Posted May 17, 2018 13:09 UTC (Thu) by sdalley (subscriber, #18550) [Link]

I *think* Zolko was just being heavily satirical...

Who controls glibc?

Posted May 19, 2018 10:27 UTC (Sat) by dractyl (guest, #26334) [Link] (1 responses)

(Sorry for the delay in my reply; I'm traveling ATM)

I don't see what copyright problem would be here, but perhaps I am not up to date on GPL legalities.

IIRC glibc, under GNU policies, has copyright assignment as part of their process. Therefore there aren't a million little copyright holders all over the place. It doesn't seem especially messy in this regard.

GNU licenses the software (shockingly) under LGPL, so an outside party has every right to fork it.

Therefore, if a new entity is created, they can fork it under the GPL in a very tidy way and since they're bound by terms to keep licensing it the same way, there is no downstream change. I never envisioned licensing as a major issue when I first wrote my comment.

I was referring to potential logistical issues; downstream disruption. But if mostly the same people are woking on the same code, with the same license, I can't see an issue there either. I see XFree86 and maybe LibreOffice as examples of this pattern.

All in all, the barrier to action arising from disruption for the glibc developers is low.

As for systemd, I am asserting no opinion of it's quality or suitability for purpose one way or the other because it's not relevant to my point. I used systemd merely as an example of something that necessitated a lot downstream changes in order to accommodate it.

The point of whether the joke was appropriate or not, whether is was funny or not, whether someone might be offended by it or not or whether it improved the world with levity or not, isn't relevant or material to the underlying issue in any way. It could have just as easily been some arcane compiler optimization.

Whether the GNU project's politics (as in policy and governing structure, rather than philosophy) are still relevant and acceptable to the governed is a key issue to be resolved. I don't see how you can leave it unresolved now that it's come up.

This is not about reversing GNU's fundamental raison d'être. I don't see "RMS is our BDFL" being a core tenet of the Free Software ideals upon which it was founded.

If the organization is ultimately unable to evolve and mature, someone will come along to pick up the torch and run with it. Perhaps that someone, individual or group, will have a stronger commitment to democratic ideals as well.

It would be a shame if that became necessary, but at some level, isn't that part of the beauty of Free Software?

Who controls glibc?

Posted May 20, 2018 2:23 UTC (Sun) by tdalman (guest, #41971) [Link]

dractyl,

thank you very much for sharing your thoughts as they match very well with my own.

Being a watcher of the glibc mailinglist for quite some time, I have seen a very positive transformation of this community in the last years. Carlos, Siddhesh, Joseph, and the others are doing a great job not only technically but also by are carefully leading people through constructive discussions.

I was very surprised to see such a vehement discussion virtually on non-topic (technically, that is; I understand the political intent by Richard, as well as the arguments against the "joke" being part of the manual). Likewise, I was surprised by Richards dominant decision because he seemed to play no role in the glibc mailinglist for years (IIRC, the only thread he really participated was about a malloc hook to be removed and its use in emacs, but maybe I missed something).