A "joke" in the glibc manual

Posted Jul 8, 2020 13:16 UTC (Wed) by ceving (guest, #140015)
Parent article: A "joke" in the glibc manual

For many, including me, it is a little hard to understand why there is any opposition to removing the joke at all. It is clearly out of place, not particularly funny, and doesn't really push the GNU anti-censorship philosophy forward in any real way even if you grant that anti-censorship is a goal of the project (which some do not).

This sounds right.

But consider this: I have never read about the Global Gag Rule. An article about RMS brought me to this article. And a few clicks further I have read the Wikipedia article about Global Gag Rule.

So the joke created a controversy. The controversy created an article about the controversy. The article got referenced by others. And in the end a reader like me knows the Global Gag Rule.

You have to admit: the joke pushed many things.