[big-malloc]

I’ve always thought this would be helpful for small in-house ops scripts and things like that, but unfortunately the logo and terminology makes this a bit to risqué for a corporate environment. I suppose that’s part of the GNU spirit!

[Lio]

The logo is a bit childish but still made me chuckle at least[1].

So much of the entire industry already relies on GNU code that I think that baring licensing issues no one ever got fired for choosing the GNU option. You know it will work and it will probably work well, forever.

1. I once went to an RMS talk where he said that the whole point of writing your own software was "so that you can give it a funny name". Which I take as good advice! :)

[hdjjhhvvhga]

I'm not sure if you are being serious or not. You don't need the logo for anything. And as for terminology, the "rec" part stands for (database) records, not "rectum" or whatever one might imagine. I mean, seriously, what's the problem with just grabbing the code and using it if it's useful and the license has been approved by your company?

[dahart]

> And as for terminology, the "rec" part stands for (database) records, not "rectum" or whatever one might imagine.

Why are you assuming the pun wasn’t intentional, and that both meanings aren’t implied? What exactly is the point of talking about male turtles copulating in the FAQ?

There is nothing wrong with ignoring the logo and just using the code, that isn’t the issue. The issue is the story of the logo & FAQ are intentionally controversial, even if the author only intended humor, and that loading the site and using the code at work would promote conversation about the topic of the logo and it’s narrative.

[hdjjhhvvhga]

> and that loading the site and using the code at work would promote conversation about the topic of the logo and it’s narrative.

Or we could be adults and treat it in the way we treat any peculiar thing in a corporate environment, that is, ignore it and move on to what is actually needed? I've been in such situations quite a few times (mixed male/female environment, some old guys and young interns), and the maximum you could count on was a "well, that's an interesting choice", but most often people would just completely ignore it. We're not in elementary school to shout, "look, copulating turtles!"

On the other hand, I see your point. People got extremely cautious over the years because of real and perceived harassment attempts and their consequences. I can understand showing this page at work could be perceived by some in the same way as the famous dongle joke on a Python conference.

[dahart]

You’re lucky! I’ve definitely worked places where supposedly adult people made many constant tasteless jokes around sex and homosexuality, and about women while speaking to women, where the environment was actually hostile and the “adults” truly didn’t even know it and thought their conduct was okay. The problem with saying “we could be adults” is that many many people disagree on what it means to be adult, it’s a criteria that’s too vague and indirect. Counting on people being adults is what we’ve tried and failed at for, I dunno, hundreds of years? Forever? BTW, I don’t think just showing the page at work is the issue, the issue is talking about it, and that is something that would happen.

[rgoulter]

I think GP meant "Selection Expression", abbreviated as "SEX" in the manual. https://www.gnu.org/software/recutils/manual/

[mywittyname]

Who is going to read the manual on an obscure program used in a shell script somewhere? Mostly likely, another dev whose never encountered recutils before, and probably long after the OG developer is gone.

The command itself is a `recsel -e`. Which is not even remotely humorous, unlike, say, `dwarfdump`.

[krageon]

If your corporate environment can't deal with the reality that a logo is there to be memorable and fundamentally has nothing to do with functionality, is it even worth working there? It sounds like a very stifling environment that takes itself entirely too seriously.

[JasonFruit]

Have you worked in a corporate environment? Copulating turtles isn't the half of the "very stifling environment that takes itself entirely too seriously." But they have no choice. How long would it take for someone to run to HR complaining of a "hostile work environment" because of the turtles? If a company doesn't have "policies in place to prevent this sort of imagery", they will as soon as the turtles show up.

[klez]

I have, and I'm pretty sure a quarter of the corporate people I worked with wouldn't be able to point to me the Java logo in a lineup with other logos. Another quarter wouldn't know what a Java is. The rest wouldn't even know there's a thing that runs their programs. How would the logo of a single library in the myriad a company use be even brought to attention?

I'm almost positive that if we dig in a modern project dependency tree deep enough we'll find at least a couple that have an inappropriate joke in the readme or in the documentation. So how would recutils be any different?

[klez]

As a side note, am I the only one who didn't notice the turtles until the FAQ made me double check?

[dahart]

> If your corporate environment can’t deal with the reality that a logo is there to be memorable and fundamentally has nothing to do with functionality

Unfortunately, that argument is entirely straw man. Most corporate environments are absolutely fine with memorable non-functional logos. The issue is the narrative about gay turtle sex and perhaps the implied suggestion that the “rec” in recutils might stand for rectum.

In my personal life, I’m comfortable discussing turtles and rectums and sex and homosexuality. But I don’t want to discuss those topics at work with my co-workers, and most corporate environments aren’t just avoiding them for fun because they’re a bunch of stiffs, they’re avoiding such topics because there is a history of them causing actual problems at work, often lead to hurt feelings and the sense that the environment is not welcoming to all, and as a result there are several ways they’re legally required to encourage employees to avoid discussing such topics, and legally required to take disciplinary action if someone complains that someone else made negative comments about gay turtles or sex.

BTW this is all a side point to the fact that this photograph of turtles makes a terrible logo. It doesn’t work as a small icon or with reduced colors. It has no shape or symbolism. It’s unrelated to the product. It’s hard to see the detail even as a large full color image. The only thing that makes this logo memorable is the FAQ text, the story that it’s gay copulating turtles, which for all we know isn’t even true - turtles sometimes climb over each other, sometimes fight, and there’s no way to identify the sex of the turtles from this photo.

[dahart]

I really don’t know why this is getting downvoted like so, but in case it’s the “rec” comment, I am of course aware that rec stands for record, I meant to suggest the alternate meaning may be a pun. If this is lame or wrong or offensive for some other reason, I’m curious and open to feedback.

[dorfsmay]

I did not know about this, but I have used SQLite with bash scripts a lot do do ops tasks. I've given a few presentations about it, sysadmins and ops people are often surprised how easy it is to use.