Britain Fumbles Its Attempt to Cleanse the Internet of Porn

[bananas]

3. Australia almost banned Linux in 1999

http://www.salon.com/1999/06/07/linux/

Will Linux be banned down under?
The source code's four-letter words could run afoul of new Australian censorship legislation.
JAMAIS CASCIO
MONDAY, JUN 7, 1999 09:00 AM PDT

Did the drafters of Australia’s new Net censorship legislation ever imagine that their rules might ban Linux? After all, the Linux source code has quite a few instances of the word “fuck” sprinkled throughout, mostly as commentary about problems with software. Can an operating system be considered unsuitable for minors?

Using grep — the powerful Unix search command — to go through a recent version of Linux, I came up with some comment lines and error messages that were clearly intended as the sort of coarse humor engineers of all sorts engage in.

Some examples:

./drivers/block/cmd640.c:16: * These chips are basically fucked by design

./fs/ufs/ufs_super.c:184: printk("ufs_read_super: fucking Sun blows me\n&quot ;

./lib/vsprintf.c: 9: * Wirzenius wrote this portably, Torvalds fucked it up

The last is particularly amusing — “Torvalds” is, of course, Linus Torvalds, the Finnish computer scientist who started Linux in the first place.

The problem is, while adult engineers might find commentary such as this humorous, the sort of people who want to censor the Internet are more likely to find it offensive. Which leads us back to the simple question: How will the Linux source code fare if the the Australian censorship law passes?

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