Profanity and OS projects - should we care? (opens in new tab)

Lets hope that this douchebag never reads the Linux Kernel source code

I think a far better action than saying "oh no, swear words" would be to ask: what code is apparently causing developers to swear and how can it be fixed?

And for what it's worth, when people are offended by mere words I counter with "I'm offended by censorship", because I am. What is it about certain commonly-censored materials that makes them so special? Why can't a person just change the channel or read something else to avoid uncomfortable material? Also, why are people so much more likely to be angry about swear words (which cause no demonstrable harm), when things that do cause harm (like wars) are more-or-less tolerated silently? Makes you wonder.

No.

Swear words which are deliberately offensive or pejorative should generally be avoided.

But there's no reason why flavoursome language can't be used to get across the developer's feelings about how fucking awful the shit piece of code they've just had to kludge something into was, and how much they're looking forward to clearing it up in a later release.

Source code is not only about the implementation, but also about the approach of the developers to express a solution to a problem. If swearing is part of that expression, it's OK to me, but I agree that unneccesary swearing, and being offensive to a certain group or demographic should be avoided at all.

such pussies.