On Fri, Apr 16, 2021 at 10:49 AM Christopher Dimech via Gcc <gcc@gcc.gnu.org> wrote: > > Sent: Saturday, April 17, 2021 at 1:03 AM > > From: "Ville Voutilainen" <ville.voutilai...@gmail.com> > > To: "Christopher Dimech" <dim...@gmx.com> > > Cc: "GCC Development" <gcc@gcc.gnu.org> > > Subject: Re: A suggestion for going forward from the RMS/FSF debate > > > > On Fri, 16 Apr 2021 at 15:46, Christopher Dimech <dim...@gmx.com> wrote: > > > > The "small minority of developers" you speak of sure > > > > seems to consist of developers who are not in the minority > > > > considering how much they _actually contribute_ to the project. > > > > > > Due to their being paid for the work. Have no doubt that if others > > > were being paid, the contributions could likely drown the current > > > contributors. Thus, the claim of a power grab is valid. > > > > How convenient to make that claim and just bypass what's said in the next > > bit: > > > > > > > > > Some of them don't need to perform a "power grab"; they > > > > already have all the power fathomable, by virtue of being maintainers > > > > and active developers. > > > > I very much doubt your lofty hypothesis that if "others" were being paid, > > the > > contributions would "likely drown" the current contributors. Especially > > when we're talking about people who have submitted pretty close to ZERO > > patches to GCC. You can give a claim that a person $foo would contribute > > if being paid to do it. I'll buy that claim if you're talking about people > > like > > Nathan Sidwell and Iain Sandoe from the time before they became active > > contributors again, now that they've been hired to do that. I will not > > buy that claim about people who haven't been GCC contributors before. > > There are many users of gcc who are more qualified to know what is needed > in gcc, than developers. That does not mean than I want to diminish their > authority for gcc. But that authority was still conferred to them by the > the Gnu Project - which demands responsibility to carry out the assigned > tasks to the best of their ability, not to excoriate their obligation towards > the project itself. > > The ultimate authority is the final responsibility of the Gnu Project, > not only that of gcc.
Free Software means there is no ultimate authority. In Free Software, leadership of the development process is by the "consent of the governed". If there is sufficient objection to the existing leadership, developers can change it, either by negotiation for changes with the current leadership or by forking. The EGCS fork happened because a critical mass of developers gave up on the GNU GCC2 leadership model. The reconciliation happened because GNU agreed to accept the EGCS development model as GNU GCC. I hope to resolve the current crisis by leadership adjustments something along the lines of Ville's proposal, rather than forking. Jason
