Messages in this thread | | | From | (Linus Torvalds) | Subject | Re: Profanity in the Linux Kernel?!?!? | Date | 9 Jun 1999 05:38:43 GMT |
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In article <87vhcypfsp.fsf@phreaker.net>, Scott Jaderholm <suicydl@phreaker.net> wrote: > >I hope that I do not offend too many people. > > cd /usr/src/linux ; grep -i fuck `find . -name '*.[ch]'`
I'll just re-iterate my standpoint on this before it gets out of hand..
Profanity and bad taste can be fine. It's usually not a problem, and the only cases where it should be =really= avoided is in messages to the user that aren't absolutely lethal this-should-not-ever-happen kind.
But I feel that trying to be too politically correct is a much worse disease than =any= amount of profanity, and I'm personally much happier seeing the output of a grep like the above than I would be trying to clean it up in the name of PC.
That means, for example, that I won't accept cleanup-patches from anybody else than the maintainers of the specific subsystems. And I won't do the cleanup myself. I _might_ reject a patch because I felt is was too foul-mouthed, but to be quite frank I don't think I have ever done so.
So don't worry. People have sometimes worried that it is "unprofessional" to use profanity, but if you think professionals don't swear you've either been living in a monestary or playing golf your whole life ;)
I'll start worrying when the profanities start to occupy a noticeable amount of kernel space.
Linus
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