On Thu, 2021-04-08 at 08:45 +0200, John Darrington wrote: > On Wed, Apr 07, 2021 at 06:34:12PM -0400, David Malcolm wrote: > > > > What you're describing sounds like a dictatorship to me. > > > > ???? I cannot see how you reach that conclusion. > > Having one guy at the top from whom all power flows. > > Power does not "flow" from RMS. Since you have used a political > analogy: > I think it is more akin to a constitutional monarchy.
I grew up in the UK, and am most familiar with the situation there; I don't have experience of the Australian system. > > What's the process for replacing the guy at the top, if he's > become a > liability to the project? What would a healthy structure look > like? > > Many countries have a single person as head of state with no formally > defined process for replacing him or her. Most of those countries > are not > usually descibed as "dictatorships". It depends on whether the head of state is a mere figurehead, or is actually in charge. In the UK, the Queen is nominally in charge of "her government", but that mostly amounts to merely rubberstamping the election result, albeit with some limited "soft power" in terms of gravitas. I think it remains to be seen if the monarchy will survive her passing (if indeed the UK is still in its current form at that point, but that's a whole other can of worms). > Further, history has shown, in cases where that head of state has > been > forcibly removed (eg France, Russia). the regime that replaced them > turned > out to be composed of murderous powermongers concerned with nobody's > interest > but their own. If we're continuing the political analogy, a counterexample might be the United States. > I for one, will not sit back and let that heppen to GNU. I think it's important to distinguish between the figurative and literal here. No one is literally calling for anyone's head. Some of us don't want RMS in a leadership position in a project we're associated with (be it the FSF or GNU, and thus, GCC). My opinions, not my employer's, as usual. Dave
