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Re: [rain1 at airmail dot cc] Delete abortion joke
On 5/8/2018 9:27 PM, Alexandre Oliva wrote:
On May 8, 2018, Torvald Riegel<triegel@redhat.com> wrote:
it seems pretty obvious now that the majority of people who
have spoken out are in favor of removing the "joke"
You've been a lot more involved with glibc day to day than I have
lately, but it seems to me that you're confused about the governing
rules adopted by this community.
The stepping stone is not tiranny of the majority, but rather consensus
building.
This means that if there is opposition to a proposed change, it is up to
the proponent to listen to the involved parties and attempt to find
middle ground so that opinions converge, or at least that objections be
withdrawn.
Is that not so?
Hi,
I am not used to get involved in this kind of discussions, anyway,
having followed this thread, I feel to say my opinion on the matter,
although it may be not relevant to the FSF or the GNU project (I am only
a user and interested bystander).
First, the matter at hand, the joke:
Obviously, abortion is a very divisive subject, and people from the two
sides of the aisle have fundamental differences in opinion about the
subject.
Yet on one thing they both agree: abortion is no joke.
Therefore, my opinion is that such an attempt to make fun about it
should be removed as inappropriate (even more in a software manual,
where it is entirely off-topic), if not even rude to the awareness of
both pro-life and pro-choice people, i.e. pretty much anyone.
I would like to emphasize the excellent point made here:
https://sourceware.org/ml/libc-alpha/2018-05/msg00291.html
Second, defense of human rights:
I am totally in for defending freedom, including freedom of speech.
I also think that, especially when it is about divisive matters, a bad
defense can be sometimes as counter-productive as an offense.
I think this joke falls under the category of bad defense, despite the
intentions of the author, because of the above.
Finally, tyranny:
From what I have read of the thread, I have seen no tyranny. These
terms are IMHO the result of the heat of the discussion.
I believe that the controversial could be solved with some level of good
old common sense: the joke is a bad joke, and is best removed.
It is right to build opportunities to promote freedom and human rights
in an effective way. I think this joke is not one of them.
Thanks,
Maurizio