[PATCH] Improve adherance to the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

[Matthew Garrett]

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

diff --git a/ChangeLog b/ChangeLog
index 073d034c40..6b6a09d4dc 100644
--- a/ChangeLog
+++ b/ChangeLog
@@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
[phone] Matthew Garrett <***@google.com>
+
+ * manual/startup.texi: Improve adherance to the Kind Communicatios
+ Guidelines
+
2018-10-22 Joseph Myers <***@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
-
@node Termination Internals
@subsection Termination Internals

[Carlos O'Donell]

Post by Matthew Garrett
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.

Post by Matthew Garrett
---
ChangeLog | 5 +++++
manual/startup.texi | 8 --------
2 files changed, 5 insertions(+), 8 deletions(-)

Granting Reviewed-by: Carlos O'Donell <***@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 <***@google.com>
Reviewed-by: Carlos O'Donell <***@redhat.com>
~~~

Post by Matthew Garrett
diff --git a/ChangeLog b/ChangeLog
index 073d034c40..6b6a09d4dc 100644
--- a/ChangeLog
+++ b/ChangeLog
@@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
+
+ * 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.

Post by Matthew Garrett
+
[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
@end deftypefun
-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.
-

OK.

Post by Matthew Garrett
@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.

[Alexandre Oliva]

I expect the guideline to cover all forms of communication including
the manual, website, and social media, and not just email.

I'm afraid I can't find anything in the guidelines that supports that
position, not in them as a whole, not in the specific paragraph about
relevant political positions, that talks about 'discussions'. From my
partial reading of the g-p-d thread that led to this document, I believe
it is supposed to cover interactive discussions, certainly not limited
to email: it could be IRC and social media, but I hesitate in
considering manual and code as 'discussion' or even 'interactive' in the
intended sense.

I concede, however, that I could be mistaken in my understanding, so
I'll leave it for the author of the document to clarify the intent and
possibly amend the document.

[Joseph Myers]

Post by Carlos O'Donell
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.

If anything I'd say it's *more* important for the manual, as that's
explicitly external communication rather than internal to the project.

Post by Carlos O'Donell
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
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/48445031/why-would-it-be-illegal-to-inform-about-abort
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/d4783/federal_censorship_regulations_may_restrict/

I concur that it should be removed, as something that is in fact confusing
to readers, and, as I noted in
<https://sourceware.org/ml/libc-alpha/2018-05/msg00292.html>, extremely
culturally-specific, relying on knowledge of a particular rule from one
particular country. I don't think such country-specific jokes are
suitable for the GNU C Library manual. As noted in the discussion
referenced in the announcement of the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines,
there are non-culturally-specific subjects of humour about topics that
bring GNU users and developers together rather than dividing us (such as
recursion, as in the name GNU itself), and those are much more suitable
for the manual than anything specific to one country.

Furthermore, enough people have seen this as a joke about abortion rather
than as one about censorship (lacking, perhaps, sufficiently detailed
knowledge of the US rule in question) to demonstrate that it *does not
work* as a joke about censorship for the audience the manual has today;
the authorial intent for it to be about censorship is not particularly
relevant when that's not how people read it. Even if a
non-country-specific censorship joke might be suitable for the manual, if
it reads as being about abortion, that renders it unsuitable.

[David Newall]

Post by Matthew Garrett
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".

It's not a project discussion, so "as the Guidelines say" is not relevant.

Humour is a good thing and I oppose removing the joke.

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ 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. ]]]

Whether to keep the abort(3) joke in the C library manual depends on
several broader issues. We need to resolve some of them in general
before trying to decide that specific question.

What I can specifically say in this context is that this joke opposes
censorship, and the GNU Project opposes censorship. So it is not an
unrelated political issue.

[Carlos O'Donell]

Post by Richard Stallman
[[[ 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. ]]]
Whether to keep the abort(3) joke in the C library manual depends on
several broader issues. We need to resolve some of them in general
before trying to decide that specific question.

How would you like to proceed on the resolution of these issues?

Could you please enumerate the broader issues you would like resolved?

It is important that we define these issues, they will form the basis
of the success criteria for concluding on consensus.

Post by Richard Stallman
What I can specifically say in this context is that this joke opposes
censorship, and the GNU Project opposes censorship. So it is not an
unrelated political issue.

Matthew Garrett raised two issues, that the joke was unwelcoming, *and*
that it was unrelated politically to what was published as the list
of politically supported positions by the GNU Project.

Could you please clarify if "anti-censorship" or "freedom of expression"
is part of "(2) supporting basic human rights in computing", which
*is* listed as a political position for the GNU Project? Could you also
clarify what restrictions "in computing" places on those rights?

In summary:

- We need to define the success criteria for consensus.

- To define the success criteria we need to know which broader
issues need resolution before deciding on the issue of removing
the joke.

Thank you for your feedback.

[David Newall]

Post by Carlos O'Donell
Matthew Garrett raised two issues, that the joke was unwelcoming, *and*
that it was unrelated politically to what was published as the list
of politically supported positions by the GNU Project.

I see nothing unwelcoming about the joke.  Please cease this odious
attempt at political correctness.

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ 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. ]]]

Post by David Newall

Post by Carlos O'Donell
Matthew Garrett raised two issues, that the joke was unwelcoming, *and*
that it was unrelated politically to what was published as the list
of politically supported positions by the GNU Project.

I see nothing unwelcoming about the joke.  Please cease this odious
attempt at political correctness.

Could we please keep this discussion more kind and not harsh?

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ 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. ]]]

Post by Carlos O'Donell
How would you like to proceed on the resolution of these issues?

Please be patient. This is going to take time. It took a few months
to address just one of those general issues that make the context.

[DJ Delorie]

Post by Richard Stallman
and the GNU Project opposes censorship.

For the sake of completeness, could you please point out where in the
GNU manifesto or the FSF's core philosophy this is spelled out? I've
been participating in the GNU/FSF project for many decades, and all
along I thought it was about software's freedom, not people's freedom.

I have no problem with you *personally* opposing censorship, and I'm
generally against it also, but if the argument is that the *project* is
officially against it... citation required.

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ 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. ]]]

Post by DJ Delorie
For the sake of completeness, could you please point out where in the
GNU manifesto or the FSF's core philosophy this is spelled out?

I recall that the FSF made a statement about this, around 20 years
ago, in an central and visible place (at that time). But I was unable
to find it now. So I stated this in new section in the GNU coding
standards about not talking about unrelated political issues in GNU
packages.

I've

Post by DJ Delorie
been participating in the GNU/FSF project for many decades, and all
along I thought it was about software's freedom, not people's freedom.

Software freedom means freedom for users in regard to the software.
So it is a kind of people's freedom. The programs that exist today
are not qualified to be considered persons, so they wouldn't be able
to exercise freedoms themselves.

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ 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. ]]]

Post by Matthew Garrett
As documented in https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/kind-communication.html,
GNU projects should aim to communicate in ways that are not unwelcoming.

More precisely, the guidelines are about how we communicate in our
discussions, not what ideas we communicate (as long as they are
pertinent to the topic of the list and support the goal of the
project).

These guidelines as such do not apply to manuals. Kindness as a
general principle surely does apply to manuals, but precisely how
remains to be decided.

I just installed a statement in the GNU maintainer guide saying that
humor is welcome _in general_ -- that we reject the idea of
"professionalism" which calls for deleting humor because it is humor.

That doesn't decide the question of the abort(3) joke. There are
other issues to decide before that.

[Carlos O'Donell]

Post by Richard Stallman
That doesn't decide the question of the abort(3) joke. There are
other issues to decide before that.

I posed some questions here which remain unanswered:
https://www.sourceware.org/ml/libc-alpha/2018-10/msg00449.html

I am going to restate them again here since I'm seeking resolution on
a way forward.

How would you like to proceed on the resolution of these issues?

Could you please enumerate the broader issues you would like resolved?

It is important that we define these issues, they will form the basis
of the success criteria for concluding on consensus.

[Joseph Myers]

Post by Carlos O'Donell

Post by Richard Stallman
That doesn't decide the question of the abort(3) joke. There are
other issues to decide before that.

https://www.sourceware.org/ml/libc-alpha/2018-10/msg00449.html
I am going to restate them again here since I'm seeking resolution on
a way forward.
How would you like to proceed on the resolution of these issues?
Could you please enumerate the broader issues you would like resolved?

I would like to suggest that we start with the following issue:

* When is content that involves or depends on some country-specific
context suitable for inclusion in the technical parts of GNU manuals?
(This issue only concerns the technical parts of the manuals, not the
content of the Invariant Sections.)

It's not the most general question in this area, but it should also not be
the most controversial, which is an advantage. If the conclusion is that
country-specific content is not suitable for the documentation of the
abort function, that would be sufficient to resolve the question of the
inclusion of this joke (which I think is clearly US-specific, being about
one particular US government rule, even though it's easy to interpret as
being about abortion more generally), and the other issues could be
considered at leisure, independenty.

My suggested answer is: because GNU manuals are for an international
audience, they should avoid privileging US or other country-specific
viewpoints and avoid assuming such country-specific context. Content
involving or depending on country-specific context is only suitable when
there is something country-specific about the features being documented.
So in the glibc manual, such content might be suitable for documentation
of locale, timezone and other i18n facilities, especially when describing
a feature that exists because of the peculiarities of some particular
country or language or that is best illustrated with reference to such
peculiarities, but would not be suitable for the documentation of abort.

[Florian Weimer]

Post by Richard Stallman
[[[ 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. ]]]

Post by Joseph Myers
* When is content that involves or depends on some country-specific
context suitable for inclusion in the technical parts of GNU manuals?
(This issue only concerns the technical parts of the manuals, not the
content of the Invariant Sections.)

That is a good example of the sort of general issues that we should
decide, because the decisions about them will be the basis for
deciding what to do about the abortion censorship joke. I don't
see any reason not to take up this issue next.
The right place for discussing these issues is

How can we subscribe to this list? Thanks.

Florian

[DJ Delorie]

Post by Joseph Myers
* When is content that involves or depends on some country-specific
context suitable for inclusion in the technical parts of GNU manuals?

I wonder if there are guidelines about language-specific idioms that
should be avoided, strictly for the purposes of translating the manual
to other languages?

While not exactly the same question as the one you asked, it's kinda
similar, and if the topic is active...