Improve adherance to the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

  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(-)
  

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.
  

On 23/10/18 2:25 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".

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.
  

On Oct 22, 2018, "Carlos O'Donell" <carlos@redhat.com> wrote:

> 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.
  

[[[ 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.
  

On 10/23/18 1:41 AM, 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. ]]]
> 
> 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.
 
> 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.
  

On Mon, 22 Oct 2018, Carlos O'Donell wrote:

> 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.

> 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/

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.
  

On 24/10/18 1:46 am, Carlos O'Donell wrote:
>
> 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.
  

[[[ 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. ]]]

  > 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.
  

[[[ 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. ]]]

  > 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.
  

[[[ 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. ]]]

  > > 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?
  

On 10/24/18 12:48 AM, Richard Stallman wrote:
> 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.
  

On Thu, 6 Dec 2018, Carlos O'Donell wrote:

> On 10/24/18 12:48 AM, Richard Stallman wrote:
> > 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?

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.
  

[[[ 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. ]]]

  > * 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
gnu-community-discuss@gnu.org.  I will forward your message there.
  

* 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. ]]]
>
>   > * 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
> gnu-community-discuss@gnu.org.  I will forward your message there.

How can we subscribe to this list?  Thanks.

Florian
  

[[[ 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. ]]]

The correct name of the list is gnu-community-private@gnu.org.
Sorry for misremembering.
  

[[[ 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. ]]]

gnu-community-private (correcting the erroneous name I gave before) is
limited to GNU maintainers and developers.  Any substantial
contributor to GNU libc is a bona fide GNU developer and can
join this list.

ISTR there is a standard protocol for subscribing to a mailing list,
and it should work for this list.
  

On Sun, Dec 9, 2018 at 7:11 PM Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:
> 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.

It's been over a year. Is there any update that can be shared?
  

On Tue, 25 Feb 2020, Matthew Garrett wrote:

> On Sun, Dec 9, 2018 at 7:11 PM Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> It's been over a year. Is there any update that can be shared?

This was referring to the question:

  > * 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.)

The GNU Coding Standards now say:

  Remember that the audience for a GNU manual (and other GNU
  documentation) is global, and that it will be used for years, maybe
  decades.  This means that the reader could have very different cultural
  reference points.  Decades from now, all but old folks will have very
  different cultural reference points; many things that "everyone knows
  about" today may be mostly forgotten.

  For this reason, try to avoid writing in a way that depends on
  cultural reference points for proper understanding, or that refers to 
  them in ways that would impede reading for someone that doesn't 
  recognize them.

  Likewise, be conservative in your choice of words (aside from technical
  terms), linguistic constructs, and spelling: aim to make them
  intelligible to readers from ten years ago.  In any contest for
  trendiness, GNU writing should not even qualify to enter.

  It is ok to refer once in a rare while to spatially or temporally
  localized reference points or facts, if it is directly pertinent or as
  an aside.  Changing these few things (which in any case stand out) when
  they no longer make sense will not be a lot of work.

  By contrast, it is always proper to refer to concepts of GNU and the
  free software movement, when they are pertinent.  These are a central
  part of our message, so we should take advantage of opportunities to
  mention them.  They are fundamental moral positions, so they will
  rarely if ever change.