GNU GPL FAQ Changes His to Her -

[James Smith]

On May 25, 2016 the word "his" was used repeatedly throughout the GNU GPL FAQ. Between May 25 and May 28 every instance was changed to "her" except one instance of "his or her" which remained.

I'm glad they reversed the oppression of women by men, but I want to know who was responsible and what prompted their courageous act.

 

[REGENDarySumanai]

This changed nothing whatsoever in the grand scheme of things, so reverting it was clearly the best idea. $20 it was some COC supporter.

 

[Exorbital Columnations]

What a stunning and brave Find and Replace job. This really moves things forward.

 

[The Fool]

Stay relevant under the massive acceptance of MIT and MPL

Usually when I see a library under the GPL I just decide I don't need to use that library.

 

[FuckedUp]

Why not "their"?

 

[Glad I couldn't help]

Why not "their"?

The FSF is full of pendants who will object on grounds that it is a plural marker.

It's a bad sign an outbreak of retarded SJW-ism will being shortly.

 

[James Smith]

Why not "their"?

Because it includes men.

 

[Spedestrian]

I wish they'd just do this on everything and get it over with. Once female pronouns are the default on literally every document, men will finally be able to prove what an idiotic pursuit this has been by continuing to give zero fucks. Plus, we'll finally have a convenient explanation for the gender pay gap — men would never waste their time doing dumb shit like this, so obviously their time is more valuable.

 

[Coffee Shits]

I wish they'd just do this on everything and get it over with. Once female pronouns are the default on literally every document, men will finally be able to prove what an idiotic pursuit this has been by continuing to give zero fucks.

Disagree. If you can control how people think ("the default sex of computer programmers is female") you can control what they do ("no harm in picking this female over this male since that's expected").

 

[Agent Abe Caprine]

Women who aren't interested in programming aren't going to suddenly want to over a pronoun change. Who in their right mind would want someone that mentally fragile programming anything of note? Man or woman, that'd be a red flag.

 

[He Who Points And Laughs]

Women who aren't interested in programming aren't going to suddenly want to over a pronoun change. Who in their right mind would want someone that mentally fragile programming anything of note? Man or woman, that'd be a red flag.

I doubt it was naturally born women who wanted this.

 

[Coolio55]

Didn't Stallman himself weirdly use "Her" like this too?

Either way, 0 fucking relevance. Just like GPL in the modern world.

 

[3119967d0c]

except one instance of "his or her" which remained.

Why was this not made 'her or her'?

 

[He Who Points And Laughs]

GPL is everywhere. Though many companies will go with an alternative because of flexibility, For example, this is the FreeBSD license :

The FreeBSD Copyright

Copyright 1992-2020 The FreeBSD Project.


Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.


The views and conclusions contained in the software and documentation are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing official policies, either expressed or implied, of the FreeBSD Project.

 

[אΩ+1]

But isn't still problematic to some people because of gendered language.

 

[Overly Serious]

Why not just use ${pronoun} through all the man pages and then the user can set an environment variable for their preference and when they open a man page there it is. And distros can annoy everyone be helpful by asking what the user wants that environment variable set to on install.

The real issue is the term "man pages" in the first place. We need a fork of man called 'person'.

 

[3119967d0c]

Why not just use ${pronoun} through all the man pages and then the user can set an environment variable for their preference and when they open a man page there it is. And distros can annoy everyone be helpful by asking what the user wants that environment variable set to on install.

The real issue is the term "man pages" in the first place. We need a fork of man called 'person'.

Ummm, Canonical? This is extremely problematic.

EDIT: On a more serious note @SoapQueen1, translations of gnu.org seem to be kept in various version control systems, so I imagine there must be a official English gnu.org CVS/git/whatever somewhere where one could track down the culprit. I can't find it though.

 

[Glad I couldn't help]

Ummm, Canonical? This is extremely problematic.
View attachment 1144848
EDIT: On a more serious note @SoapQueen1, translations of gnu.org seem to be kept in various version control systems, so I imagine there must be a official English gnu.org CVS/git/whatever somewhere where one could track down the culprit. I can't find it though.

Note that there is Emacs mode for viewing man pages with out the man program (i.e. on Windows), which is called "w/o (without) man" or "woman".

 

[James Smith]

On a more serious note @SoapQueen1, translations of gnu.org seem to be kept in various version control systems, so I imagine there must be a official English gnu.org CVS/git/whatever somewhere where one could track down the culprit. I can't find it though.

It would be funny to find some weirdo's name attached to it, I couldn't find anything either.

 

[Spooky Bones]

I don't know why people are surprised that a license which was created by autists to spread exceptional beliefs gets more exceptional beliefs tacked onto it.