Re: [PATCH] Improve adherance to the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

[Carlos O'Donell <carlos at redhat dot com>]

On 10/22/18 11:55 AM, Matthew Garrett wrote:
> As documented in https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/kind-communication.html,
> GNU projects should aim to communicate in ways that are not unwelcoming.
> Multiple people have indicated that they found this joke unwelcoming,
> and in addition it is an unrelated and off-topic political issue: as the
> Guidelines say, "Please don't raise unrelated political issues in GNU
> Project discussions, because they are off-topic".

Matthew,

Thanks for proposing this patch. It is beyond the cool down period
which ended on August 1st when glibc 2.28 was released, thank you for
adhering to that cool down period.

I am immensely appreciative to Richard for working on and publishing
the "GNU Kind Communications Guidelines" (the URL you quote), it is
in my opinion a very good guideline for the GNU project. I expect the
guideline to cover all forms of communication including the manual,
website, and social media, and not just email.

I also appreciate your point of view that the statement in the
cartouche in the manual under the abort function should be reviewed
in light of the the newly published "GNU Kind Communication
Guidelines."

I am in support of the removal of the statement in the manual. As a
GNU project maintainer for glibc, and project steward, I think it is
useful to remove the statement because it has caused confusion in at
least two recorded cases:

Post 9 months ago with +900 views:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/48445031/why-would-it-be-illegal-to-inform-about-abort

The linked reddit thread from 7 years ago:
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/d4783/federal_censorship_regulations_may_restrict/

... and does not support the present intent of the manual, which is
to provide accurate technical information for the GNU C Library.

There are several other reasons for removal, but the above reasons
are the most central social and technical reasons.

I'd like Alex to comment on this patch and state if he has any
objections, or sustained objections (block consensus) on the patch.

I would also like to wait long enough for others in the community
to comment.

Thank you for your patience.

> ---
>  ChangeLog           | 5 +++++
>  manual/startup.texi | 8 --------
>  2 files changed, 5 insertions(+), 8 deletions(-)
> 

Granting Reviewed-by: Carlos O'Donell <carlos@redhat.com>

We should review the exact commit message going in with this patch.

Suggest:
~~~
As documented in https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/kind-communication.html,
GNU projects should aim to communicate in ways that are welcoming.

Multiple people have indicated that they found the cartouche in the abort
function documentation unwelcoming, and in addition it is an unrelated 
and an off-topic political issue: as the Guidelines say, "Please don't
raise unrelated political issues in GNU Project discussions, because they
are off-topic". The GNU C Library manual is considered an important and
primary form of communication with our users.

This change removes the paragraph in the @cartouche following the
definition of the abort function in the "Aborting a Program" section
of the manual.

Signed-off-by: Matthew Garrett <matthewgarrett@google.com>
Reviewed-by: Carlos O'Donell <carlos@redhat.com>
~~~
> diff --git a/ChangeLog b/ChangeLog
> index 073d034c40..6b6a09d4dc 100644
> --- a/ChangeLog
> +++ b/ChangeLog
> @@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
> +2018-10-22  Matthew Garrett  <matthewgarrett@google.com>
> +
> +	* manual/startup.texi: Improve adherance to the Kind Communicatios
> +	Guidelines

We should state what is removed.

Suggest:

	* manual/startup.texi (Aborting a Program): Remove paragraph 
	in @cartouche under abort function description.

The commit message above provides the rationale.

> +
>  2018-10-22  Joseph Myers  <joseph@codesourcery.com>
>  
>  	[BZ #23793]
> diff --git a/manual/startup.texi b/manual/startup.texi
> index 7395d32dd0..21c48cd037 100644
> --- a/manual/startup.texi
> +++ b/manual/startup.texi
> @@ -1005,14 +1005,6 @@ This function actually terminates the process by raising a
>  intercept this signal; see @ref{Signal Handling}.
>  @end deftypefun
>  
> -@c Put in by rms.  Don't remove.
> -@cartouche
> -@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.
> -@end cartouche
> -

OK.

>  @node Termination Internals
>  @subsection Termination Internals

You don't need to submit a v2. This version has no substantive changes
(I just requested ChangeLog and commit message cleanups).

Cheers,
Carlos.