So,
On 2024-10-26 22:22, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
We have enough money, about 50k€ currently at the FSF plus a couple
thousand € at Guix Foundation⁰.
So we rely on the FSF for the funding, mostly.
I don't want to discuss if we want to separate ourselves from the FSF or
not, but in the end, if we want to be independent we should control
where is the money coming from. Can the FSF cut the funding?
In any case, I think the money should be employed on keeping the
substitutes, the CI and so on. That is important, because a great
package manager that is unreliable easily becomes a poor package manager.
Having a reliable Guix is good for everything. And many of us are
developers, and don't like to do the reliability work.
I could also think about the ramifications of the thing, the people who
control the machines control everything and they might become evil and
be too powerful. But it's a risk I think we should take.
We have people that have been thanklessly doing this job for very long
time, I don't expect them to become bad actors. If they didn't break
after so long... I think they proved themselves.
⁰ There’s a ledger at
<https://framagit.org/guix-europe/guix-europe/-/blob/main/accounting/accounting.ledger>
but I don’t remember how to get the balance with the ‘ledger’ command.
:-)
- Is the Guix Foundation the way to do it?
It is one way to do it, yes.
Should we invest on making it **The Way**?
- Does GNU, or the FSF, have some role on that?
GNU isn’t a legal structure, it “doesn’t exist” so to speak.
The FSF reimburses when we send them invoices; Guix Foundation can pay
services, hardware, etc. directly, which is more convenient.
My preference would be to have a single structure, to improve legibility
and simplify things, and that structure would not be the FSF.
I can agree with that. I don't dislike the FSF specially but I prefer to
be more independent. What I do like is the principles we share with the
FSF, and having a different financial structure should not change that.
I think we all agree on the fact that Guix should continue to be a Free
Software distribution.
- Can we improve anything relieving weight from the shoulders of some
people instead of putting even more on them?
Yes! Committers can review code; people interested in governance can
help with the next steps, in particular the RFC process at
<https://issues.guix.gnu.org/66844>; sysadmins/devops/hackers can help
with the infrastructure¹; and so on.
These are some of the thankless tasks that are key to a healthy project
and where we must ensure a fair distribution of work to avoid burnout.
I like that.
¹ https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2024-05/msg00183.html
That link is lost in the ML, shouldn't all that list be somewhere in the
Guix manual so we can understand the whole picture of Guix?
Maybe with an explanation about how these parts interact with each other?
I think we should add something like that in "Contributing to Guix" part
of the manual.
- Would having more committers help relieve some of the weight?
Only if they participate in code review.
I'm not very good at it. But I'd like to help.
- If so, should we propose commit access to people, instead of waiting
them to propose themselves?
We should. I think maintainers started doing it?
Maybe we should do it more.
- Should we ease the process of becoming a committer?
Do you think the process is difficult? Or intimidating maybe?
Yes.
I think it's intimidating because for some it's hard to take
responsibility. I feel way more comfortable as an outsider. Also, I
don't consider I deserve to be a committer or anything like that. I
don't know how to deal with that. I approached you and told you I
thought it was time for me to help, some of you agreed and when the
process started to take long I preferred to let it cool down.
I feel like I'm asking for too much. IDK.
I think it would be more encouraging if it was proposed to people, and
not the other way around. Making people ask for it may make them think
twice and be cautious. Proposing them may make them feel encouraged and
wiling to demonstrate they deserved the "price".
I don't know. I don't like the process, that's for sure. But I don't
know because of my personal case was weird or in general. I also saw
some people saying their request was delayed and so on. The current
process generates some awkwardness we could ease.
Ludo’.
In the end Ludovic, if I may:
0. Is the donate page in guix.gnu.org up to date? Maybe we should make
sure it is, and maybe include the Guix Foundation?
1. Adopt an RFC process. I think it's valuable.
2. Decide if we want to invest on the Guix Foundation:
- What is the status of it? Is it a fully functional organization?
- Can we use the Guix Foundation for, for example, Tax exempt
donations in the EU? And the US? Maybe some famous streamer could use
their platform to make fundraisers for the Guix Foundation. (see what
the Zig Software Foundation does)
- Could we use the Guix Foundation to make a minimal Business (I hate
that word) model to make a Guix-based product to get funds to improve
Guix itself? Say, make a Guix hosting service? Currently most of us are
throwing money to corporations for our small servers and would be happy
to redirect that to something we love, while also having a great Guix
based workflow.
- Or maybe some of us could make that model and donate all or part of
the profits to the Guix Foundation? (I think owning the hardware helps a
lot)
3. Once we have money we can use, choose some people to maintain the
infrastructure and pay them.
- Can we really afford our machines? (are we paying for all of them?
what are we going to do with the ones that are in a basement somewhere?)
- Is Guix sustainable?
4. Maybe decide if we want to have paid maintainers/security-maintainers
or committers (or teams!).
5. Relieve weight from people that have too much on their shoulders. I
won't name names, but some of you are in the border to the burnout.
- How could the rest of us mitigate that? Maybe it's time to speak
and ask for help.
6. Propose more committers. Encourage committers to review patches, and
also non-committers! (Steve, you are doing a valuable thing)
7. Add documentation about Guix's infrastructure to the Contributing
section of the manual, so anyone can pay attention to that part of Guix
too. I'll try to do that myself, if someone else is committed to commit
it ;)
Those points we could act on in the short/mid-term, or at least give us
some direction.
What do you think, am I missing something?
Maybe some of the calls to action you don't like? Are they practical enough?
