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Wielaard: A public discussion about GNU

Mark Wielaard has posted a summary of the discussion thus far on the governance of the GNU project. "The mentoring and apprenticeship discussion focused on the GNU maintainers as being the core of the GNU project. But as was pointed out there are also webmasters, translators, infrastructure maintainers (partially paid FSF staff and volunteers), education and conference organizers, etc. All these people are GNU stakeholders. And how we organize governance of the GNU project should also involve them."

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Wielaard: A public discussion about GNU

Posted Dec 3, 2019 16:27 UTC (Tue) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link] (3 responses)

> […] the Chief GNUisance is no longer the president of the FSF

Quote of the year. Well, not really … but still … a year ago nobody would have said that publicly.

Wielaard: A public discussion about GNU

Posted Dec 3, 2019 17:20 UTC (Tue) by oldtomas (guest, #72579) [Link] (2 responses)

Just for context: Richard Stallmann referred to himself as the "chief gnuisance". Perhaps you know, but not others...

Wielaard: A public discussion about GNU

Posted Dec 3, 2019 17:52 UTC (Tue) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link] (1 responses)

Ah. I didn't know that he used that "title" himself.

Wielaard: A public discussion about GNU

Posted Dec 5, 2019 8:19 UTC (Thu) by mjw (subscriber, #16740) [Link]

It was meant as a statement of fact, not to be funny. But yes, I guess we at least established that GNU has a odd sense of humor. We might end up with a GNUcial Contract too :)

This is actually how the FSF also described it in their call for participation: https://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-and-gnu
[...] the relationship between the FSF and GNU has been fluid [...] Since RMS resigned as president of the FSF, but not as head of GNU ("Chief GNUisance") [...]

The term Chief GNUisance is not very well defined. But it is used in some of the GNU maintainer documents. Since the Chief GNUisance was also the FSF President there was this simple/fluid relationship. When a GNU maintainer needed something from the FSF and didn't know who to contact they would ask the Chief GNUisance who as FSF president would know or could decide themselves. Likewise when "blessing" a new GNU maintainer, the Chief GNUisance would switch hats, become the FSF president and add them to the maintainers list as the FSF steward for a GNU package. This way the FSF oversight role over the GNU project and the way to decide who could use which FSF resources on behalf of the GNU project were easy. Now that they are separate roles (there actually isn't an FSF president at the moment, but there are two vice-presidents) we'll have to figure out how to define GNU leadership, how to make those of decisions and through which kind of governance system.

Wielaard: A public discussion about GNU

Posted Dec 4, 2019 4:57 UTC (Wed) by donbarry (guest, #10485) [Link] (6 responses)

Another example of Corbet's editorial framing.

One would never realize from reading this news note that Wielaard, and those he cites on his blog post, are those dissident GNU maintainers, signatories of the letter accepting as good coin their unargued assertion that Stallman has "undermined.. the empowerment of all computer users." Behind this bad-faith argument is a much more transparent one: the removal of Stallman fully from all stewardship roles. Given that the list of maintainers is heavy on those who have little or no presence in the promotion of the values of the movement articulated by Stallman, it would seem their interest -- and their likely future moves, should they succeed in their endeavor, is in reorienting GNU projects in an entirely pragmatic fashion, certainly better for their careers.. Others can judge, as I have, what this means for the principles behind the GNU project.

There is also the unmentioned history that they (Carlos O'Donell and Mark Wielaard) appropriated themselves censors of the mailing list and attempted to frame the debate through that mechanism -- there is extensive discussion of that. Original list manager Brandon Invergo wrote, "It has become clear that the moderation was being used in a biased manner. We have decided to remove Mark and Carlos as moderators/admins..."

It is also of note that the list is heavy with people working for or closely with Red Hat. The frictions of that organization with GNU over the years are a matter of historical record.

Wielaard: A public discussion about GNU

Posted Dec 4, 2019 7:36 UTC (Wed) by shalem (subscriber, #4062) [Link]

Disclaimer: I work for Red Hat

As someone who knows Mark personally I have to refute this. Mark is doing this because he cares deeply about the GNU project and about software freedom. Mark is one of those people who insists that all computers run free software, including only using routers with openwrt, a dumb phone, etc. Suggesting that Mark is doing this to further his career is simply ridiculous,

Hans de Goede

Wielaard: A public discussion about GNU

Posted Dec 4, 2019 8:01 UTC (Wed) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link]

Why should the people doing useful work support your religion on their dime? You sound like the ad industry.

Wielaard: A public discussion about GNU

Posted Dec 4, 2019 12:39 UTC (Wed) by nathan (subscriber, #3559) [Link] (1 responses)

I think the LWN posting was neutral. Just because it failed to mention your personal viewpoint does not make it biased. One does not expect the entire history to be in such an announcement.

Mark and Carlos (who I know personally) care deeply about GNU software. I did notice on the mailing list referred to that when one of the few (only?) women commented she was unfairly attacked by some correspondants. I happen to know her too, and she's been involved in GNU software for decades as a developer. Her comments are important. At the time Mark and Carlos were moderators, the list was very inflamed, I was saddened to see them step back from that, but the world moves on.

Redhat employs a lot of developers who care about GNU software, including many maintainers of same. Thus it is unsurprising that a lot of Redhat engineers are on that list. I fail to see why that is a bad thing.

Disclaimer: I am a maintainer of GNU software, but do not work for Redhat.

Wielaard: A public discussion about GNU

Posted Dec 4, 2019 17:00 UTC (Wed) by deepfire (guest, #26138) [Link]

> Redhat employs a lot of developers who care about GNU software, including many maintainers of same. Thus it is unsurprising that a lot of Redhat engineers are on that list. I fail to see why that is a bad thing.

I think it's relatively easy to argue that monoculture (which necessarily stems from being dominated by representatives of a single company) is bad for diversity & long-term vision of projects that carry a social mandate.

Both FSF and GNU are such projects -- the vision they establish affects countless people in our world.

Companies have narrow goals, that tend consciously and unconsciously affect people that work for them.

Diversity of representation helps to ensure these complicated and unseen effects are minimised.

Wielaard: A public discussion about GNU

Posted Dec 4, 2019 17:51 UTC (Wed) by ceplm (subscriber, #41334) [Link]

You’ve got to be kidding me. How can you dare to attack his character and his motives? Where were you when Mark was leading the rewrite of the Java Classpath just so that we could now have free Java?

I have had the privilege to know Mark (and work with him in the same company for eleven years) and he is one of the most humble, gentle and hard working people I know.

Matěj Cepl
(eleven years at Red Hat, now SUSE)

Wielaard: A public discussion about GNU

Posted Dec 5, 2019 8:51 UTC (Thu) by mjw (subscriber, #16740) [Link]

Hi Don,

I think that is too harsh towards LWN. It simply quotes and refers to my blog post. If you would read that you'll see that the third link refers to the Joint statement on the GNU Project https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2019/joint-statement-on-the-gnu...

I am sure that I summarized things as I see them personally. But I also link to statements made in the public discussion that are from people that aren't on that list or even disagree with them (the lwn quote is actually from one of those parts, where someone points out that the discussion shouldn't just be about GNU maintainers, but all GNU stakeholders).

I cannot speak for others, but I personally do care very deeply about the principles behind the GNU project. And I think the discussion about the GNU Social Contract also shows people are passionate about capturing that spirit.

The "meta-drama" around the mailinglist moderation is also mentioned briefly in the Resources section of my summary with a link to what actually happened https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnu-misc-discuss/2019-... It might be seen as an interesting meta-discussion about who can speak for and/or use the GNU resources that the FSF provides.

There are some people who happen to work for Red Hat on the list (I personally work for Red Hat, but mostly on non-GNU GPLed projects). But it is certainly not a majority of contributors. There are 5 (out of 31) people who signed the Joined Statement who work for Red Hat. It should also be noted that Red Hat has a Code of Business Conduct and Ethics https://investors.redhat.com/code-of-business-conduct-and... that explicitly says that you may make a determination in the interest of the project that is adverse to the Company’s interests.

Cheers,

Mark

Wielaard: A public discussion about GNU

Posted Dec 4, 2019 17:08 UTC (Wed) by jezuch (subscriber, #52988) [Link] (2 responses)

> But as was pointed out there are also webmasters, translators, infrastructure maintainers (partially paid FSF staff and volunteers), education and conference organizers, etc. All these people are GNU stakeholders.

Hm. Sounds a lot like the discussion Debian had, like, 10 years ago (probably not that many, but long ago enough for me to forget when), when they introduced Debian Maintainers to recognize contributions of those "other" stakeholders. I don't want to be snarky, but it's good to see that GNU is finally catching up :)

Wielaard: A public discussion about GNU

Posted Dec 5, 2019 2:35 UTC (Thu) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link] (1 responses)

The "Debian Maintainer" status is a *lot* more narrow, it only allows one to upload specific packages one has shown a track record of being able to manage correctly. First the person is approved by the Debian Account Managers (DAM) and then the package sponsor for each package approves DM upload access as needed.

https://www.debian.org/vote/2007/vote_003

Perhaps you were thinking of the formalisation of the practice of accepting Debian members who don't do packaging (and thus don't need upload access)? IIRC that change was mostly about formally recognising such folks and encouraging existing contributors to become members.

https://www.debian.org/vote/2010/vote_002

Wielaard: A public discussion about GNU

Posted Dec 10, 2019 15:31 UTC (Tue) by jezuch (subscriber, #52988) [Link]

Yeah, I had the terminology wrong, but yes, I mean the effort to recognize non-packagers as official members of the project. Thanks for the links, they prove that my wild guess about the time it happened was basically right and I'm not yet becoming senile :D


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