Re: RMS removed from the GCC Steering Committee

[kenner@vlsi1.ultra.nyu.edu (Richard Kenner)]

> I'm scared by the dangerous influence that dangeours US corporations
> and a dangerous military nation with a long history of human rights
> violations (see Snowden's and Assange's revelations and the ongoing
> Assange's trial) HAVE over the GCC development.

I agree that that's a concern, but the point being made is that the SC
is not relevant to this because they, as a practial matter, have
almost no influence on GCC development.  GCC development is mostly
influenced by those companies that pay people to work on GCC.  It is a
fact that most of these are US corporations.  But the only way to
change that is to encourage companies that are *not* in the US to
contribute too.

> Except that the President of FSF (and Chief GNUissance himself) was
> receiving copy of all the communications of the Steering Committee.

Do we know this as a fact?  I don't know whether that's the case or
not, but I've read this entire thread and have seen no evidence either
way on that issue. In any event, I suspect that the "all communications"
may be less than a few dozen emails a year, although that's only a
guess on my part.

> Thus, I'm not naive enough to ignore the thousands way your employee
> can get huge advantages by having you in the GCC's Steering Committee.

Thousands?  Given how little the SC actually *does*, I find it hard
to come up with any meaningful advantages at all, let alone "huge" ones.

> As a small example among many many others, you are using a @google.com
> mail address while serving in the Steering Committee.

So?  How many emails per year do SC members send on behalf of the SC?
As far as I see, it averages maybe two per year, all of which are
announcements of new or changed maintainers of components of GCC.

> On the contrary, it explains WHY you are debating against an urgent
> fix to the GCC Steering Committee on my request, while you had no
> problem to promptly remove Stallman on Nathan's request.

Again, the position taken was that RMS was never *on* the SC to begin
with.

> You said you involved him in SC discussions.
> You said you treated him as a member of the Steering Committee.

You're missing the point here.  The role of the SC is to act as the
official maintainer of GCC.  The official maintainer of a GNU project
coordinates things with the GNU project (a tautology).  RMS is indeed
involved in those communications (which I suspect are quite rare), but
as a representative of the GNU project, *not* of the GCC SC.