This is the mail archive of the
libc-alpha@sourceware.org
mailing list for the glibc project.
Re: [PATCH] Revert Abortion joke removal.
On 05/08/2018 12:00 PM, Alexandre Oliva wrote:
That doesn't mean there isn't a reversal of the burden of overcoming
objections, as someone (I forget who, sorry) pointed out very early in
this debate. That's what makes a very very quick objection tactically
more powerful to a slightly late one: the latter faces a much heavier
burden to preserve the initial status quo, because they table is turned
as the sneaked-in change is taken as a given and what would have been a
status-preserving objection is now mistaken as a proposed change that
must overcome objections to the reversal.
You continue to call it 'sneaked-in', which implies malice. Please
don't do that.
And yes, I acknowledge the perception of the tactical advantage (I
mentioned it in the first place) and I'm trying to make the case that it
shouldn't matter in a consensus driven discussion because ideally you'd
have the same set of arguments and hence the same set of results.
For example with this patch, not having applied the patch wouldn't have
changed the fact that most of the community is in fact in favour of
removing it and I'd hazard a guess that RMS would have declared his veto
power in any case or stopped responding (and assuming that his grand
opposition has been registered) resulting in the same set of results as
we have now.
Do you really not see the contradiction between your two sentences?
No, see above. I don't claim that it's not unequal, I claim that it
doesn't matter for the outcome.
You specifically mentioned RMS' super powers in the project as one of
the driving reasons for the change,
There was no change. It's just what it was before the discussion
started, just as it should be until the discussion is over.
It was the removal that had stepped over RMS's objection. It couldn't
have gone in like that.
You were within your right to back it out. It was annoying (because you
repeatedly cited RMS' super powers as one of the reasons behind it) and
not a result of a consensus, but you were within your right to do that.
I think enough of us have said that already.
In the normal case (i.e. the last 7-8 years!) we have
successfully put trust in each other to act in good faith.
Looks like we'd never hit such a heated situation in which both sides
accuse each other of cheating the consensus rules, while insisting on
having complied with them.
We may have argued over consensus in the past (string benchmarks come to
mind in the early days of benchtests) but we have never had the case of
someone stating that their word overrules any consensus. Roland
actually had that documented status for years and he did not state that
as a threat in that time.
and (2) there are repeated calls to authority in the absence of actual
merit in the opposition.
On both sides, I must say.
You can't be serious about this now, or are you referring to the threat
of a fork as being an equally powerful authority to that of RMS? In
that case that is your first admission of the community actually having
some credibility, so I guess, thank you?
Yeah, both parts should be there. We don't want to grant veto powers to
any sufficiently stubborn interest, but we (GNU maintainers) must ensure
GNU can occasionally put in or take out changes decided by the project
as a whole, even if overriding decisions of the specific subproject.
There shouldn't be any surprise or news about that, as much as any of us
might disapprove of the way RMS conveyed his position. Of course he had
every right to feel extremely insulted for having had his explicit
request (early objection) completely ignored, regardless of his position
in the GNU project. If he behaved badly, consider he was reacting to
incredible insult. What excuse did the community have for its
incredibly insulting behavior?
I'm sorry but I don't answer to authority in the same way you do. I do
not see any merit in that silly joke so disagreeing with him and asking
him for a justification or a modification does not constitute an insult.
Also, please stop trying to defend RMS, I'm sure he is capable of doing
that for himself. In the process you're making assumptions about his
behaviour that don't necessarily reflect well on him and may not even be
true.
Siddhesh