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Re: A GNU “social contract”?


From: Alexandre François Garreau
Subject: Re: A GNU “social contract”?
Date: Wed, 06 Nov 2019 04:04:03 +0100

Le mardi 5 novembre 2019, 21:31:09 CET Andreas Enge a écrit :
> Hello,
> 
> On Tue, Nov 05, 2019 at 12:46:42PM -0500, Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
> > In the GNU project everyone is welcome, even people who do not share
> > the goals and philosophy of the GNU project.
> 
> I do not think this makes sense, actually. As soon as we have a bit of
> responsibility in GNU (like being a maintainer, which is the role I know),
> we are also ambassadors of GNU.

No you misunderstood the role, which is technical.  So ambassading outside of 
a project mailing-list is outside of this role.  Like any GNU member comments 
on per blog.

Ambassadors of GNU are already listed in the GNU webpage listing whose who are 
validated as speakers to give talks about software freedom (and the specific 
subject they might talk about).

> So I would expect us to uphold the GNU
> standards.

There are not GNU standards.  There is GNU philosophy.  And RMS moral 
standards (by abide almost noone lives, or they’re very few and the 
intersection with competent people is too tiny to be interesting).

We can’t except all people contributing by doing the hard, continuous, long 
and stable work of maintaining and coordinating development of software to 
uphold any standard, especially not to thoughpolice them, or even to police 
what they say *outside GNU* (what is side on GNU website, mailing lists and 
packages is already policed).

> For instance, I would not find it acceptable that a GNU
> maintainer goes to FOSDEM to give a talk about their newest open source
> software on a Macbook, or using a Powerpoint presentation on their Windows
> machine.

Many already do that, and I even (sadly, I was as shocked as other people, but 
that’s not a reason to shut up people) observed that on some past GHMs.  Along 
with promoting software that only works on proprietary OSes.

Actually, you have to consider that morality and competence don’t perfectly 
intersect.  That’s not a problem.  You don’t want the most moral person for 
each job if the job in the end is less well done, and on other sides it 
doesn’t make a difference.

I’ve come to know many people who don’t care about this or that (at least from 
using a cellphone and libreboot).  But that’s only a problem when their 
software is proprietary, supporting proprietary software or trapped in working 
only on proprietary software or supporting hardware.  Otherwise, they do good 
that will benefit community and help it sustain.

> And in practice, I have yet to meet a GNU maintainer who would state
> "I do not care about the four freedoms, I am just maintaining this random
> package that happens to be under the GPL, because of its cool features."

Most of time it’s not as radical of “cool features” (though this might be the 
case of emacs, often), but “because it was copylefted” or “because my company 
paid me to do so because they use it”.  And those are huge cases for 
contributing to free software and keeping it working, secure and updated while 
companies are competing.




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