Why would it be illegal to inform about “abort”? : <p>The <a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node/Aborting-a-Program.html#Aborting-a-Program" rel="noreferrer">GNU libc documentation of the <code>abort</code> function</a> contains the following notice:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p><strong>Future Change Warning:</strong> Proposed Federal censorship regulations may prohibit us from giving you information about the possibility of calling this function. We would be required to say that this is not an acceptable way of terminating a program.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Uh, what?</p>

<p>I found a seven-year-old <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/d4783/federal_censorship_regulations_may_restrict/" rel="noreferrer">Reddit thread</a> discussing this. It appears that the notice was put in by Richard Stallman in 1995 — so it’s been in there for a while. However, except for <a href="https://sourceware.org/ml/glibc-linux/1999-q3/msg00013.html" rel="noreferrer">a 1999 mailing list thread</a> claiming it’s a joke, I couldn’t find any further information.</p>

<p>So: is this just an Easter egg put in by rms? Or is it serious (though probably no longer relevant)? If so, what does/did it refer to?</p>

<p>The <a href="http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/functions/abort.html" rel="noreferrer">Open Group POSIX documentation</a> of the same function doesn’t include anything similar, nor do any of the man pages I consulted.</p>
