Hacker Read

pjc50 | karma 93685 | avg karma 3.72 · 2018-10-24 14:19:06+00:00

One of the first effects of this is another attempt to remove RMS's pet favourite abortion joke from the glibc docs: https://lwn.net/Articles/753646/ -> https://sourceware.org/ml/libc-alpha/2018-10/msg00399.html

Will RMS comply with his own "guidelines"?

reply

Mononokay | karma 1894 | avg karma 4.21 · 2018-10-24 09:26:41

If you read the thread you could see how everyone agreed that the guidelines didn't apply to docs.

jawilson2 | karma 988 | avg karma 3.89 · 2018-10-24 09:33:19

Apparently not: https://sourceware.org/ml/libc-alpha/2018-10/msg00467.html

> More precisely, the guidelines are about how we communicate in our discussions, not what ideas we communicate (as long as they are pertinent to the topic of the list and support the goal of the project).

> These guidelines as such do not apply to manuals. Kindness as a general principle surely does apply to manuals, but precisely how remains to be decided.

> I just installed a statement in the GNU maintainer guide saying that humor is welcome _in general_ -- that we reject the idea of "professionalism" which calls for deleting humor because it is humor.

> That doesn't decide the question of the abort(3) joke. There are issues to decide before that.

reply

jordigh | karma 18367 | avg karma 5.71 · 2018-10-24 14:54:18+00:00

I wish rms had the humility to accept that his joke is not funny and is making more people unhappy than it's making people laugh.

baud147258 | karma 3685 | avg karma 1.46 · 2018-10-26 06:49:35

Proposed Federal censorship régulations 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.

I don't get the joke; I think I'm missing some context since I'm not from the US. Can you explain it?

reply