It is a little interesting to me that the joke in question is making fun of a US-right-wing political position, so the fact that it's clear to everyone that this atmosphere disagrees with the joke would seem to remove some credence from the "FOSS is turning into a liberal echo chamber" argument that's been getting popular. There is a political shift / push happening, but "liberal echo chamber" isn't it.
I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that the consensus is that the joke is disagreeable, but that it is not an appropriate joke for the documentation.
I am a staunchly pro-choice, but this joke is out-of-date and out-of-place. I would personally vote for it to go.
I really don't want to see the political divide fragment the GNU/Linux community because people are determined to inject their opinions into code.
If you run a small repo and the development community agrees with political interjections in the software, then go for it. If the community doesn't like it, they can fork it.
But maybe, if the both the developers and the users of a major piece of software found on hundreds of millions of machines think your political joke should go, that's just not a hill worth dying on...
Oh yes - I was unclear about disagreeing with the joke. I don't think anyone is openly disagreeing with the politics of the joke per se, they seem to be saying that it's not meaningful technical documentation and they empathize with those who might disagree with the politics (which might be themselves or might not). So yes, I don't think there's a left/right political divide either here, or elsewhere.
You don't have to disagree with Stallman on abortion in order to find his humor tasteless and inappropriate for product documentation. Pulling rank as GNU project leader for the sake of a tasteless joke is squandering your moral authority, I think, and he may need it for a time when, say, a state actor tries to sneak nefarious code into glibc.
Not sure how the joke is "tasteless". Michelle Wolf's "knock em out of there" abortion joke was tasteless. This is just a joke about government censorship and overreach.
In the new spirit of 'liberalism', or the tumblr version of it, mentioning a traumatic event is as bad as causing the traumatic event. You can't mention rape because it might trigger someone, it doesn't matter if you are excusing it, or demanding harsher punishments for it.
Unless you've been on a collage campus in the last 10 years you don't know how insane the movement is. Calling it 'liberal' is complete wrong because it is illiberal in the extreme and makes people take the side of authoritarians who want to remove all wrong think from the world.
I've been on a college campus within the last 10 years and I can only assume the people who genuinely think this either haven't or have their careers depend on pretending it's true (e.g. Turning Point USA).
I'm not sure how any of this supports the point you're making (I believe the point you're making is "mentioning a traumatic event is as bad as causing the traumatic event" and/or "[these people are] authoritarians who want to remove all wrong think from the world").
If the point you're making is "I don't believe the concept of LGBTQIA+ and allies should exist," then yes, there would appear to be authoritarians who want to remove all wrong think from the world....
