On Friday, following comments made by Linux legend Linus Torvalds about diversity in the open source development community, a new Linux fork went online at Github, apparently to mock diversity advocates. Dubbed ToleranUX, the fork, created by a one-day-old Github account called The Feminist Software Foundation, was announced with a lengthy diatribe full of over-the-top mockery of feminist and diversity movements within the tech sector.
The fork's introductory text included a quote from Shanley Kane, founder of tech and culture essay publisher Model View Culture, that expressed disapproval of Torvalds' statements made at an Auckland open source conference on Thursday. Having no affiliation with the anonymous FSF group, Kane searched for the group's origins and found its creators discussing the joke fork at the image board site that resembles the likes of 8chan. (Kane declined to comment to Ars about this story.)
The ToleranUX page is chock full of exaggerated portrayals of feminism, both in describing the project's inspirations and in trying to apply fake feminist philosophy to the nuts and bolts of Linux development. (To wit: "ToleranUX is created to revolutionize the Toxic Meritocracy that permeates the FLOSS world that has proved itself to be the crux of divisiveness, the cause of the gender imbalance in IT, and the bane of True Equality.") We've picked a few of the page's most mocking sections to illustrate the fake project's viewpoint.
On equality:
Absolutely no coding experience is necessary: all code are equal in the eyes of the Feminist Software Foundation. There is no objective way to determine whether one person's code is better than another's. In light of this fact, all submitted code will be equally accepted. However, marginalized groups, such as wom*n and trans* will be given priority in order to make up for past discrimination. Simply submit a pull request for any submission, whether code, artwork, or even irrelevant bits — nothing is irrelevant in the grand struggle for a Truly Tolerant UNIX-ike Kernel!:
On patriarchy:
When one considers the monolithic kernel paradigm, one realizes that the drivers and services all working under the kernel's address space is extremely oppressive. Much like how the patriarchy keeps womyn [sic] and POC down, so too does a monolithic kernel encourage problematic code in kernel memory. Of course, the most important part of why a monolithic kernel was not picked is simply due to the phallic nature of monoliths and other large sculpted rocks (See Laura Chiltern's "Patriarchy of Stone: How Mt. Rushmore Oppressed Me and How You Can Prevent it" for more information on the subject).
On privilege:
ToleranUX shall implement an environment where administrative privileges are strictly prohibited. Gone is the superuser — all users are now equal in privilege. In traditional systems this manoeuvre would cause mayhem as there will be no protection against malicious users abusing their power and privileges. To combat this, ToleranUX implements a pan-kernel daemon that checks the privilege of every user during every kernel tick to ensure that no privilege abuse is done. In fact, the only operation that a user can do with their privilege is to check it, ensuring that no societal power abuse can ever be possible.
(This portion, perhaps accidentally, echoes a contribution by Richard Stallman to the su documentation.)
On cultural sensitivity:
In sexist FOSS software, this would be a fork. This term, for being so commonplace and existing in the roots of how an OS handles its processes, displays an inherent lack of consideration and sensibility towards a tolerant approach to shepherding resources. Immature and sexually aggravating puns aside, the term fork also reinforces the Eurocentric idea that "forks" are a sign of culture — who are we to disprivilege and discriminate against the chopsticks, the spoons, and the hand? In light of this, processes must only diverse and never fork in ToleranUX.
Should you feel so inclined to load FSF on your own Linux box, the actual files appear to be no different than those found at the Linux kernel source tree at this point—apart from some custom artwork.
Update: Some of ToleranUX appears to have lifted jokes from another phony Linux fork group that named itself FSF—and even had a similar logo—back in December 2013, though its creation was named "C+=", or "C plus equality."
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