Re: [rain1 at airmail dot cc] Delete abortion joke

[Christian Brauner <christian dot brauner at getenv dot org>]

On Thu, May 03, 2018 at 12:36:42AM -0400, Carlos O'Donell wrote:
> On 05/01/2018 11:11 PM, Richard Stallman wrote:
> > [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> > [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> > [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
> > 
> >   >   However, the GNU C Library Manual is an actively
> >   > inappropriate place to discuss it,
> > 
> > A serious discussion of an unrelated political issue would be a
> > strange digression.  The joke is appropriate precisely because it is a
> > joke, and very short.
> > 
> > Since you understand it wasn't right to delete this without my
> > approval, would you please undo that mistake?
>  
> As a GNU Developer for the community I OK'd the patch.
> 
> As a GNU Developer I answer to the GNU Project.
> 
> I also apologize for not contacting you directly.
> 
> This does not change my position on the joke and it's relation to
> abortion and censorship.
> 
> A large group of developers, serious senior developers, at least 3
> project stewards (GNU Developers for the project), are indicating
> that they do not share your same view on the joke. Please consider
> their input and work with me to reach a consensus position.

After having read the LVM article and following the thread here I feel
the need to voice my opinion: I'm in favor of removing this joke and
reverting the revert.
The comments on the LWN article and the wider discussion seem to
indicate that some question whether there is sufficient consensus among
maintainers. Even though I'm neither a senior developer nor steward, but
a simple maintainer I feel it's important to explicitly voice my opinion
to help build consensus.

Christian

> 
> The underlying notions that the joke tries to express are important
> and I am more than willing to engage with you and Alex to write
> new text and put it back into the manual to meet our needs to
> express a viewpoint on censorship.
> 
> Let me propose another the following patch for discussion. It is
> *not* a @cartouche, and will therefore be visible in all of our
> info and html files (which is better IMO).
> 
> 2018-05-03  Carlos O'Donell  <carlos@systemhalted.org>
> 
> 	* manual/intro.texi (Government Censorship): New node.
> 
> diff --git a/manual/intro.texi b/manual/intro.texi
> index cc9c99f543..b413652194 100644
> --- a/manual/intro.texi
> +++ b/manual/intro.texi
> @@ -22,6 +22,7 @@ portability.
>  
>  @menu
>  * Getting Started::             What this manual is for and how to use it.
> +* Government Censorship::       Government censorship.
>  * Standards and Portability::   Standards and sources upon which the GNU
>                                   C library is based.
>  * Using the Library::           Some practical uses for the library.
> @@ -29,7 +30,7 @@ portability.
>                                   this manual.
>  @end menu
>  
> -@node Getting Started, Standards and Portability,  , Introduction
> +@node Getting Started, Government Censorship,  , Introduction
>  @section Getting Started
>  
>  This manual is written with the assumption that you are at least
> @@ -56,6 +57,21 @@ are writing your programs you can recognize @emph{when} to make use of
>  library functions, and @emph{where} in this manual you can find more
>  specific information about them.
>  
> +@node Government Censorship, Standards and Portability, Getting Started, Introduction
> +@section Government Censorship
> +@cindex censorship
> +
> +@string{Trigger warning: Talk of abortion.}
> +
> +The GNU project takes the position that government censorship should
> +not be supported.  Censorship threatens the distribution of information
> +in ways that restricts the freedoms of our users and harms the creativity
> +of the project.
> +
> +Censorship of technical information, cultural information, and even
> +information related to human abortion (regardless of your position on
> +the topic), should not be supported. Such censorship restricts the
> +freedoms of all users.
>  
>  @node Standards and Portability, Using the Library, Getting Started, Introduction
>  @section Standards and Portability
> ---
> 
> -- 
> Cheers,
> Carlos.