Re: GNU Social Contract version 1.0

[Andreas R.]

Hi Andreas,

On Fri, Feb 14, 2020 at 07:03:07PM +0100, Andreas Enge wrote:
> 
> We have invited all GNU maintainers to send a message until February 24,
> the end of the endorsement period, 

Could you clarify what this cut-off date of February the 24th means? What 
happens afterwards? 

As things are there is a bloc of of GNU maintainers that will voluntarily
hold themselves to different standards than required by the GNU
project. These bloc-internal standards are fortunately not incompatible with the
current requirements of the GNU project, so there is no conflict in
that regard, nor any need for an ultimatum.

To push for endorsement it has been alleged that:
- the GNU project is faltering
- certain maintainers preclude possible contributors from participating.

Since there is no reason for this bloc not to exist, even within
the GNU project, there should be no reason for any sort of cut-off date.
In fact, keeping endorsement open-ended might be exactly the
legitimate tool for influencing governance, since maintainers
within the block should get, by their own projections, more contributors
and make development easier. This should logically lead to a situation
where over time the amount of maintainers and contributors inside the bloc 
would grow up to a point where where any leadership question becomes moot.

The thing currently working against the formalisation of the bloc
is a good name for the faction. I'm afraid "gnu.tools", with ".tools"
being a top level domain will be considered too close to gnu itself 
to fairly represent what is only a subset of GNU maintainers.

I'm sure the current gnu.tools leadership is open to discussion on
the naming matter and can come up with a more amiable identifier to
represent their movement that would be  acceptable to all parties.

        thanks,
        Andreas R.