Re: [tlug] GPL-code bugreport, WAS: Bill Gates and the GPL , let the flames begin

["SL Baur" <steve@example.com>]

On 4/24/08, Christian Horn <chorn@example.com> wrote:

>  http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=477454

That's on a par with some of the comments in the XEmacs sources
regarding Richard Stallman[1].  As a packager, I don't think it's within
Debian's prerogatives to censor code like that.  They can request
the maintainer change it and drop it from their distro if he doesn't
comply, but changing it on their own is not a good thing to do.

It used to be a regular occurrence on lkml that some noob would
grep the kernel sources for profanity and post the results, sometimes
accompanied with patches for their removal.  As far as I know, the
only thing he ever censored was the "Fucking Sun blows me"
printk and only because it was potentially user visible and not
informative as an error message.

Personally, I think stuff like that is unprofessional and personal
insults don't have a place even as comments.  I'm still not about
to try to censor someone else's code that I'm not responsible[2] for.

-sb

[1] Which I *did* censor, unilaterally, before I'd turned over all the god-
like powers that came with the position of Mr. XEmacs at the time.  Got
flamed really hard over it too.

[2] XEmacs was being released under my name, which explains the
inconsistency in [1].