That's the whole point of free software.
Edit: I find it disturbing that so many people want to erase hacker culture from the internet. Consensus is a Bay Area idea, one that came quite late to the world of computers, and one that many of us disagree with.
RMS just over ruled that. Because it was his joke and he felt like it.
Which seems like it goes against the whole “community“ thing.
The maintainers are just mechanics working on someone else's car and have as much say in choosing the interior decor.
The beauty of the system is that if they get sick of that state of affairs they get an identical copy of the car for free and can then do whatever they want to it.
That is already an optional part of the GPL itself afaik.
(Or at least that's what I got from this thread. Certainly it's possible that GNU/RMS/Whoever originally had rights has passed those rights to the maintainers, but it doesn't happen simply by virtue of them maintaining it.)
But there a few historically true things that are relevant here: first, that an important part of "hacker culture" unequivocally originated in the Bay Area (Fairchild Semiconductor, Homebrew Computer Club, BSD, etc.), and second, that "consensus" has been an important idea in this culture for a while - an obvious example being the IETF's "rough consensus and running code".
[citation needed]
An SCM change, by very nature, doesn't "erase" anything, it only creates a record of change. The repository will always have the history.
RMS is pulling the authority card, which is always a dodgy thing to do, and people want an egalitarian project rather than an authoritarian one. Both sides need to learn when to pick a fight and when to let something pass.
GNU is what it is today largely because of the name recognition, and people's willingness to get stuff incorporated into GNU because of that name recognition. eglibc was very conservative about patches because it aimed for reunification eventually, but it didn't have to be.
Plenty of us prefer the authoritarian model, rather than the chaotic model of arbitrary consensus.
They’re bikeshedding over whether or not to include a comment on a controversial topic. It is not relevant to the functioning of the library and is just a distraction. Rip it out and ban rms for perpetuating such idiotic drama.
He sounds like the one in need of a safe space where nothing ever changes
At leaast now he can honestly say he is still actively involved with glibc.
(I'm not saying that's appropriate thing to do, as I'm just a lurker enjoying the free work by others in glibc's regard, but wanted to make the point)
But neither has anything about abortion policy in it's public declaration of goals.
So, while some political messages might make sense in GNU technical docs, I don't see why a warning making an oblique reference to the Mexico City policy is not only acceptable but so critical that central leadership needs to overrule the specific project's maintainers to preserve it.
I wish I could understand who taught you people that insistence of stupid horseshit is the key to achieving your goals.
Politics aren't bad and are an effect of different people being present in the same space, while of course there is a difference between FSF/GNU/RMS with a strong focus on a political mission and some other projects primarily focussing on a technical mission.