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Re: [rain1 at airmail dot cc] Delete abortion joke
On May 3, 2018, Zach van Rijn <me@zv.io> wrote:
> On Thu, 2018-05-03 at 17:11 -0300, Alexandre Oliva wrote:
>> On May 3, 2018, Florian Weimer <fw@deneb.enyo.de> wrote:
>>
>> > In most cultures, government restrictions on access to information
>> > which is specifically designed to enable people to commit illegal
>> > acts are not considered censorship. I don't think you can list
>> > abortion in this context without taking sides.
> I agree with Florian's latter point: "I don't think you can list abortion
> in this context without taking sides."
Contrast with the famous quote "I don't agree with what you say, but
I'll defend to death your right to say it."
> If it is appropriate for a "freedom fighter" to demand that a joke
> supporting abortion be included in the manual
That's a straw man. The joke under discussion does not support (human)
abortion in any way; it doesn't even support the abortion of programs!
Please read it again, below, and point out where or explain why you
believe it does.
@strong{Future Change Warning:} Proposed Federal censorship regulations
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.
> a "freedom fighter" on the other "side" to demand that SIGCHLD be
> relabeled "terminate an unwanted child process ignoring its silent
> scream" --
That would be technically inaccurate (SIGCHLD is delivered to the parent
process when a child process dies), but it could be adjusted to make for
technically accurate criticism of abortion, if we set out to do so.
Nobody has suggested us to take a stand for or against abortion, though,
so that's a non-issue.
> Or perhaps, as I've stated previously, and numerous others have
> expressed: the glibc manual is not the appropriate forum for a public
> statement by either side of [the topic of human abortion].
Nobody has expressed disagreement with that.
The core of the misunderstanding seems to be the unwarranted assumption
that the joke does so.
> When you use the term "gang up" what you're saying is, that you notice
> how (many) others have been vocal about keeping this particular joke out
> of the documentation, a viewpoint you seem to oppose.
That term also highlights the highly emotional mob behavior that I
observe.
> I would argue that only a small fraction of the community opposes its
> removal, and that the overwhelming majority would not miss it.
That is quite an understatement. The reaction is a lot more than "would
not miss it". It comes across as Dr Who's Daleks' "EX TERMINATE! EX
TERMINATE!" Excuse me if that reeks of censorship to the point of
turning me into a fierce opponent of the removal of a snippet that I
formerly didn't care so much about.
> Now, as far as FSF vs. GNU is concerned, if GNU is going to "take a side"
> which "side" will it be?
For the freedom to distribute unmodified copies of the information for
practical use, and the freedom to distribute improved copies of the
information for practical use. It's hardly news that the Free Software
movement takes that stance.
That such freedom is denied by the censorship law on information for
practical use about human abortion seems to be surprising news. How
come?
--
Alexandre Oliva, freedom fighter http://FSFLA.org/~lxoliva/
You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -- Gandhi
Be Free! -- http://FSFLA.org/ FSF Latin America board member
Free Software Evangelist|Red Hat Brasil GNU Toolchain Engineer