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A summary of some open discussions
From: |
Mark Wielaard |
Subject: |
A summary of some open discussions |
Date: |
Sun, 15 Dec 2019 23:32:02 +0100 |
I wrote a blog post about some open discussion items
that were discussed on this list over the last 2 months:
https://gnu.wildebeest.org/blog/mjw/2019/12/02/a-public-discussion-about-gnu/
There was also some discussion about this on the LWN website:
https://lwn.net/Articles/806184/
It summarizes things as I see them personally. But maybe some
of this can be the start of discussion pages once we have a
collaborative wiki to work them out further.
Here it is as plain text:
New GNU Governance
There is now a public discussion[1] about GNU governance issues as
described in this LWN article: Rethinking the governance of the
GNU Project[2]. We have had private discussion about GNU governance
issues for the last couple of decades between GNU maintainers, but
that never resulted in actual change. And recent events[3] made
things a bit more urgent. Since the Chief GNUisance is no longer the
president of the FSF. The FSF is now asking for feedback[4] on how
their relationship with the GNU project should go forward with
respect to fiscal sponsorship, technical infrastructure, promotion,
copyright assignment, and volunteer management. So we need to answer
a lot of questions.
1 https://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2019-10/msg00147.html
2 https://lwn.net/Articles/802985/
3 https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2019/joint-statement-on-the-gnu-project/
4 https://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-and-gnu
Mentoring and apprenticeship
We started with a description of how various GNU projects handle
mentoring and apprenticeship[5]. Once a GNU maintainer is assigned as
the FSF steward of a project/package there are lots of documents on
coding standards and what it means for a project to be GNU and Free
Software. But there is no core guideline and a GNU maintainer has
almost complete freedom interpreting whether any guidelines are or
arenĂ¢t applicable to their project. This results in GNU maintainers
reinventing a lot of project maintenance, governance and delegation
of tasks. It would be good to document[6] the various (consensus
based) development models that are the result.
5 https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnu-misc-discuss/2019-10/msg00002.html
6 https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnu-misc-discuss/2019-10/msg00025.html
GNU membership
The mentoring and apprenticeship discussion focused on the GNU
maintainers as being the core of the GNU project. But as was
pointed out[7] 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. There are also already some committees to evaluate new GNU
packages and give feedback on the GNU coding standards. But given
these committees are advisory only and are sometimes ignored or
overruled people have been demotivated to join them or don't see them
as legitimate. It isn't clear who is actually a GNU member, or
whether the FSF recognizes just the GNU maintainers or also other GNU
volunteers as stakeholders.
7 https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnu-misc-discuss/2019-10/msg00054.html
FSF Philosophy or GNU Policy
Both the GNU membership and the new GNU governance discussions try to
answer the question "What is GNU?". The easy answer is "GNU is an
operating system[8] that is free software[9], put together by people
working together for the freedom of all software users to control
their computing". That still leaves a lot to define. What is in an
Operating System, who are these people that do all this work and how
do we coordinate all that work?
But looking at [gnu.org[10] it is much more complex than that. As you
expect there is a people[11] section and a software[12] section. But
then there is a lot of sections that blur the lines between the FSF
and GNU. Most of that is simply historical. GNU used to be the only
program the FSF ran. And some of these pages now have their own on
fsf.org[13]. The FSF now has a long list[14] of programs besides GNU
it runs. But things like the Free Software License List[15], Free
Software Definition[16] and Free System Distribution Guidelines[17] are
still maintained on gnu.org. It would be good to agree on who defines
what.
And looking at the Philosophy[18] of the GNU project page one
could ask[19] whether GNU is fundamentally about producing coherent,
empowering free software systems, or whether it is fundamentally
about developing and propagating an inspiring, liberatory philosophy?
Or maybe it is both? And which Philosophy articles actually define
Policy for the project and which are just personal opinions or
preferences of the authors? How we are going to maintain these pages
in the future (or maybe we are just going to mark them as historic?)
depends on answers[20] to these questions.
8 https://www.gnu.org/gnu/about-gnu.html
9 https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
10 https://www.gnu.org/
11 https://www.gnu.org/people/
12 https://www.gnu.org/software/
13 https://www.fsf.org/
14 https://www.fsf.org/campaigns
15 https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html
16 https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
17 https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guidelines.html
18 https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/
19 https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnu-misc-discuss/2019-10/msg00161.html
20 https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnu-misc-discuss/2019-10/msg00190.html
Resources
The FSF manages a lot of resources for the GNU project. It holds the
trademark, it is entrusted with some of the copyrights, does
fundraising and uses the money for technical infrastructure that GNU
volunteers can use. Crucially it maintains the infrastructure for
www.gnu.org[21], lists.gnu.org[22], ftp.gnu.org[23],
savannah.gnu.org[24] and fencepost.gnu.org for GNU projects to
publish their work and coordinate development. But this
infrastructure doesn't currently scale and several GNU projects have
to maintain[25] their own infrastructure. Some projects have their
own (earmarked) funds through the FSF Working Together for Free
Software[26] program (or sometimes through other foundations like
Software in the Public Interest[27]). It would be nice if the FSF
could provide a place to have a discussion about the use of FSF
resources by all the GNU volunteers (meta.gnu.org maybe) to help with
these discussions and to make it more clear who can speak for GNU and
which volunteers can use which mailinglists[28] for what purposes.
21 https://www.gnu.org/
22 https://lists.gnu.org/
23 https://ftp.gnu.org/
24 https://savannah.gnu.org/
25 https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnu-misc-discuss/2019-10/msg00024.html
26 https://www.fsf.org/working-together/fund
27 https://www.spi-inc.org/projects/
28 https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnu-misc-discuss/2019-11/msg00096.html
GNU Social Contract
All the above discussions will be easier if we could agree on some
guidelines that everybody[29] would follow when acting on behalf of
GNU. A mission statement about what it means to be GNU and what the
values are that the GNU community respects when working together.
Condensed to something that is easy to comprehend and follow by
anybody who wishes to associate with GNU. Ludo posted a first
(annotated) draft[30] based on the idea of the Debian Social
Contract. And after some discussion[31], Andreas posted a preliminary
version of the GNU Social Contract[32] based on four core principles:
* The GNU Project respects users freedoms
* The GNU Project provides a consistent system
* The GNU Project collaborates with the broader free software community
* The GNU Project welcomes contributions from all and everyone
29 https://wwahammy.com/on-safety-at-libreplanet/
30 https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnu-misc-discuss/2019-10/msg00050.html
31 https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnu-misc-discuss/2019-11/msg00358.html
32
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnu-misc-discuss/2019-11/txt4qcP6odMnx.txt
If you are working on and/or participation in a GNU project we would
love to hear your feedback on the proposed GNU Social Contract, the
relation of the GNU project and the FSF, governance, membership and
any of the other topics that we have been discussing. Together we can
make sure that the GNU project will keep empowering all users to
control their computing.
- A summary of some open discussions,
Mark Wielaard <=