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Re: What's GNU -- and what's not


From: Mark Wielaard
Subject: Re: What's GNU -- and what's not
Date: Fri, 7 Feb 2020 20:51:49 +0100
User-agent: Mutt/1.10.1 (2018-07-13)

Hi Richard,

On Thu, Feb 06, 2020 at 01:36:07AM -0500, Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
> Date: Tue, 4 Feb 2020 18:26:51 -0500
> From: "Richard Stallman (Chief GNUisance)" <rms@gnu.org>
> To: rms@gnu.org
> Subject: What's GNU -- and what's not
> 
> The GNU Project is sending this message to each GNU package 
> maintainer.

I hadn't seen this earlier, but Alfred was nice enough to forward it
to the public discussion list.

> You may have recently received an email asking you to review a
> document titled "GNU Social Contract" and then to endorse it or
> reject it.

I assume you are referring to the email we sent recently calling for
discussion of the DRAFT GNU Social Contract:
https://wiki.gnu.tools/git/gnu-tools-wiki/plain/code/sc-email.txt

> It does not entirely accord with the GNU Project's views.

Many people already gave feedback on it and we do hope that it does
match as closely as possible. If you still believe it doesn't entirely
accord with the GNU Project's views then please do suggest wording
changes. We hope to combine all the feedback by February 10th for an
updated version.

> The message also proposed to "define" what it means to be a "member
> of GNU", and cited a web page presented as a "wiki for GNU
> maintainers", It may have given the impression that they were doing
> all those things on behalf of the GNU Project.  That is not the
> case.  The document, the wiki, and the proposed idea of "members"
> have no standing in the GNU Project, which is not considering such
> steps.  The use of a domain not affiliated with GNU reflects this
> fact.

As you know since the FSF asked for feedback on the relationship
between the FSF and GNU we have wanted to have some public discussion
with all GNU volunteers precisely on What's GNU -- and what's not.
Some of those discussions have been used as input to that process:
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnu-misc-discuss/2019-12/msg00011.html
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnu-misc-discuss/2019-12/msg00026.html

One of the outputs of our process is the proposed GNU Social Contract
DRAFT: https://wiki.gnu.tools/gnu:social-contract

We hope that when we concentrate on what binds us, focus on the core
values of the GNU project volunteers, then we will create a stronger
community. And it will be easier to discuss things when we might not
agree because then we have a shared common base to fall back on.

A GNU wiki to support this process was requested by several GNU
maintainers. So we did ask the FSF to setup a public space for this.
To have a neutral place for the GNU community as a whole to have a
public discussion. But they told us that they don't have the resources
for that. So in good GNU tradition we got together and just setup
something ourselves. The gnu.tools domain is tools by GNU maintainers
for GNU maintainers. It is as officially affiliated with the GNU
project as any other GNU site where GNU volunteers work together. Any
GNU maintainer can use https://wiki.gnu.tools/ for working documents
they want to have publicly discussed.

We would like to extend this to any GNU volunteer to make sure those
who work to make GNU a reality feel like they are really part of the
community. Which is why we proposed to extend the discussion to what
it means to be a GNU member. But that is something we can discuss in
the future. Lets first see if we can come up with a GNU Social
Contract that people feel comfortable to endorse if they like it and
that describes the core values of the GNU project.

Thanks,

Mark



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