Re: Turning GNU into a bottom-up organization

[Mark Wielaard]

On Tue, 2019-10-22 at 10:16 +0200, František Kučera wrote:
> i.e. there is no guarantee that contributors are faithful to free
> software ideas and that they always work for the benefit of users and
> their freedom.
> 
> So if this is to have a chance of success, there must be a rigid
> (immutable) constitution which guarantees the principles in the long
> term. (Sure, immutability has its pitfalls, but if the principles are to
> change, it is necessary to come up with a new name – the words like free
> software, FSF or GNU must not be reused for a different purpose).
> 
> We have the GNU Manifesto <https://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html> and
> the Free Software Definition
> <https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html>. Maybe they should be
> transformed into a constitutional document (while retaining the original
> meaning, of course).

Yes, I totally agree. That was what my, probably too long, message
tried to say. In practice I think it works because unless you do things
the GNU way you won't get "promoted" from contributor to developer to
committer to uploader to co-maintainer, etc. So most GNU contributors
already have a firm and willing commitment to Free Software and the GNU
way. But it would be excellent if we has some kind of Social Contract
for the GNU project to make that a more formal requirement. Those who
don't agree can then of course still contribute, but they wouldn't get
responsibilities for the project.

Cheers,

Mark