* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-15 17:31 ` David Malcolm
@ 2021-04-15 19:05 ` Ian Lance Taylor
2021-04-15 19:27 ` Christopher Dimech
` (2 subsequent siblings)
3 siblings, 0 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: Ian Lance Taylor @ 2021-04-15 19:05 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: David Malcolm; +Cc: GCC Development
On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 10:31 AM David Malcolm via Gcc <gcc@gcc.gnu.org> wrote:
>
> I still admire much of what RMS has written, and have spent much of my
> career trying to implement part of a vision inspired by him. I'm sad
> about the way things have turned out. Twitter seems to turn everything
> into a pitched battle between two camps. I hope there's room for a
> nuanced view of him - the good and the less good. I don't know what
> role he should have, but I think it should not be a leadership one, and
> I think the FSF and GNU need to greatly change to stay relevant,
> including on governance and on succession plans. None of us are
> getting any younger, and the vision of the FSF and GNU seems to me to
> be stuck in the 1990s (or earlier).
Thanks, that is well put. That describes my own feelings as well.
To be very blunt, I don't know how to read
https://www.fsf.org/news/rms-addresses-the-free-software-community and
think "the person who wrote this should be in a leadership role." I
don't think RMS is a bad person. I think that RMS can still have a
great deal to contribute to free software as a programmer and as a
philosopher. But those are not the words of a leader. Leadership is
about people: understanding what people need, understanding how to
motivate them toward a shared goal. What I see in that essay is
somebody who doesn't understand people very well, and is not all that
interested in learning.
Ian
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-15 17:31 ` David Malcolm
2021-04-15 19:05 ` Ian Lance Taylor
@ 2021-04-15 19:27 ` Christopher Dimech
2021-04-15 20:26 ` Chris Punches
2021-04-15 23:28 ` Eric S. Raymond
3 siblings, 0 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: Christopher Dimech @ 2021-04-15 19:27 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: dmalcolm; +Cc: esr, Joseph Myers, gcc, Nathan Sidwell
> Sent: Friday, April 16, 2021 at 5:31 AM
> From: "David Malcolm via Gcc" <gcc@gcc.gnu.org>
> To: esr@thyrsus.com, "Joseph Myers" <joseph@codesourcery.com>
> Cc: gcc@gcc.gnu.org, "Nathan Sidwell" <nathan@acm.org>
> Subject: Re: removing toxic emailers
>
> On Thu, 2021-04-15 at 09:49 -0400, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
> > Joseph Myers <joseph@codesourcery.com>:
> > > On Wed, 14 Apr 2021, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
> > >
> > > > I'm not judging RMS's behavior (or anyone else's) one way or
> > > > another. I am simply pointing out that there is a Schelling point
> > > > in
> > > > possible community norms that is well expressed as "you shall judge
> > > > by
> > > > the code alone". This list is not full of contention from
> > > > affirming
> > > > that norm, but from some peoples' attempt to repudiate it.
> > >
> > > Since RMS, FSF and GNU are not contributing code to the toolchain and
> > > haven't been for a very long time, the most similar basis to judge
> > > them
> > > would seem to be based on their interactions with toolchain
> > > development.
> > > I think those interactions generally show that FSF and GNU have been
> > > bad
> > > umbrella organizations for the toolchain since at least when the GCC
> > > 4.4
> > > release was delayed waiting for a slow process of developing the GCC
> > > Runtime Library Exception.
> >
> > I do not have standing to argue this point.
> >
> > I will, however, point out that it is a very *different* point from
> > "RMS has iupset some people and should therefore be canceled".
>
> [I'm sorry to everyone who's sick of these threads, but I feel I have
> to respond to this one; sorry about writing another long email]
>
> Eric: I don't know if you're just being glib, or you're deliberately
> trying to caricature those of us who are upset by RMS's behavior.
>
> I think the words "canceled" and "cancel culture" have effectively
> become meaningless and should be avoided if we want to have a nuanced
> discussion - no-one seems to have a definition of what counts as
> "canceling" vs "consequences" vs "fair and measured responses".
>
> At one time, both you and RMS were heroes of mine, and I was a true
> believer (of what, I'm no longer sure); I own copies of both "The
> Cathedral and the Bazaar" and "Free Software - Free Society", though
> both are currently in my attic, gathering dust.
>
> I've long felt that there was a massive hole in the GNU project and FSF
> where effective technical leadership should have been - various
> maintainers on gcc, gdb, etc have been implementing things, and things
> were humming along, and those of us in Red Hat working on them tried to
> coordinate on features we felt were important - but where was the top-
> level response to, say, LLVM/clang? (to name just one of many changes
> in the industry) In many ways the last 8 years of my career have been
> an attempt to get gcc to respond to the appearance of LLVM/clang (I've
> added JIT-compilation, improved diagnostics, and I'm implementing a
> static analysis pass)
I don't see a problem with improvements in appearance when valuable and
useful. It is not easy to work with as it could be. One can also complain
about what's missing in LLVM. I am however not a proponent of C++, and closely
relate to Eric's comment about the unfortunate decline of C. Have worked
on C++ myself in the oil, gas and mining industry, and in other things like
underwater acoustics. Where the difficulties of working with object oriented
programming made working with some kinds of algorithms impossible to track
adequately.
> - I'm lucky that my managers inside Red Hat are
> happy to pay me to hack on this stuff and make GCC better - it helps
> our customers, but it also helps GCC, and the broader FLOSS communities
> using both toolchains).
>
> Where has the technical leadership from RMS been? Instead the long-
> standing opposition by RMS to exposing the compiler's IR has hobbled
> GCC, and partly contributed to the pile of technical debt we have to
> dig our way out of. The only "leadership" coming out of GNU/FSF seem
> to me to be dictats from on high about ChangeLog formats and coding
> conventions. The GNU project seems to me to be stuck in the 1980s.
> Perhaps a pronouncement like: "try to make everything be consumable as
> libraries with APIs, as well as as standalone binaries" might have
> helped (and still could; can we do that please?)
>
> Similarly, I agree with Joseph's observations of the ways that the FSF
> and GNU have been bad umbrella organizations for the toolchain.
>
> But beyond the failure of technical leadership, and the organizational
> incompetence/incoherence, is RMS's behavior, and the extent to which
> it, as you put it "upset some people".
>
> RMS's defenders seem to have fixated on his 2019 comments on Marvin
> Minsky, the uproar over those, and his responses to them (then and
> recently), and seem keen to assure us that everything's OK now, or, at
> least on a road to improvement.
I have seen much discussion and arguments emanating from that. Including
the current debate, as justification for disposing completely of RMS.
> But in the time since those 2019 comments, I've been reconsidering my
> views on RMS. In particular, I have read of many alleged incidents
> such as:
> - spontaneously licking a female conference member on the arm
> - appearing to hit on anyone female, even if they're underage
> - asking which female audience members at his talk were virgins
>
> At least one of the above was from a former colleage of mine, which
> when I read it was about the point that broke me.
>
> As part of my reconsidering my views on RMS, I recalled an event
> described in Sam Williams' biography of RMS in which Williams describes
> RMS's then girlfriend talking about how she "admired the way Richard
> built up an entire political movement to address an issue of profound
> personal concern", which she identified as "crushing loneliness".
>
> When I first read that, years ago, I felt sorry and pity for RMS, and a
> vague feeling that community is an important part of FLOSS, or somesuch
> sentiment (and a feeling of trying to recreate a lost utopia from the
> 1980s).
>
> But in the light of the various reports of RMS's awkard behavior around
> women, I decided to reread that section. I looked online, and found
> that the book is available here:
> https://www.fsf.org/faif
Numerous studies indicate that a woman's presence can change a dude's behavior
in some pretty insane ways. But that also happens when dealing with influential
people.
> I noticed this passage immediately after the reference to "crushing
> loneliness":
>
> "During dinner, I let the women do the talking and spent most of the
> time trying to detect clues as to whether the last 12 months had
> softened Stallman in any significant way. I didn’t see anything to
> suggest they had. Although more flirtatious than I remembered,
> Stallman retained the same general level of prickliness. At one point,
> my wife uttered an emphatic "God forbid" only to receive a typical
> Stallman rebuke."
>
> Something about the reference to "flirtatious" caught me eye in the
> light of the stories I've read about RMS's behavior around women. It
> turns out that the original text is available on Project Gutenberg
> here:
> http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5768
> where that passage reads:
>
> "During dinner, I let the women do the talking and spent most of the
> time trying to detect clues as to whether the last 12 months had
> softened Stallman in any significant way. I didn't see anything to
> suggest they had. Although more flirtatious than I remembered - a
> flirtatiousness spoiled somewhat by the number of times Stallman's eyes
> seemed to fixate on my wife's chest - Stallman retained the same
> general level of prickliness. At one point, my wife uttered an emphatic
> "God forbid" only to receive a typical Stallman rebuke."
>
> Spot the difference?
>
> https://www.fsf.org/faif says:
> "It is a rare kind of biography, where the reader has the benefit of
> both the biographer's original words and the subject's response."
>
> which is certainly one way of describing it. It's unclear to me
> whether Williams removed that sentence, or RMS did. It may be unfair
> to Williams and his wife to draw attention to this in this email, and
> I'm sorry if it is - I mention it here as it's something that no-one
> else seemed to have noticed. I don't want biography to become
> hagiography - it's unhealthy to put people up on a pedestal - for them
> and us.
>
> I don't know if your retort about "upset[ing] some people" was
> referring to the Minsky comments, or to the behaviors RMS seems to be
> prone to around women, which although I'm not a woman, appear to me to
> be very alienating. If the latter, you might want to consider that
> women and girls are roughly half the population of the world at large
> (if not this project), and referring to them as "some people" might be
> seen as patronizing.
>
> I don't want FLOSS to be a boy's club, but also, merely, from the
> existing narrow perspective of the political mission of the FSF, I
> think having more women involved would help keep software freedom
> relevant to today's tech enviroment. For example, I think this article
> has an excellent take on the power relationship between smartphones and
> their users, comparing a smartphone to an abusive partner:
> https://conversationalist.org/2019/09/13/feminism-explains-our-toxic-relationships-with-our-smartphones/
> and it makes many points that I think are very relevant to the FSF's
> political mission (if not on-topic to the nuts and bolts of GCC
> development; I'm just posting it here by way of example).
>
> Most of the above issues involve gender, but not all of them.
In the field of my interest - in mathematics - there is a wealth of scholarship
and career opportunities available to women. And still there are not enough
to fill the jobs that could be available. Although the story is much more
promising for Asian and Hispanic Women.
Various mathematical societies as well as corporations, federal, state and local government agencies, minority support groups, the military, universities, academic associations, research companies, and other groups offer assistance for qualified individuals.
At any rate, at times when positions were held by women, I did not notice any
appreciative difference in leadership or management style. The same problems
remained. The reality is that it change is mostly dependent on the qualities
of the people involved, rather than what's under their pants.
> For example, the staff of the FSF appear to have had to unionize
> specifically as a response to having to constantly deal with
> unreasonable behavior from RMS (and the management apparently wanted to
> join the union too, but couldn't due to laws on such matters).
>
> Reading that made me regret if any harsh words I've had for the
> organization of the FSF have hurt the staffers there; it seems to have
> been a very difficult place to work.
>
> To try to sum up, it's not just RMS's remarks about Minsky that
> bothered me. I think there are technical, governance, *and* social
> issues here. To be fair, I'm not sure how much of my own visceral
> reaction to RMS's recent return to the FSF board is due to the amount
> of code I've had to write to deal with technical decisions he's imposed
> on the project, versus a feeling of "ick" having now read the stories
> from women who've felt deeply uncomfortable around him. Maybe I'm just
> bitter about having to fix the code. To what extent should we accept
> eccentric and/or antisocial behavior in FLOSS communities, or does
> doing so make us "enablers"? I'm not sure what the boundaries here
> should be.
>
> I think that the idea that some have that list moderation is always
> wrong closely relates to "Geek Social Fallacy #1: Ostracizers Are
> Evil":
> https://plausiblydeniable.com/five-geek-social-fallacies/
> and is equally invalid.
>
> I still admire much of what RMS has written, and have spent much of my
> career trying to implement part of a vision inspired by him. I'm sad
> about the way things have turned out. Twitter seems to turn everything
> into a pitched battle between two camps. I hope there's room for a
> nuanced view of him - the good and the less good. I don't know what
> role he should have, but I think it should not be a leadership one, and
> I think the FSF and GNU need to greatly change to stay relevant,
> including on governance and on succession plans. None of us are
> getting any younger, and the vision of the FSF and GNU seems to me to
> be stuck in the 1990s (or earlier).
>
> I don't have the emotional bandwidth to contribute more meaningfully to
> the future of GNU/FSF beyond my contributions to GCC, and this email.
> I've posted the following link to Luis Villa's blog before, which in my
> view has many good ideas on ways to save the FSF from itself, so I'll
> repost it again in case anyone hasn't seen it yet who might find
> benefit in it:
> https://lu.is/blog/2021/04/07/values-centered-npos-with-kmaher/
>
> I reject the idea that a FLOSS community should be judged purely on the
> code it generates - I want to work in a "professional" environment, for
> some definition of "professional", with basic standards of behavior,
> or, to quote the late Anthony Bourdain:
>
> "It is truly a privilege to live by what I call the "no asshole" rule.
> I don't do business with assholes. I don't care how much money they are
> offering me, or what project. Life is too short. Quality of life is
> important. I'm fortunate to collaborate with a lot of people who I
> respect and like, and I’d like to keep it that way."
>
> In general, my experiences with the GCC community is that it is full of
> people I respect and like, but with dysfunction when it comes to
> anything to do with GNU/FSF/RMS. (and thank you to the Steering
> Committee for helping shelter us from that dysfunction).
> This may have turned into a rant, for which I'm sorry, but I hope it's
> constructive. I've used "I and "me" a lot - the views here are my own,
> although I'm paid to care about GCC (which I do), and these are not the
> opinions of Red Hat, or of my colleagues.
>
> Sorry again about prolonging this thread; I will try to get back to
> coding now.
>
> Dave
>
>
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-15 17:31 ` David Malcolm
2021-04-15 19:05 ` Ian Lance Taylor
2021-04-15 19:27 ` Christopher Dimech
@ 2021-04-15 20:26 ` Chris Punches
2021-04-15 20:51 ` Ian Lance Taylor
` (3 more replies)
2021-04-15 23:28 ` Eric S. Raymond
3 siblings, 4 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: Chris Punches @ 2021-04-15 20:26 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: David Malcolm, esr, Joseph Myers; +Cc: gcc, Nathan Sidwell
What I see here in sum is another high level tightly integrated Red Hat
employee saying the gist of "I'm really not saying it out of my
employer's interest and it has nothing to do with my personal
feelings".
Every single proponent of this argument that I have seen so far is
employed by one of the same 5 companies and "really isn't doing it on
behalf of my company I swear".
Why is it almost exclusively that specific crowd saying it here, then?
I just don't buy it. Please say anything that would not support the
emerging theory that these companies are using integrated employees to
try to emulate justification/pretext for a rift to attack the free
software world. Anything at all.
-C
On Thu, 2021-04-15 at 13:31 -0400, David Malcolm via Gcc wrote:
> On Thu, 2021-04-15 at 09:49 -0400, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
> > Joseph Myers <joseph@codesourcery.com>:
> > > On Wed, 14 Apr 2021, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
> > >
> > > > I'm not judging RMS's behavior (or anyone else's) one way or
> > > > another. I am simply pointing out that there is a Schelling
> > > > point
> > > > in
> > > > possible community norms that is well expressed as "you shall
> > > > judge
> > > > by
> > > > the code alone". This list is not full of contention from
> > > > affirming
> > > > that norm, but from some peoples' attempt to repudiate it.
> > >
> > > Since RMS, FSF and GNU are not contributing code to the toolchain
> > > and
> > > haven't been for a very long time, the most similar basis to
> > > judge
> > > them
> > > would seem to be based on their interactions with toolchain
> > > development.
> > > I think those interactions generally show that FSF and GNU have
> > > been
> > > bad
> > > umbrella organizations for the toolchain since at least when the
> > > GCC
> > > 4.4
> > > release was delayed waiting for a slow process of developing the
> > > GCC
> > > Runtime Library Exception.
> >
> > I do not have standing to argue this point.
> >
> > I will, however, point out that it is a very *different* point from
> > "RMS has iupset some people and should therefore be canceled".
>
> [I'm sorry to everyone who's sick of these threads, but I feel I have
> to respond to this one; sorry about writing another long email]
>
> Eric: I don't know if you're just being glib, or you're deliberately
> trying to caricature those of us who are upset by RMS's behavior.
>
> I think the words "canceled" and "cancel culture" have effectively
> become meaningless and should be avoided if we want to have a nuanced
> discussion - no-one seems to have a definition of what counts as
> "canceling" vs "consequences" vs "fair and measured responses".
>
> At one time, both you and RMS were heroes of mine, and I was a true
> believer (of what, I'm no longer sure); I own copies of both "The
> Cathedral and the Bazaar" and "Free Software - Free Society", though
> both are currently in my attic, gathering dust.
>
> I've long felt that there was a massive hole in the GNU project and
> FSF
> where effective technical leadership should have been - various
> maintainers on gcc, gdb, etc have been implementing things, and
> things
> were humming along, and those of us in Red Hat working on them tried
> to
> coordinate on features we felt were important - but where was the
> top-
> level response to, say, LLVM/clang? (to name just one of many changes
> in the industry) In many ways the last 8 years of my career have
> been
> an attempt to get gcc to respond to the appearance of LLVM/clang
> (I've
> added JIT-compilation, improved diagnostics, and I'm implementing a
> static analysis pass) - I'm lucky that my managers inside Red Hat are
> happy to pay me to hack on this stuff and make GCC better - it helps
> our customers, but it also helps GCC, and the broader FLOSS
> communities
> using both toolchains).
>
> Where has the technical leadership from RMS been? Instead the long-
> standing opposition by RMS to exposing the compiler's IR has hobbled
> GCC, and partly contributed to the pile of technical debt we have to
> dig our way out of. The only "leadership" coming out of GNU/FSF seem
> to me to be dictats from on high about ChangeLog formats and coding
> conventions. The GNU project seems to me to be stuck in the 1980s.
> Perhaps a pronouncement like: "try to make everything be consumable
> as
> libraries with APIs, as well as as standalone binaries" might have
> helped (and still could; can we do that please?)
>
> Similarly, I agree with Joseph's observations of the ways that the
> FSF
> and GNU have been bad umbrella organizations for the toolchain.
>
> But beyond the failure of technical leadership, and the
> organizational
> incompetence/incoherence, is RMS's behavior, and the extent to which
> it, as you put it "upset some people".
>
> RMS's defenders seem to have fixated on his 2019 comments on Marvin
> Minsky, the uproar over those, and his responses to them (then and
> recently), and seem keen to assure us that everything's OK now, or,
> at
> least on a road to improvement.
>
> But in the time since those 2019 comments, I've been reconsidering my
> views on RMS. In particular, I have read of many alleged incidents
> such as:
> - spontaneously licking a female conference member on the arm
> - appearing to hit on anyone female, even if they're underage
> - asking which female audience members at his talk were virgins
>
> At least one of the above was from a former colleage of mine, which
> when I read it was about the point that broke me.
>
> As part of my reconsidering my views on RMS, I recalled an event
> described in Sam Williams' biography of RMS in which Williams
> describes
> RMS's then girlfriend talking about how she "admired the way Richard
> built up an entire political movement to address an issue of profound
> personal concern", which she identified as "crushing loneliness".
>
> When I first read that, years ago, I felt sorry and pity for RMS, and
> a
> vague feeling that community is an important part of FLOSS, or
> somesuch
> sentiment (and a feeling of trying to recreate a lost utopia from the
> 1980s).
>
> But in the light of the various reports of RMS's awkard behavior
> around
> women, I decided to reread that section. I looked online, and found
> that the book is available here:
> https://www.fsf.org/faif
>
> I noticed this passage immediately after the reference to "crushing
> loneliness":
>
> "During dinner, I let the women do the talking and spent most of the
> time trying to detect clues as to whether the last 12 months had
> softened Stallman in any significant way. I didn’t see anything to
> suggest they had. Although more flirtatious than I remembered,
> Stallman retained the same general level of prickliness. At one
> point,
> my wife uttered an emphatic "God forbid" only to receive a typical
> Stallman rebuke."
>
> Something about the reference to "flirtatious" caught me eye in the
> light of the stories I've read about RMS's behavior around women. It
> turns out that the original text is available on Project Gutenberg
> here:
> http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5768
> where that passage reads:
>
> "During dinner, I let the women do the talking and spent most of the
> time trying to detect clues as to whether the last 12 months had
> softened Stallman in any significant way. I didn't see anything to
> suggest they had. Although more flirtatious than I remembered - a
> flirtatiousness spoiled somewhat by the number of times Stallman's
> eyes
> seemed to fixate on my wife's chest - Stallman retained the same
> general level of prickliness. At one point, my wife uttered an
> emphatic
> "God forbid" only to receive a typical Stallman rebuke."
>
> Spot the difference?
>
> https://www.fsf.org/faif says:
> "It is a rare kind of biography, where the reader has the benefit
> of
> both the biographer's original words and the subject's response."
>
> which is certainly one way of describing it. It's unclear to me
> whether Williams removed that sentence, or RMS did. It may be unfair
> to Williams and his wife to draw attention to this in this email, and
> I'm sorry if it is - I mention it here as it's something that no-one
> else seemed to have noticed. I don't want biography to become
> hagiography - it's unhealthy to put people up on a pedestal - for
> them
> and us.
>
> I don't know if your retort about "upset[ing] some people" was
> referring to the Minsky comments, or to the behaviors RMS seems to be
> prone to around women, which although I'm not a woman, appear to me
> to
> be very alienating. If the latter, you might want to consider that
> women and girls are roughly half the population of the world at large
> (if not this project), and referring to them as "some people" might
> be
> seen as patronizing.
>
> I don't want FLOSS to be a boy's club, but also, merely, from the
> existing narrow perspective of the political mission of the FSF, I
> think having more women involved would help keep software freedom
> relevant to today's tech enviroment. For example, I think this
> article
> has an excellent take on the power relationship between smartphones
> and
> their users, comparing a smartphone to an abusive partner:
>
> https://conversationalist.org/2019/09/13/feminism-explains-our-toxic-relationships-with-our-smartphones/
> and it makes many points that I think are very relevant to the FSF's
> political mission (if not on-topic to the nuts and bolts of GCC
> development; I'm just posting it here by way of example).
>
> Most of the above issues involve gender, but not all of them.
>
> For example, the staff of the FSF appear to have had to unionize
> specifically as a response to having to constantly deal with
> unreasonable behavior from RMS (and the management apparently wanted
> to
> join the union too, but couldn't due to laws on such matters).
>
> Reading that made me regret if any harsh words I've had for the
> organization of the FSF have hurt the staffers there; it seems to
> have
> been a very difficult place to work.
>
> To try to sum up, it's not just RMS's remarks about Minsky that
> bothered me. I think there are technical, governance, *and* social
> issues here. To be fair, I'm not sure how much of my own visceral
> reaction to RMS's recent return to the FSF board is due to the amount
> of code I've had to write to deal with technical decisions he's
> imposed
> on the project, versus a feeling of "ick" having now read the stories
> from women who've felt deeply uncomfortable around him. Maybe I'm
> just
> bitter about having to fix the code. To what extent should we accept
> eccentric and/or antisocial behavior in FLOSS communities, or does
> doing so make us "enablers"? I'm not sure what the boundaries here
> should be.
>
> I think that the idea that some have that list moderation is always
> wrong closely relates to "Geek Social Fallacy #1: Ostracizers Are
> Evil":
> https://plausiblydeniable.com/five-geek-social-fallacies/
> and is equally invalid.
>
> I still admire much of what RMS has written, and have spent much of
> my
> career trying to implement part of a vision inspired by him. I'm sad
> about the way things have turned out. Twitter seems to turn
> everything
> into a pitched battle between two camps. I hope there's room for a
> nuanced view of him - the good and the less good. I don't know what
> role he should have, but I think it should not be a leadership one,
> and
> I think the FSF and GNU need to greatly change to stay relevant,
> including on governance and on succession plans. None of us are
> getting any younger, and the vision of the FSF and GNU seems to me to
> be stuck in the 1990s (or earlier).
>
> I don't have the emotional bandwidth to contribute more meaningfully
> to
> the future of GNU/FSF beyond my contributions to GCC, and this
> email.
> I've posted the following link to Luis Villa's blog before, which in
> my
> view has many good ideas on ways to save the FSF from itself, so I'll
> repost it again in case anyone hasn't seen it yet who might find
> benefit in it:
> https://lu.is/blog/2021/04/07/values-centered-npos-with-kmaher/
>
> I reject the idea that a FLOSS community should be judged purely on
> the
> code it generates - I want to work in a "professional" environment,
> for
> some definition of "professional", with basic standards of behavior,
> or, to quote the late Anthony Bourdain:
>
> "It is truly a privilege to live by what I call the "no asshole"
> rule.
> I don't do business with assholes. I don't care how much money they
> are
> offering me, or what project. Life is too short. Quality of life is
> important. I'm fortunate to collaborate with a lot of people who I
> respect and like, and I’d like to keep it that way."
>
> In general, my experiences with the GCC community is that it is full
> of
> people I respect and like, but with dysfunction when it comes to
> anything to do with GNU/FSF/RMS. (and thank you to the Steering
> Committee for helping shelter us from that dysfunction).
>
> This may have turned into a rant, for which I'm sorry, but I hope
> it's
> constructive. I've used "I and "me" a lot - the views here are my
> own,
> although I'm paid to care about GCC (which I do), and these are not
> the
> opinions of Red Hat, or of my colleagues.
>
> Sorry again about prolonging this thread; I will try to get back to
> coding now.
>
> Dave
>
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-15 20:26 ` Chris Punches
@ 2021-04-15 20:51 ` Ian Lance Taylor
2021-04-15 21:13 ` Christopher Dimech
2021-04-15 23:11 ` Frosku
2021-04-15 21:13 ` David Malcolm
` (2 subsequent siblings)
3 siblings, 2 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: Ian Lance Taylor @ 2021-04-15 20:51 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: chris.punches; +Cc: GCC Development
On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 1:26 PM Chris Punches via Gcc <gcc@gcc.gnu.org> wrote:
>
> Every single proponent of this argument that I have seen so far is
> employed by one of the same 5 companies and "really isn't doing it on
> behalf of my company I swear".
>
> Why is it almost exclusively that specific crowd saying it here, then?
For better or for worse, since the early '90s the majority of people
who do serious work on GCC have been hired by companies that want to
do serious work on GCC. After all, it's a win-win: the company gets
work done, the GCC programmer gets well paid. The effect is that most
of the major GCC contributors work for a relatively small number of
companies. There are of course many exceptions, but that is the
general rule.
Ian
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-15 20:51 ` Ian Lance Taylor
@ 2021-04-15 21:13 ` Christopher Dimech
2021-04-15 23:11 ` Frosku
1 sibling, 0 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: Christopher Dimech @ 2021-04-15 21:13 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: iant; +Cc: chris.punches, GCC Development
> Sent: Friday, April 16, 2021 at 8:51 AM
> From: "Ian Lance Taylor via Gcc" <gcc@gcc.gnu.org>
> To: chris.punches@silogroup.org
> Cc: "GCC Development" <gcc@gcc.gnu.org>
> Subject: Re: removing toxic emailers
>
> On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 1:26 PM Chris Punches via Gcc <gcc@gcc.gnu.org> wrote:
> >
> > Every single proponent of this argument that I have seen so far is
> > employed by one of the same 5 companies and "really isn't doing it on
> > behalf of my company I swear".
> >
> > Why is it almost exclusively that specific crowd saying it here, then?
>
> For better or for worse, since the early '90s the majority of people
> who do serious work on GCC have been hired by companies that want to
> do serious work on GCC. After all, it's a win-win: the company gets
> work done, the GCC programmer gets well paid. The effect is that most
> of the major GCC contributors work for a relatively small number of
> companies. There are of course many exceptions, but that is the
> general rule.
>
> Ian
Such contributions are valued, and companies where talent is allowed to flow
towards the public is commendable, even for those with a history of exploitation.
Many of us pay their taxes, not because we see crowds of people sent to jail.
But because spontaneous compliance is the way for things to work. That's what
I hope for.
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-15 20:51 ` Ian Lance Taylor
2021-04-15 21:13 ` Christopher Dimech
@ 2021-04-15 23:11 ` Frosku
2021-04-15 23:36 ` Christopher Dimech
2021-04-17 9:09 ` Gerald Pfeifer
1 sibling, 2 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: Frosku @ 2021-04-15 23:11 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Ian Lance Taylor, chris.punches; +Cc: GCC Development
On Thu Apr 15, 2021 at 9:51 PM BST, Ian Lance Taylor via Gcc wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 1:26 PM Chris Punches via Gcc <gcc@gcc.gnu.org>
> wrote:
> >
> > Every single proponent of this argument that I have seen so far is
> > employed by one of the same 5 companies and "really isn't doing it on
> > behalf of my company I swear".
> >
> > Why is it almost exclusively that specific crowd saying it here, then?
>
> For better or for worse, since the early '90s the majority of people
> who do serious work on GCC have been hired by companies that want to
> do serious work on GCC. After all, it's a win-win: the company gets
> work done, the GCC programmer gets well paid. The effect is that most
> of the major GCC contributors work for a relatively small number of
> companies. There are of course many exceptions, but that is the
> general rule.
>
> Ian
In my view, if people employed by a small number of American companies
succeed in disassociating GCC from GNU/FSF, which is representative of
the free software grassroots community, this is not a win-win. This is
powerful US corporations removing something our community created from
our community's oversight and moving it into a space where it's governed
by representatives of Silicon Valley rather than a membership-based non
profit.
Whilst everyone's contributions to the software should be welcomed, I
don't think you'll find many FSF members celebrating the impact of paid
Corporate engineers on GCC if this sorry state of affairs comes to be.
>>= %frosku = { os => 'gnu+linux', editor => 'emacs', coffee => 1 } =<<
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-15 23:11 ` Frosku
@ 2021-04-15 23:36 ` Christopher Dimech
2021-04-15 23:44 ` Frosku
2021-04-15 23:52 ` Eric S. Raymond
2021-04-17 9:09 ` Gerald Pfeifer
1 sibling, 2 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: Christopher Dimech @ 2021-04-15 23:36 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Frosku; +Cc: Ian Lance Taylor, chris.punches, GCC Development
> Sent: Friday, April 16, 2021 at 11:11 AM
> From: "Frosku" <frosku@frosku.com>
> To: "Ian Lance Taylor" <iant@google.com>, chris.punches@silogroup.org
> Cc: "GCC Development" <gcc@gcc.gnu.org>
> Subject: Re: removing toxic emailers
>
> On Thu Apr 15, 2021 at 9:51 PM BST, Ian Lance Taylor via Gcc wrote:
> > On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 1:26 PM Chris Punches via Gcc <gcc@gcc.gnu.org>
> > wrote:
> > >
> > > Every single proponent of this argument that I have seen so far is
> > > employed by one of the same 5 companies and "really isn't doing it on
> > > behalf of my company I swear".
> > >
> > > Why is it almost exclusively that specific crowd saying it here, then?
> >
> > For better or for worse, since the early '90s the majority of people
> > who do serious work on GCC have been hired by companies that want to
> > do serious work on GCC. After all, it's a win-win: the company gets
> > work done, the GCC programmer gets well paid. The effect is that most
> > of the major GCC contributors work for a relatively small number of
> > companies. There are of course many exceptions, but that is the
> > general rule.
> >
> > Ian
>
> In my view, if people employed by a small number of American companies
> succeed in disassociating GCC from GNU/FSF, which is representative of
> the free software grassroots community, this is not a win-win. This is
> powerful US corporations removing something our community created from
> our community's oversight and moving it into a space where it's governed
> by representatives of Silicon Valley rather than a membership-based non
> profit.
>
> Whilst everyone's contributions to the software should be welcomed, I
> don't think you'll find many FSF members celebrating the impact of paid
> Corporate engineers on GCC if this sorry state of affairs comes to be.
The commercial use of free software is our hope, not our fear. When people
at IBM began to come to free software, wanting to recommend it and use it,
and maybe distribute it themselves or encourage other people to distribute
it for them, we did not criticise them for not being non-profit virtuous
enough, or said "we are suspicious of you", let alone threatening them.
> >>= %frosku = { os => 'gnu+linux', editor => 'emacs', coffee => 1 } =<<
>
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-15 23:36 ` Christopher Dimech
@ 2021-04-15 23:44 ` Frosku
2021-04-15 23:52 ` Paul Koning
2021-04-16 0:00 ` Joseph Myers
2021-04-15 23:52 ` Eric S. Raymond
1 sibling, 2 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: Frosku @ 2021-04-15 23:44 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Christopher Dimech; +Cc: Ian Lance Taylor, chris.punches, GCC Development
On Fri Apr 16, 2021 at 12:36 AM BST, Christopher Dimech wrote:
>
> The commercial use of free software is our hope, not our fear. When
> people
> at IBM began to come to free software, wanting to recommend it and use
> it,
> and maybe distribute it themselves or encourage other people to
> distribute
> it for them, we did not criticise them for not being non-profit virtuous
> enough, or said "we are suspicious of you", let alone threatening them.
>
There is a colossal difference between commercial use and commercial
entities buying control of projects currently governed by entities
which are answerable to the grassroots (GNU) and then toppling that
governance structure in favor of one which is only answerable to
boardrooms in Silicon Valley and Seattle WA.
>>= %frosku = { os => 'gnu+linux', editor => 'emacs', coffee => 1 } =<<
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-15 23:44 ` Frosku
@ 2021-04-15 23:52 ` Paul Koning
2021-04-15 23:55 ` Frosku
2021-04-16 0:00 ` Joseph Myers
1 sibling, 1 reply; 153+ messages in thread
From: Paul Koning @ 2021-04-15 23:52 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Frosku; +Cc: Christopher Dimech, GCC Development
> On Apr 15, 2021, at 7:44 PM, Frosku <frosku@frosku.com> wrote:
>
> On Fri Apr 16, 2021 at 12:36 AM BST, Christopher Dimech wrote:
>>
>> The commercial use of free software is our hope, not our fear. When
>> people
>> at IBM began to come to free software, wanting to recommend it and use
>> it,
>> and maybe distribute it themselves or encourage other people to
>> distribute
>> it for them, we did not criticise them for not being non-profit virtuous
>> enough, or said "we are suspicious of you", let alone threatening them.
>>
>
> There is a colossal difference between commercial use and commercial
> entities buying control of projects currently governed by entities
> which are answerable to the grassroots (GNU) and then toppling that
> governance structure in favor of one which is only answerable to
> boardrooms in Silicon Valley and Seattle WA.
There are, or would be if that were a real issue. It's not something that is feasible with GPL licensed code, whether the copyright is held by the FSF as it is for GCC, or by all the authors as for Linux.
paul
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-15 23:52 ` Paul Koning
@ 2021-04-15 23:55 ` Frosku
0 siblings, 0 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: Frosku @ 2021-04-15 23:55 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Paul Koning; +Cc: Christopher Dimech, GCC Development
On Fri Apr 16, 2021 at 12:52 AM BST, Paul Koning wrote:
>
>
> > On Apr 15, 2021, at 7:44 PM, Frosku <frosku@frosku.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Fri Apr 16, 2021 at 12:36 AM BST, Christopher Dimech wrote:
> >>
> >> The commercial use of free software is our hope, not our fear. When
> >> people
> >> at IBM began to come to free software, wanting to recommend it and use
> >> it,
> >> and maybe distribute it themselves or encourage other people to
> >> distribute
> >> it for them, we did not criticise them for not being non-profit virtuous
> >> enough, or said "we are suspicious of you", let alone threatening them.
> >>
> >
> > There is a colossal difference between commercial use and commercial
> > entities buying control of projects currently governed by entities
> > which are answerable to the grassroots (GNU) and then toppling that
> > governance structure in favor of one which is only answerable to
> > boardrooms in Silicon Valley and Seattle WA.
>
> There are, or would be if that were a real issue. It's not something
> that is feasible with GPL licensed code, whether the copyright is held
> by the FSF as it is for GCC, or by all the authors as for Linux.
>
> paul
Paul,
Short of maintaining the FSF branch of the fork, I don't see a way to
keep the project's direction accountable to end users.
>>= %frosku = { os => 'gnu+linux', editor => 'emacs', coffee => 1 } =<<
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-15 23:44 ` Frosku
2021-04-15 23:52 ` Paul Koning
@ 2021-04-16 0:00 ` Joseph Myers
1 sibling, 0 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: Joseph Myers @ 2021-04-16 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Frosku; +Cc: Christopher Dimech, GCC Development
On Fri, 16 Apr 2021, Frosku wrote:
> There is a colossal difference between commercial use and commercial
> entities buying control of projects currently governed by entities
> which are answerable to the grassroots (GNU) and then toppling that
RMS's notion of GNU is as something under his personal direction and
control, not answerable to the grassroots at all.
For answerability to the grassroots, whatever organization the toolchain
falls under, it's better for it to *explicitly* act only as an umbrella
organization, serving the toolchain community rather than having any
authority to direct it.
--
Joseph S. Myers
joseph@codesourcery.com
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-15 23:36 ` Christopher Dimech
2021-04-15 23:44 ` Frosku
@ 2021-04-15 23:52 ` Eric S. Raymond
2021-04-16 0:04 ` Frosku
2021-04-16 0:48 ` Christopher Dimech
1 sibling, 2 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: Eric S. Raymond @ 2021-04-15 23:52 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Christopher Dimech; +Cc: Frosku, GCC Development
Christopher Dimech via Gcc <gcc@gcc.gnu.org>:
> The commercial use of free software is our hope, not our fear. When people
> at IBM began to come to free software, wanting to recommend it and use it,
> and maybe distribute it themselves or encourage other people to distribute
> it for them, we did not criticise them for not being non-profit virtuous
> enough, or said "we are suspicious of you", let alone threatening them.
Actually, some of us did *exactly* those things late in the last century.
One of the challenges I faced in my early famous years was persuading
the hacker culture as a whole to treat the profit-centered parts of the
economy as allies rather than enemies.
I won't say that a *majority* of us were resistent to this, but I
did have to work hard on the problem for a while, between 1997
and about 2003.
--
<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-15 23:52 ` Eric S. Raymond
@ 2021-04-16 0:04 ` Frosku
2021-04-16 0:16 ` Joseph Myers
2021-04-16 0:48 ` Christopher Dimech
1 sibling, 1 reply; 153+ messages in thread
From: Frosku @ 2021-04-16 0:04 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: esr, Christopher Dimech; +Cc: GCC Development
On Fri Apr 16, 2021 at 12:52 AM BST, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
> Christopher Dimech via Gcc <gcc@gcc.gnu.org>:
> > The commercial use of free software is our hope, not our fear. When people
> > at IBM began to come to free software, wanting to recommend it and use it,
> > and maybe distribute it themselves or encourage other people to distribute
> > it for them, we did not criticise them for not being non-profit virtuous
> > enough, or said "we are suspicious of you", let alone threatening them.
>
> Actually, some of us did *exactly* those things late in the last
> century.
>
> One of the challenges I faced in my early famous years was persuading
> the hacker culture as a whole to treat the profit-centered parts of the
> economy as allies rather than enemies.
>
> I won't say that a *majority* of us were resistent to this, but I
> did have to work hard on the problem for a while, between 1997
> and about 2003.
ESR,
My criticism has nothing to do with profit and everything to do with
accountability. GCC is a project which is used by almost everyone in the
ecosystem, and whose future direction is important to almost everyone in
the ecosystem. Right now, the ultimate oversight of GCC sits with GNU &
FSF -- both institutions with a mandate to represent the ecosystem based
on level of membership and time spent fighting for free software.
GCC forking away from those institutions removes that oversight, and
unless something which is equally or more representative is brought in to
replace that oversight role, I find it difficult to believe that this
doesn't represent a huge step backwards in terms of who ultimately has
an input into the future direction of GCC. It should be, at the very
minimum, challenging for representatives of Google, Red Hat and other
corporations to convince anyone -- after wrestling the project away from
GCC -- that their interests are not at odds with GCC users'.
I would say *exactly* the same thing if you replaced Google/Red Hat with
nonprofits which have less trust in free software than GNU/FSF.
>>= %frosku = { os => 'gnu+linux', editor => 'emacs', coffee => 1 } =<<
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-16 0:04 ` Frosku
@ 2021-04-16 0:16 ` Joseph Myers
2021-04-16 0:41 ` Frosku
2021-04-16 1:04 ` Christopher Dimech
0 siblings, 2 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: Joseph Myers @ 2021-04-16 0:16 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Frosku; +Cc: esr, Christopher Dimech, GCC Development
On Fri, 16 Apr 2021, Frosku wrote:
> Right now, the ultimate oversight of GCC sits with GNU &
> FSF -- both institutions with a mandate to represent the ecosystem based
> on level of membership and time spent fighting for free software.
I think the oversight of glibc by development working through discussion
seeking consensus, and rejecting any attempt to override such consensus
"from above", is much more effective than any attempt GNU or FSF makes at
oversight. An umbrella organization for the toolchain should not act as
an "above" that can override the community at all; it should provide
services to the toolchain (e.g. legal support) as needed.
--
Joseph S. Myers
joseph@codesourcery.com
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-16 0:16 ` Joseph Myers
@ 2021-04-16 0:41 ` Frosku
2021-04-16 1:04 ` Christopher Dimech
1 sibling, 0 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: Frosku @ 2021-04-16 0:41 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Joseph Myers; +Cc: esr, Christopher Dimech, GCC Development
On Fri Apr 16, 2021 at 1:16 AM BST, Joseph Myers wrote:
> On Fri, 16 Apr 2021, Frosku wrote:
>
> > Right now, the ultimate oversight of GCC sits with GNU &
> > FSF -- both institutions with a mandate to represent the ecosystem based
> > on level of membership and time spent fighting for free software.
>
> I think the oversight of glibc by development working through discussion
> seeking consensus, and rejecting any attempt to override such consensus
> "from above", is much more effective than any attempt GNU or FSF makes
> at
> oversight. An umbrella organization for the toolchain should not act as
> an "above" that can override the community at all; it should provide
> services to the toolchain (e.g. legal support) as needed.
>
> --
> Joseph S. Myers
> joseph@codesourcery.com
The way I see it, the developers represent the interests of the developers,
and FSF/GNU represent the interests of the users. The users should always
have some level of representation in any steering discussion, especially
for a project like GCC where any poor decision could have a negative effect
on so many other free software projects.
>>= %frosku = { os => 'gnu+linux', editor => 'emacs', coffee => 1 } =<<
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-16 0:16 ` Joseph Myers
2021-04-16 0:41 ` Frosku
@ 2021-04-16 1:04 ` Christopher Dimech
1 sibling, 0 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: Christopher Dimech @ 2021-04-16 1:04 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Joseph Myers; +Cc: Frosku, esr, GCC Development
> Sent: Friday, April 16, 2021 at 12:16 PM
> From: "Joseph Myers" <joseph@codesourcery.com>
> To: "Frosku" <frosku@frosku.com>
> Cc: esr@thyrsus.com, "Christopher Dimech" <dimech@gmx.com>, "GCC Development" <gcc@gcc.gnu.org>
> Subject: Re: removing toxic emailers
>
> On Fri, 16 Apr 2021, Frosku wrote:
>
> > Right now, the ultimate oversight of GCC sits with GNU &
> > FSF -- both institutions with a mandate to represent the ecosystem based
> > on level of membership and time spent fighting for free software.
>
> I think the oversight of glibc by development working through discussion
> seeking consensus, and rejecting any attempt to override such consensus
> "from above", is much more effective than any attempt GNU or FSF makes at
> oversight. An umbrella organization for the toolchain should not act as
> an "above" that can override the community at all; it should provide
> services to the toolchain (e.g. legal support) as needed.
It should act as an umbrella organization for distributing useful code
under robust legal theory during the production of software in commons.
That's my position, anyway.
> --
> Joseph S. Myers
> joseph@codesourcery.com
>
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-15 23:52 ` Eric S. Raymond
2021-04-16 0:04 ` Frosku
@ 2021-04-16 0:48 ` Christopher Dimech
1 sibling, 0 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: Christopher Dimech @ 2021-04-16 0:48 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: esr; +Cc: Frosku, GCC Development
> Sent: Friday, April 16, 2021 at 11:52 AM
> From: "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@thyrsus.com>
> To: "Christopher Dimech" <dimech@gmx.com>
> Cc: "Frosku" <frosku@frosku.com>, "GCC Development" <gcc@gcc.gnu.org>
> Subject: Re: removing toxic emailers
>
> Christopher Dimech via Gcc <gcc@gcc.gnu.org>:
> > The commercial use of free software is our hope, not our fear. When people
> > at IBM began to come to free software, wanting to recommend it and use it,
> > and maybe distribute it themselves or encourage other people to distribute
> > it for them, we did not criticise them for not being non-profit virtuous
> > enough, or said "we are suspicious of you", let alone threatening them.
>
> Actually, some of us did *exactly* those things late in the last century.
When I worked in ocean acoustics, everything was kept secret. Yet russian
oceanographers (e.g. Leonid Brekhovshkikh who was working in the Sea Japan)
had themselves figured out the same phenomena independently at around the
same time.
> One of the challenges I faced in my early famous years was persuading
> the hacker culture as a whole to treat the profit-centered parts of the
> economy as allies rather than enemies.
>
> I won't say that a *majority* of us were resistent to this, but I
> did have to work hard on the problem for a while, between 1997
> and about 2003.
About ten years ago, free software was chosen as the operating system of
the International Space Station. Things have been changing, but I agree
that there is much work to be done. Our approach has been a noticeable
proposition, not just to us - though we understand why it is socially and
politically desirable that the world works this way.
> --
> <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>
>
>
>
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-15 23:11 ` Frosku
2021-04-15 23:36 ` Christopher Dimech
@ 2021-04-17 9:09 ` Gerald Pfeifer
2021-04-17 11:56 ` Giacomo Tesio
2021-04-17 13:57 ` Christopher Dimech
1 sibling, 2 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: Gerald Pfeifer @ 2021-04-17 9:09 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Frosku; +Cc: Ian Lance Taylor, chris.punches, gcc
On Fri, 16 Apr 2021, Frosku wrote:
> In my view, if people employed by a small number of American companies
> succeed in disassociating GCC from GNU/FSF, which is representative of
> the free software grassroots community
I find this insistant focus by some on "American companies"
interesting - and quite pointless. And my passport is burgundy.
It also is a completely unwarranted attack on the integrity of the
maintainers, contributors, and other leaders of GCC. Regardless of
the color of their passports.
Personally I care about quality of what we ship, supporting our
users, and upholding the principles of free software/open source.
And I am willing to bet this applies to the vast majority of us.
So please stop those unfounded allegations.
Gerald
PS: Our release managers, for example, are British (Joseph), Czech
(Jakub), and German (Richi), IIRC. The majority of the FSF board,
FSF leadership, and RMS himself are American from what I can tell.
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-17 9:09 ` Gerald Pfeifer
@ 2021-04-17 11:56 ` Giacomo Tesio
2021-04-17 14:41 ` Christopher Dimech
2021-04-17 18:11 ` David Brown
2021-04-17 13:57 ` Christopher Dimech
1 sibling, 2 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: Giacomo Tesio @ 2021-04-17 11:56 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: gcc, Gerald Pfeifer, Frosku
Hi Gerald,,
On April 17, 2021 9:09:19 AM UTC, Gerald Pfeifer <gerald@pfeifer.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 16 Apr 2021, Frosku wrote:
> > In my view, if people employed by a small number of American
> companies
> > succeed in disassociating GCC from GNU/FSF, which is representative
> > of the free software grassroots community
>
> I find this insistant focus by some on "American companies"
> interesting - and quite pointless. And my passport is burgundy.
So much that in fact, we are talking about some of the most controversial
corporation in the whole world.
And while we are talking about "toxic emailers", it's not lost to me
the irony that all this divisive debate about inclusive and righteous
behaviour started with an email of a Facebook employee that defines
working in Facebook "a joy".
https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2021-March/235091.html
Yeah the same Facebook that still does what Cambridge Analytica used to.
> It also is a completely unwarranted attack on the integrity of the
> maintainers, contributors, and other leaders of GCC. Regardless of
> the color of their passports.
This is a strawman.
People are just concerned about the undue influence that these controversial corporations can have on GCC through the influence they have on their employees.
It would be overly naive to pretend that the Steering Committee members'
are not influenced by their affiliations, even if we were not talking about the
champions of surveillance capitalism.
And this has nothing to do with their integrity.
Why should they have declared such affiliations in the SC's web page,
if they were irrelevant?
Because they acknowledge that their affiliations have a non-negligible
influence on what they do and what they do not.
Also this has nothing to do with their passports.
In fact, as you say,
> The majority of the FSF board,
> FSF leadership, and RMS himself are American from what I can tell.
It was Nathan who framed his request in term of culture, politics and
whiteness and priviledge...
And since the GCC Steering Committe did what he requested, we have to
assume that these are the kind of arguments that we have to debunk,
providing you with a more varied perspective.
But unfortunately you keep invalidating our perspective because... we are "jerks".
Giacomo
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-17 11:56 ` Giacomo Tesio
@ 2021-04-17 14:41 ` Christopher Dimech
2021-04-17 18:11 ` David Brown
1 sibling, 0 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: Christopher Dimech @ 2021-04-17 14:41 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Giacomo Tesio; +Cc: gcc, Gerald Pfeifer, Frosku
> Sent: Saturday, April 17, 2021 at 11:56 PM
> From: "Giacomo Tesio" <giacomo@tesio.it>
> To: gcc@gcc.gnu.org, "Gerald Pfeifer" <gerald@pfeifer.com>, "Frosku" <frosku@frosku.com>
> Subject: Re: removing toxic emailers
>
> Hi Gerald,,
>
> On April 17, 2021 9:09:19 AM UTC, Gerald Pfeifer <gerald@pfeifer.com> wrote:
> > On Fri, 16 Apr 2021, Frosku wrote:
> > > In my view, if people employed by a small number of American
> > companies
> > > succeed in disassociating GCC from GNU/FSF, which is representative
> > > of the free software grassroots community
> >
> > I find this insistant focus by some on "American companies"
> > interesting - and quite pointless. And my passport is burgundy.
>
>
> So much that in fact, we are talking about some of the most controversial
> corporation in the whole world.
>
> And while we are talking about "toxic emailers", it's not lost to me
> the irony that all this divisive debate about inclusive and righteous
> behaviour started with an email of a Facebook employee that defines
> working in Facebook "a joy".
> https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2021-March/235091.html
>
> Yeah the same Facebook that still does what Cambridge Analytica used to.
It's worse than that. Facebook provides the soil and nourishment
for companies like Cambridge Analytica to grow.
Some early work on "The Shift News" exposed facebook profiles used
to spread rumours about the government’s perceived enemies including
the family of slain journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in 2017.
Her police protection was removed entirely in 2013 when the Labour party
- a frequent target of her investigations - returned to power.
https://theshiftnews.com/2018/05/27/the-shift-news-disinformation-watch-fake-facebook-account-behind-unsubstantiated-attacks-on-opposition-mp/
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/30/europe/daphne-caruana-galizia-qa-intl/index.html
> > It also is a completely unwarranted attack on the integrity of the
> > maintainers, contributors, and other leaders of GCC. Regardless of
> > the color of their passports.
>
> This is a strawman.
>
> People are just concerned about the undue influence that these controversial corporations can have on GCC through the influence they have on their employees.
>
> It would be overly naive to pretend that the Steering Committee members'
> are not influenced by their affiliations, even if we were not talking about the
> champions of surveillance capitalism.
>
> And this has nothing to do with their integrity.
>
> Why should they have declared such affiliations in the SC's web page,
> if they were irrelevant?
>
> Because they acknowledge that their affiliations have a non-negligible
> influence on what they do and what they do not.
>
>
> Also this has nothing to do with their passports.
>
> In fact, as you say,
>
> > The majority of the FSF board,
> > FSF leadership, and RMS himself are American from what I can tell.
>
>
> It was Nathan who framed his request in term of culture, politics and
> whiteness and priviledge...
>
> And since the GCC Steering Committe did what he requested, we have to
> assume that these are the kind of arguments that we have to debunk,
> providing you with a more varied perspective.
>
> But unfortunately you keep invalidating our perspective because... we are "jerks".
>
>
> Giacomo
>
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-17 11:56 ` Giacomo Tesio
2021-04-17 14:41 ` Christopher Dimech
@ 2021-04-17 18:11 ` David Brown
2021-04-18 1:39 ` Ian Lance Taylor
1 sibling, 1 reply; 153+ messages in thread
From: David Brown @ 2021-04-17 18:11 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Giacomo Tesio, gcc, Gerald Pfeifer, Frosku
On 17/04/2021 13:56, Giacomo Tesio wrote:
> Hi Gerald,,
>
> On April 17, 2021 9:09:19 AM UTC, Gerald Pfeifer <gerald@pfeifer.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, 16 Apr 2021, Frosku wrote:
>>> In my view, if people employed by a small number of American
>> companies
>>> succeed in disassociating GCC from GNU/FSF, which is representative
>>> of the free software grassroots community
>>
>> I find this insistant focus by some on "American companies"
>> interesting - and quite pointless. And my passport is burgundy.
>
>
> So much that in fact, we are talking about some of the most controversial
> corporation in the whole world.
>
> And while we are talking about "toxic emailers", it's not lost to me
> the irony that all this divisive debate about inclusive and righteous
> behaviour started with an email of a Facebook employee that defines
> working in Facebook "a joy".
> https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2021-March/235091.html
>
> Yeah the same Facebook that still does what Cambridge Analytica used to.
>
>> It also is a completely unwarranted attack on the integrity of the
>> maintainers, contributors, and other leaders of GCC. Regardless of
>> the color of their passports.
>
> This is a strawman.
>
> People are just concerned about the undue influence that these
> controversial corporations can have on GCC through the influence they
> have on their employees.
>
Do you have any justification for thinking that the number of such
"concerned people" is significant? It is clearly at least one - you -
and arguably a couple of the others who have posted here. But do you
think it is many, and do you think they have any reason or justification
for this concern? (Repeating it multiple times in these mailing list
threads is not reasoning or justification - "proof by repeated
assertion" arguments can be dismissed off-hand.)
I am not a Facebook fan myself. I have an account that I use almost
exclusively just for keeping up with a couple of sports clubs of which I
am a member, and which use Facebook to publish information. I don't
like the way it tracks so much information about me and other people,
and I don't see how it benefits me. (Google tracks information too, but
I see more benefit in it.) However, that is /my/ choice and /my/
opinion, and the way /I/ like to use (or avoid) social media. Other
people have very different opinions, and find a lot to like about
Facebook. That's /their/ choice.
Big companies like Facebook and Google are powerful tools. They usually
try to be "good" most of the time - after all, they are staffed by real
people with real consciences who are, as most people are the world over,
basically good people. They will make mistakes sometimes, and powerful
tools get abused on occasion. But on the whole they are trying to
provide a service people want and can make use of, while also making a
living in the process. Anything else is paranoia - and like most
conspiracy theories, it falls flat when you realise it would involve
huge numbers of people keeping quite about doing evil.
I do believe that Facebook, Google, IBM, etc., will have /some/
influence on gcc and all the other free and open source projects that
they support. That is because they are big users of such software - it
makes sense for them to support them and help and encourage them. And
sometimes they will be contributing towards specific features that they
want for their systems. (This does not seem to be common for gcc, as
far as I understand it from the key developers here.) For example,
Facebook want improvements to filesystems in Linux so they have employed
people specifically to work on btrfs.
IMHO, this is /fine/. There is nothing wrong with that. It is
companies "scratching their own itches", just as individual developers
often do. We all benefit. It may be /influence/, but it is minor and
it is certainly not /undue/ influence.
The way you go on about "controversial American companies" and "undue
influence" suggests you think these companies are forcing their
employees on the gcc steering committee to add backdoors to gcc to tell
Facebook what projects you are compiling, or make gcc only work well on
Red Hat. That would be utter nonsense.
So what is it that you think these companies are doing wrong for gcc?
How do you think they are influencing it? Who are all these "concerned
people" ?
If you have justification, evidence, or even a rational argument for
your concerns, please share them. If not, please stop repeating
baseless paranoia. You have made your point, such as it is - please
move along now. (That is not censorship - it's just a polite request to
stop wasting people's time.)
David Brown
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-17 18:11 ` David Brown
@ 2021-04-18 1:39 ` Ian Lance Taylor
2021-04-18 13:10 ` Eric S. Raymond
0 siblings, 1 reply; 153+ messages in thread
From: Ian Lance Taylor @ 2021-04-18 1:39 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: GCC Development
This conversation has moved well off-topic for the GCC mailing lists.
Some of the posts here do not follow the GNU Kind Communication
Guidelines (https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/kind-communication.en.html).
I suggest that people who want to continue this thread take it off the
GCC mailing list.
Thanks.
Ian
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-18 1:39 ` Ian Lance Taylor
@ 2021-04-18 13:10 ` Eric S. Raymond
2021-04-18 14:51 ` David Malcolm
0 siblings, 1 reply; 153+ messages in thread
From: Eric S. Raymond @ 2021-04-18 13:10 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Ian Lance Taylor; +Cc: GCC Development
Ian Lance Taylor via Gcc <gcc@gcc.gnu.org>:
> This conversation has moved well off-topic for the GCC mailing lists.
>
> Some of the posts here do not follow the GNU Kind Communication
> Guidelines (https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/kind-communication.en.html).
>
> I suggest that people who want to continue this thread take it off the
> GCC mailing list.
>
> Thanks.
>
> Ian
Welcome to the consequences of abandoning "You shall judge by the code alone."
This is what it will be like, *forever*, until you reassert that norm.
--
<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-18 13:10 ` Eric S. Raymond
@ 2021-04-18 14:51 ` David Malcolm
2021-04-18 15:59 ` Christopher Dimech
` (2 more replies)
0 siblings, 3 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: David Malcolm @ 2021-04-18 14:51 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Ian Lance Taylor; +Cc: GCC Development
On Sun, 2021-04-18 at 09:10 -0400, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
Sorry for prolonging this thread-of-doom; I'm loathe to reply to Eric
because I worry that it will encourage him. I wrote a long rebuttal to
his last email to me about his great insights into the minds of women
but didn't send it in the hope of reducing the temperature of the
conversation.
That said...
> Ian Lance Taylor via Gcc <gcc@gcc.gnu.org>:
> > This conversation has moved well off-topic for the GCC mailing lists.
> >
> > Some of the posts here do not follow the GNU Kind Communication
> > Guidelines
> > (https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/kind-communication.en.html).
> >
> > I suggest that people who want to continue this thread take it off
> > the
> > GCC mailing list.
> >
> > Thanks.
> >
> > Ian
>
> Welcome to the consequences of abandoning "You shall judge by the code
> alone."
>
> This is what it will be like, *forever*, until you reassert that norm.
Or we could ignore the false dilemma that Eric is asserting, and
instead moderate the list, or even just moderate those who have never
contributed to GCC but persist in emailing the list.
Personally, I've been moving all posts by Christopher Dimech to this
list direct from my inbox to my archive without reading them for the
last several days, and it's helped my mood considerably. He's been
prolifically posting to the list recently, but in the 8 years I've been
involved in gcc development I've never heard of him before this thing
kicked off, and the stuff I've had the misfortune to see by him appears
to me to be full of conspiracy theories and deranged raving. The clue
might have been when he referred to us as "bitches".
"Don't feed the trolls" might have worked once, but sometimes they
start talking to each other, and it becomes difficult for a bystander
to tell that everyone else is ignoring them, and it keeps threads like
this one alive.
I reject the idea that those of us who work on GCC have to put up with
arbitrary emails from random crazies on the internet without even the
simple recourse of being able to put individuals on moderation. That
might have worked 20 years ago when I thought ESR was relevant, but
seems absurdly out-of-date to me today.
As usual, these are my opinions only, not necessarily those of my
employer
Dave
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-18 14:51 ` David Malcolm
@ 2021-04-18 15:59 ` Christopher Dimech
2021-04-18 18:24 ` Alexandre Oliva
2021-04-18 19:06 ` Jonathan Wakely
2 siblings, 0 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: Christopher Dimech @ 2021-04-18 15:59 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: dmalcolm; +Cc: Ian Lance Taylor, GCC Development
---------------------
Christopher Dimech
General Administrator - Naiad Informatics - GNU Project (Geocomputation)
- Geophysical Simulation
- Geological Subsurface Mapping
- Disaster Preparedness and Mitigation
- Natural Resource Exploration and Production
- Free Software Advocacy
> Sent: Monday, April 19, 2021 at 2:51 AM
> From: "David Malcolm via Gcc" <gcc@gcc.gnu.org>
> To: "Ian Lance Taylor" <iant@google.com>
> Cc: "GCC Development" <gcc@gcc.gnu.org>
> Subject: Re: removing toxic emailers
>
> On Sun, 2021-04-18 at 09:10 -0400, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
>
> Sorry for prolonging this thread-of-doom; I'm loathe to reply to Eric
> because I worry that it will encourage him. I wrote a long rebuttal to
> his last email to me about his great insights into the minds of women
> but didn't send it in the hope of reducing the temperature of the
> conversation.
>
> That said...
>
> > Ian Lance Taylor via Gcc <gcc@gcc.gnu.org>:
> > > This conversation has moved well off-topic for the GCC mailing lists.
> > >
> > > Some of the posts here do not follow the GNU Kind Communication
> > > Guidelines
> > > (https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/kind-communication.en.html).
> > >
> > > I suggest that people who want to continue this thread take it off
> > > the
> > > GCC mailing list.
> > >
> > > Thanks.
> > >
> > > Ian
> >
> > Welcome to the consequences of abandoning "You shall judge by the code
> > alone."
> >
> > This is what it will be like, *forever*, until you reassert that norm.
>
> Or we could ignore the false dilemma that Eric is asserting, and
> instead moderate the list, or even just moderate those who have never
> contributed to GCC but persist in emailing the list.
>
> Personally, I've been moving all posts by Christopher Dimech to this
> list direct from my inbox to my archive without reading them for the
> last several days, and it's helped my mood considerably. He's been
> prolifically posting to the list recently, but in the 8 years I've been
> involved in gcc development I've never heard of him before this thing
> kicked off, and the stuff I've had the misfortune to see by him appears
> to me to be full of conspiracy theories and deranged raving. The clue
> might have been when he referred to us as "bitches".
> "Don't feed the trolls" might have worked once, but sometimes they
> start talking to each other, and it becomes difficult for a bystander
> to tell that everyone else is ignoring them, and it keeps threads like
> this one alive.
>
> I reject the idea that those of us who work on GCC have to put up with
> arbitrary emails from random crazies on the internet without even the
> simple recourse of being able to put individuals on moderation. That
> might have worked 20 years ago when I thought ESR was relevant, but
> seems absurdly out-of-date to me today.
>
> As usual, these are my opinions only, not necessarily those of my
> employer
The deranged raving is the disclaimer every time an employee posts
something.
> Dave
>
>
>
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-18 14:51 ` David Malcolm
2021-04-18 15:59 ` Christopher Dimech
@ 2021-04-18 18:24 ` Alexandre Oliva
2021-04-18 19:13 ` Jonathan Wakely
2021-04-18 19:06 ` Jonathan Wakely
2 siblings, 1 reply; 153+ messages in thread
From: Alexandre Oliva @ 2021-04-18 18:24 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: David Malcolm via Gcc
David,
On Apr 18, 2021, David Malcolm via Gcc <gcc@gcc.gnu.org> wrote:
> I reject the idea that those of us who work on GCC have to put up with
> arbitrary emails from random crazies on the internet without even the
> simple recourse of being able to put individuals on moderation.
All sides in this multi-threaded debate, since the very first message,
have put forth crazy, unfounded, unsupported, and false theories. That
you're willing to tolerate some, because you find them believable, but
are not willing to tolerate others, because you disagree with them, is
not conducive of the tolerant and welcoming atmosphere I'd like us to
pursue.
That you claim some are entitled to share their opinions, because
they've contributed code (and you agree with them), and that others are
not because they haven't (and you disagree with them), but you do not
disqualify those who have not contributed code (but you agree with them)
and dismiss those who have (that you disagree with), you not only
confirm that the issue really is about agreement/disagreement, but
attempt to frame the intolerance to dissenting ideas as a chaste system.
Again, not conducive of the tolerant and welcoming atmosphere I'd like
us to pursue.
I recall a scene from the original Cosmos TV series, by Carl Sagan, in
which he's set within an out-of-scale model of the solar system, walking
about the planets and talking about some batshit crazy theory by some
scientist about how a planet-sized body had some day been ejected from
Jupiter and floated about the solar system causing, among other effects,
the Earth to stop spinning and then start spinning again, as described
in some religious book.
Then he proceeds to describe the most serious scientific problem
involving that theory: that some self-proclaimed scientists attempted to
prevent those ideas from being published.
Preventing ideas you don't already agree with from being shared is not
the way to do science, quite the opposite. Being intolerant to ideas
that aren't prevalent in your filter bubble, and demanding others to
take action to protect you from as much as being exposed to them, does
not seem conducive of scientific progress, of collaboration, of
tolerance, of inclusivity, or of diversity. I certainly don't find that
welcoming, but rather toxic. I find it requiring alignment and
obedience rather than diversity and freedom.
Please reflect some more thoroughly about this apparent misalignment
between your actions and your words.
Thanks for reading,
--
Alexandre Oliva, happy hacker https://FSFLA.org/blogs/lxo/
Free Software Activist GNU Toolchain Engineer
Vim, Vi, Voltei pro Emacs -- GNUlius Caesar
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-18 18:24 ` Alexandre Oliva
@ 2021-04-18 19:13 ` Jonathan Wakely
2021-04-18 20:10 ` Alexandre Oliva
2021-04-19 0:54 ` Frosku
0 siblings, 2 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: Jonathan Wakely @ 2021-04-18 19:13 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Alexandre Oliva; +Cc: David Malcolm via Gcc
On Sun, 18 Apr 2021 at 19:54, Alexandre Oliva via Gcc <gcc@gcc.gnu.org> wrote:
> That you claim some are entitled to share their opinions, because
> they've contributed code (and you agree with them), and that others are
> not because they haven't (and you disagree with them), but you do not
> disqualify those who have not contributed code (but you agree with them)
> and dismiss those who have (that you disagree with), you not only
> confirm that the issue really is about agreement/disagreement, but
> attempt to frame the intolerance to dissenting ideas as a chaste system.
Utter nonsense, Alex. I think it's clear I don't agree with most of
your posts on this list in the past month, but it would be silly to
suggest that you should not be allowed to post here, given your track
record. Dave didn't say who he thinks should or shouldn't be
moderated, so why do you think he said that those he agrees with are
welcome to share their opinion? He said "those who have never
contributed to GCC but persist in emailing the list" so why do you
infer he only means those he disagrees with? Are you projecting maybe?
To me a simple rule makes sense (and is what is used on another list
that I am the moderator for, with not a single complain about my
moderation in many years): every new subscriber has their "moderated"
flag set by default. When a moderator approves their post, they have
the option of clearing the "moderated" flag, if it's clear they are
going to contribute usefully. That flag can be set again if somebody
is disruptive or refuses to follow the list policies and stay on
topic.
> Again, not conducive of the tolerant and welcoming atmosphere I'd like
> us to pursue.
Neither is making false claims about Dave's claims or his motives for
moderation. Stop it.
>
> I recall a scene from the original Cosmos TV series, by Carl Sagan, in
> which he's set within an out-of-scale model of the solar system, walking
> about the planets and talking about some batshit crazy theory by some
> scientist about how a planet-sized body had some day been ejected from
> Jupiter and floated about the solar system causing, among other effects,
> the Earth to stop spinning and then start spinning again, as described
> in some religious book.
Sounds like Velikovsky. Less ridiculous than some of the ideas posted
to this list recently.
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-18 19:13 ` Jonathan Wakely
@ 2021-04-18 20:10 ` Alexandre Oliva
2021-04-19 0:54 ` Frosku
1 sibling, 0 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: Alexandre Oliva @ 2021-04-18 20:10 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Jonathan Wakely; +Cc: David Malcolm via Gcc
On Apr 18, 2021, Jonathan Wakely <jwakely.gcc@gmail.com> wrote:
> Dave didn't say who he thinks should or shouldn't be moderated,
Shall we ask him to confirm what I read between the lines?
Shall we ask Nathan?
Shall we ask you?
> it would be silly to suggest that you should not be allowed to post
> here, given your track record
I happen to disagree with the underlying premise, that my opinion should
be any more legitimate or welcome because of my modest contributions to
the project.
Besides the implied chaste system that I've already objected to in the
previous message, the approach you suggested amounts to regarding people
as guilty until proven innocent. I support the opposite alternative,
the one prescribed in the declaration of human rights and adopted in
most civilized societies, that recommends people to be regarded as
innocent until proven guilty.
I find systems in which people are not welcome by default, but rather
need to first earn a baseline of respect that every human being ought to
be entitled to, are the opposite of welcoming, and the unchecked powers
needed to implement them are too prone to abuse. I've seen such powers
being abused, and I've found that absolutely intolerable.
Plus, there's a cautionary principle that I subscribe to, that it's
preferrable to find 10 guilty parties not-guilty and let them go free,
than to treat one single innocent party as guilty.
> so why do you think he said that those he agrees with are
> welcome to share their opinion?
Mainly because of timing, threading and general disposition.
Even if he didn't state it expressly, it has not been hard to tell.
I'd welcome certainty instead, either way.
Whose messages would you prefer to have had the power to filter out, or
that whoever did had filtered out from your view?
Nathan, how about you?
David, how about you?
> Are you projecting maybe?
I doubt it. I don't find myself wanting or calling for people to be
prevented from expressing their opinions, no matter how much I disagree
with them, or how much I find they may be undermining what I stand for
with their stance.
I do notice, however, when people call for suppression of dissenting
voices, on arguments that apply equally or even more strongly to aligned
voices, but that did not motivate calls for suppression on the same
grounds. It's not even like I have to actively search for such
patterns, asymmetries jump out at me and catch my attention.
--
Alexandre Oliva, happy hacker https://FSFLA.org/blogs/lxo/
Free Software Activist GNU Toolchain Engineer
Vim, Vi, Voltei pro Emacs -- GNUlius Caesar
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-18 19:13 ` Jonathan Wakely
2021-04-18 20:10 ` Alexandre Oliva
@ 2021-04-19 0:54 ` Frosku
1 sibling, 0 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: Frosku @ 2021-04-19 0:54 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Jonathan Wakely, Alexandre Oliva; +Cc: David Malcolm via Gcc
On Sun Apr 18, 2021 at 8:13 PM BST, Jonathan Wakely via Gcc wrote:
> Utter nonsense, Alex. I think it's clear I don't agree with most of
> your posts on this list in the past month, but it would be silly to
> suggest that you should not be allowed to post here, given your track
> record. Dave didn't say who he thinks should or shouldn't be
> moderated, so why do you think he said that those he agrees with are
> welcome to share their opinion? He said "those who have never
> contributed to GCC but persist in emailing the list" so why do you
> infer he only means those he disagrees with? Are you projecting maybe?
I'm genuinely trying to wrap my head around this. Front and centre of the
anti-RMS argument is that this is about becoming more welcoming. Is this
some kind of Orwellian doublespeak? That the project should become more
welcoming by casting off the neurodivergent leader who founded it and
putting up more barriers to participation?
Whoever heard of a free software community which bans its users from
participating? Let alone one which erects this metaphorical Trumpian wall
with its wrought iron, well-manned gates under the guise of being *more*
welcoming?
> To me a simple rule makes sense (and is what is used on another list
> that I am the moderator for, with not a single complain about my
> moderation in many years): every new subscriber has their "moderated"
> flag set by default. When a moderator approves their post, they have
> the option of clearing the "moderated" flag, if it's clear they are
> going to contribute usefully. That flag can be set again if somebody
> is disruptive or refuses to follow the list policies and stay on
> topic.
Why is it that those with the most radical ideas always seem to have the
least tolerance for dissent and feel the most threatened by discussion?
It's quite clear that your criteria for 'disruption' has more to do with
whether or not people agree with you than whether or not they're making
actual arguments or contributing in good faith. You're proposing for GCC
to act even less accountable to its (non-corporate) users than corporate
America does. How is this in the spirit of free software again?
How many values is it worth casting down the drain to achieve this promised
utopia where people never have to hear a voice they disagree with again?
>>= %frosku = { os => 'gnu+linux', editor => 'emacs', coffee => 1 } =<<
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-18 14:51 ` David Malcolm
2021-04-18 15:59 ` Christopher Dimech
2021-04-18 18:24 ` Alexandre Oliva
@ 2021-04-18 19:06 ` Jonathan Wakely
2021-04-18 20:22 ` Alexandre Oliva
2 siblings, 1 reply; 153+ messages in thread
From: Jonathan Wakely @ 2021-04-18 19:06 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: David Malcolm; +Cc: Ian Lance Taylor, GCC Development
On Sun, 18 Apr 2021 at 16:32, David Malcolm wrote:
>
> "Don't feed the trolls" might have worked once, but sometimes they
> start talking to each other, and it becomes difficult for a bystander
> to tell that everyone else is ignoring them, and it keeps threads like
> this one alive.
>
> I reject the idea that those of us who work on GCC have to put up with
> arbitrary emails from random crazies on the internet without even the
> simple recourse of being able to put individuals on moderation. That
> might have worked 20 years ago when I thought ESR was relevant, but
> seems absurdly out-of-date to me today.
Hear hear. "Just ignore them" allows the trolls to dominate the
discussion, and makes it appear that the entire GCC project is full of
such people (when in fact the ones dominating the discussions have
nothing to do with the project).
Moderation is not censorship.
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-18 19:06 ` Jonathan Wakely
@ 2021-04-18 20:22 ` Alexandre Oliva
2021-04-19 1:10 ` Frosku
0 siblings, 1 reply; 153+ messages in thread
From: Alexandre Oliva @ 2021-04-18 20:22 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Jonathan Wakely via Gcc
On Apr 18, 2021, Jonathan Wakely via Gcc <gcc@gcc.gnu.org> wrote:
> "Just ignore them" allows the trolls to dominate the discussion
*nod*
That's why it's best to dissent politely, lest they incorrectly conclude
their opinions are consensual, or majoritary, just because they've
driven dissenters into silence.
Violent emotional responses is what trolls of all alignments aim for.
Let's not give them that. Let's not give them reasons to denounce
censorship either. Let's dissent politely and kindly, without calling
them names, whether trolls or jerks or crazy. Ad troll[i]um is a very
popular fallacious argument these days, but it's just as logically
unsound as other fallacies.
The best answer to unwanted speech is not censorship, but rather more
good speech.
It's true that negotiating and settling with wildly different opinions
requires more effort than having despotic powers to dictate the right
answer. The community has made it clear what political model it
prefers, so let's put that in practice, shall we?
--
Alexandre Oliva, happy hacker https://FSFLA.org/blogs/lxo/
Free Software Activist GNU Toolchain Engineer
Vim, Vi, Voltei pro Emacs -- GNUlius Caesar
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-18 20:22 ` Alexandre Oliva
@ 2021-04-19 1:10 ` Frosku
2021-04-19 2:42 ` Christopher Dimech
2021-04-19 6:29 ` Jonathan Wakely
0 siblings, 2 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: Frosku @ 2021-04-19 1:10 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Alexandre Oliva, Jonathan Wakely via Gcc
On Sun Apr 18, 2021 at 9:22 PM BST, Alexandre Oliva via Gcc wrote:
> That's why it's best to dissent politely, lest they incorrectly conclude
> their opinions are consensual, or majoritary, just because they've
> driven dissenters into silence.
The problem is, Alex, that the trolls mostly haven't been on the dissenting
side. All of the childish namecalling -- "jerks", "trolls", "crazies" --
and the insinuations that our voices aren't worth listening to because we
don't get paid $250,000 a year by Google to contribute to GCC all day are
coming from the pro-forking side.
Once upon a time, free software developers understood that users' opinions
were as valid as contributor's opinions. For a project like a compiler which
exists solely to enable other projects to exist, it seems like the only users
who are deemed worthy of representation in the 'room where it happens' now
are the major Corporations with the ability to sponsor a contributor on their
behalf. It's becoming very difficult to engage in good faith against this
kind of overt hostility to the grassroots users.
> Violent emotional responses is what trolls of all alignments aim for.
> Let's not give them that. Let's not give them reasons to denounce
> censorship either. Let's dissent politely and kindly, without calling
> them names, whether trolls or jerks or crazy. Ad troll[i]um is a very
> popular fallacious argument these days, but it's just as logically
> unsound as other fallacies.
I've only seen one or two genuine 'trolls' in the discussion, as in, people
who are just here to fish for a reaction who don't have an actual vested
interest in the outcome. All of them have sent a couple of messages and then
left. Completely agree with you that 'ad trollum' is being deployed here to
conflate the legitimate voices of concerned free software advocates with
childish trolling, much to the detriment of the level of conversation.
> It's true that negotiating and settling with wildly different opinions
> requires more effort than having despotic powers to dictate the right
> answer. The community has made it clear what political model it
> prefers, so let's put that in practice, shall we?
I think there's a fundamental disagreement here where we're defining 'the
community' broadly -- to include contributors, users, and pretty much the
whole free software and GNU community -- and certain people on the pro-
fork side are taking a more corporate view that only 'the firm' should get
any input into 'internal business'. This is not the free software community
that I recognize.
>>= %frosku = { os => 'gnu+linux', editor => 'emacs', coffee => 1 } =<<
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-19 1:10 ` Frosku
@ 2021-04-19 2:42 ` Christopher Dimech
2021-04-19 6:29 ` Jonathan Wakely
1 sibling, 0 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: Christopher Dimech @ 2021-04-19 2:42 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Frosku; +Cc: Alexandre Oliva, Jonathan Wakely via Gcc
> Sent: Monday, April 19, 2021 at 1:10 PM
> From: "Frosku" <frosku@frosku.com>
> To: "Alexandre Oliva" <oliva@gnu.org>, "Jonathan Wakely via Gcc" <gcc@gcc.gnu.org>
> Subject: Re: removing toxic emailers
>
> On Sun Apr 18, 2021 at 9:22 PM BST, Alexandre Oliva via Gcc wrote:
> > That's why it's best to dissent politely, lest they incorrectly conclude
> > their opinions are consensual, or majoritary, just because they've
> > driven dissenters into silence.
>
> The problem is, Alex, that the trolls mostly haven't been on the dissenting
> side. All of the childish namecalling -- "jerks", "trolls", "crazies" --
> and the insinuations that our voices aren't worth listening to because we
> don't get paid $250,000 a year by Google to contribute to GCC all day are
> coming from the pro-forking side.
>
> Once upon a time, free software developers understood that users' opinions
> were as valid as contributor's opinions. For a project like a compiler which
> exists solely to enable other projects to exist, it seems like the only users
> who are deemed worthy of representation in the 'room where it happens' now
> are the major Corporations with the ability to sponsor a contributor on their
> behalf. It's becoming very difficult to engage in good faith against this
> kind of overt hostility to the grassroots users.
>
> > Violent emotional responses is what trolls of all alignments aim for.
> > Let's not give them that. Let's not give them reasons to denounce
> > censorship either. Let's dissent politely and kindly, without calling
> > them names, whether trolls or jerks or crazy. Ad troll[i]um is a very
> > popular fallacious argument these days, but it's just as logically
> > unsound as other fallacies.
>
> I've only seen one or two genuine 'trolls' in the discussion, as in, people
> who are just here to fish for a reaction who don't have an actual vested
> interest in the outcome. All of them have sent a couple of messages and then
> left. Completely agree with you that 'ad trollum' is being deployed here to
> conflate the legitimate voices of concerned free software advocates with
> childish trolling, much to the detriment of the level of conversation.
>
> > It's true that negotiating and settling with wildly different opinions
> > requires more effort than having despotic powers to dictate the right
> > answer. The community has made it clear what political model it
> > prefers, so let's put that in practice, shall we?
>
> I think there's a fundamental disagreement here where we're defining 'the
> community' broadly -- to include contributors, users, and pretty much the
> whole free software and GNU community -- and certain people on the pro-
> fork side are taking a more corporate view that only 'the firm' should get
> any input into 'internal business'. This is not the free software community
> that I recognize.
That's quite accurate. I can see again the emergence of the phreakers
types of the 1980's, the minority that were up to no good. Want to join
the club Frosku?
> >>= %frosku = { os => 'gnu+linux', editor => 'emacs', coffee => 1 } =<<
>
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-19 1:10 ` Frosku
2021-04-19 2:42 ` Christopher Dimech
@ 2021-04-19 6:29 ` Jonathan Wakely
2021-04-19 6:31 ` Frosku
2021-04-19 15:06 ` Thomas Rodgers
1 sibling, 2 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: Jonathan Wakely @ 2021-04-19 6:29 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Frosku; +Cc: Alexandre Oliva, Jonathan Wakely via Gcc
On Mon, 19 Apr 2021, 02:41 Frosku, wrote:
> On Sun Apr 18, 2021 at 9:22 PM BST, Alexandre Oliva via Gcc wrote:
> > That's why it's best to dissent politely, lest they incorrectly conclude
> > their opinions are consensual, or majoritary, just because they've
> > driven dissenters into silence.
>
> The problem is, Alex, that the trolls mostly haven't been on the dissenting
> side. All of the childish namecalling -- "jerks", "trolls", "crazies" --
> and the insinuations that our voices aren't worth listening to because we
> don't get paid $250,000 a year by Google to contribute to GCC all day are
> coming from the pro-forking side.
>
Google doesn't pay anybody to work on GCC all day. You know nothing about
GCC or the "problems" you're complaining about. Your input to this
conversation is not constructive.
> Once upon a time, free software developers understood that users' opinions
> were as valid as contributor's opinions.
That depends on the user.
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-19 6:29 ` Jonathan Wakely
@ 2021-04-19 6:31 ` Frosku
2021-04-19 15:06 ` Thomas Rodgers
1 sibling, 0 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: Frosku @ 2021-04-19 6:31 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Jonathan Wakely; +Cc: Alexandre Oliva, Jonathan Wakely via Gcc
On Mon Apr 19, 2021 at 7:29 AM BST, Jonathan Wakely wrote:
> On Mon, 19 Apr 2021, 02:41 Frosku, wrote:
>
> > On Sun Apr 18, 2021 at 9:22 PM BST, Alexandre Oliva via Gcc wrote:
> > > That's why it's best to dissent politely, lest they incorrectly conclude
> > > their opinions are consensual, or majoritary, just because they've
> > > driven dissenters into silence.
> >
> > The problem is, Alex, that the trolls mostly haven't been on the dissenting
> > side. All of the childish namecalling -- "jerks", "trolls", "crazies" --
> > and the insinuations that our voices aren't worth listening to because we
> > don't get paid $250,000 a year by Google to contribute to GCC all day are
> > coming from the pro-forking side.
> >
>
> Google doesn't pay anybody to work on GCC all day. You know nothing
> about
> GCC or the "problems" you're complaining about. Your input to this
> conversation is not constructive.
>
>
>
> > Once upon a time, free software developers understood that users' opinions
> > were as valid as contributor's opinions.
>
>
>
> That depends on the user.
Thanks for perfectly illustrating my point. I don't agree with you so my opinion
isn't valid and I'm stupid/clueless/etc.
>>= %frosku = { os => 'gnu+linux', editor => 'emacs', coffee => 1 } =<<
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-19 6:29 ` Jonathan Wakely
2021-04-19 6:31 ` Frosku
@ 2021-04-19 15:06 ` Thomas Rodgers
2021-04-19 16:57 ` Christopher Dimech
2021-04-20 3:47 ` Frosku
1 sibling, 2 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: Thomas Rodgers @ 2021-04-19 15:06 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Jonathan Wakely; +Cc: Frosku, Jonathan Wakely via Gcc
On 2021-04-18 23:29, Jonathan Wakely via Gcc wrote:
> On Mon, 19 Apr 2021, 02:41 Frosku, wrote:
>
> On Sun Apr 18, 2021 at 9:22 PM BST, Alexandre Oliva via Gcc wrote:
> That's why it's best to dissent politely, lest they incorrectly
> conclude
> their opinions are consensual, or majoritary, just because they've
> driven dissenters into silence.
> The problem is, Alex, that the trolls mostly haven't been on the
> dissenting
> side. All of the childish namecalling -- "jerks", "trolls", "crazies"
> --
> and the insinuations that our voices aren't worth listening to because
> we
> don't get paid $250,000 a year by Google to contribute to GCC all day
> are
> coming from the pro-forking side.
Google doesn't pay anybody to work on GCC all day. You know nothing
about
GCC or the "problems" you're complaining about. Your input to this
conversation is not constructive.
> Once upon a time, free software developers understood that users'
> opinions
> were as valid as contributor's opinions.
That depends on the user.
Once upon a time, free software's developers *were* it's primary users,
i.e. they built the technology for themselves and made it freely
available in the hope that it would be useful to others. It's also the
case that the vast majority of GCC *current* users are not here making
proclamations about what GCC's project governance should be. Rather it's
a vocal and vanishingly small minority, who have contributed nothing of
value, code or insights, and continue to vocally do so. Many of GCC's
users are, however, watching in horror at the absolutely amateurish way
in which this is playing out and wondering if their long term commitment
should be to using this piece of software to build their
products/businesses.
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-19 15:06 ` Thomas Rodgers
@ 2021-04-19 16:57 ` Christopher Dimech
2021-04-20 3:47 ` Frosku
1 sibling, 0 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: Christopher Dimech @ 2021-04-19 16:57 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Thomas Rodgers; +Cc: Jonathan Wakely, GCC Development
> Sent: Tuesday, April 20, 2021 at 3:06 AM
> From: "Thomas Rodgers" <rodgert@appliantology.com>
> To: "Jonathan Wakely" <jwakely.gcc@gmail.com>
> Cc: "Jonathan Wakely via Gcc" <gcc@gcc.gnu.org>
> Subject: Re: removing toxic emailers
>
> On 2021-04-18 23:29, Jonathan Wakely via Gcc wrote:
>
> > On Mon, 19 Apr 2021, 02:41 Frosku, wrote:
> >
> > On Sun Apr 18, 2021 at 9:22 PM BST, Alexandre Oliva via Gcc wrote:
> > That's why it's best to dissent politely, lest they incorrectly
> > conclude
> > their opinions are consensual, or majoritary, just because they've
> > driven dissenters into silence.
> > The problem is, Alex, that the trolls mostly haven't been on the
> > dissenting
> > side. All of the childish namecalling -- "jerks", "trolls", "crazies"
> > --
> > and the insinuations that our voices aren't worth listening to because
> > we
> > don't get paid $250,000 a year by Google to contribute to GCC all day
> > are
> > coming from the pro-forking side.
>
> Google doesn't pay anybody to work on GCC all day. You know nothing
> about
> GCC or the "problems" you're complaining about. Your input to this
> conversation is not constructive.
>
> > Once upon a time, free software developers understood that users'
> > opinions
> > were as valid as contributor's opinions.
>
> That depends on the user.
>
> Once upon a time, free software's developers *were* it's primary users,
> i.e. they built the technology for themselves and made it freely
> available in the hope that it would be useful to others. It's also the
> case that the vast majority of GCC *current* users are not here making
> proclamations about what GCC's project governance should be. Rather it's
> a vocal and vanishingly small minority, who have contributed nothing of
> value, code or insights, and continue to vocally do so. Many of GCC's
> users are, however, watching in horror at the absolutely amateurish way
> in which this is playing out and wondering if their long term commitment
> should be to using this piece of software to build their
> products/businesses.
Completely false. Free software's developers were people who were disgusted
with the communities of software developers that started restricting users.
The Free Software Community wanted software that they could use and modify
code for any purpose, notwithstanding any prohibition other developers
wanted to impose on them.
The hackers of the 70s and 80s who transformed computing and the early
internet were known for their wit. This included using a playboy photo
of Lena Söderberg for image processing. They had got tired of the
usually dull test images used at conferences. She rapidly became
the First Lady of Computing. Many were very happy to meet her in person
and ask her an autograph. n 1997, Forsén worked for a government agency
supervising disabled employees who archived data using computers and
scanners. In 2015, she was guest of honor at the banquet of IEEE,
delivering a speech, and chairing the best paper award ceremony.
Those were exciting times, but by now government-sepported and
corporation-supported organizations have caught up; what was once
a liberating technology has become a conduit for surveillance and
manipulation.
Even a chimp can write code. So I give the reply attributed to
Eric Raymond, after Microsoft offerred him a job.
I'd thank you for your offer of employment at Microsoft, except
that it indicates that either you or your research team (or both)
couldn't get a clue if it were pounded into you with baseball bats.
What were you going to do with the rest of your afternoon, offer jobs
to Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds? Or were you going to stick to
something easier, like talking Pope Benedict into presiding at a
Satanist orgy? - Eric Raymond
There was a time when I felt too much at odds with Eric, but today
he has became a friend.
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-19 15:06 ` Thomas Rodgers
2021-04-19 16:57 ` Christopher Dimech
@ 2021-04-20 3:47 ` Frosku
2021-04-20 5:06 ` Christopher Dimech
2021-04-20 7:53 ` Jonathan Wakely
1 sibling, 2 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: Frosku @ 2021-04-20 3:47 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Thomas Rodgers, Jonathan Wakely; +Cc: Jonathan Wakely via Gcc
On Mon Apr 19, 2021 at 4:06 PM BST, Thomas Rodgers wrote:
> Google doesn't pay anybody to work on GCC all day. You know nothing
> about
> GCC or the "problems" you're complaining about. Your input to this
> conversation is not constructive.
This feels like that moment in 8Mile, "pay attention, you're saying the
same shit that he said." The personal insults and technical semantic
arguments are testament to the fact that you're not willing or not able
to argue the points. It's quite incredible that two people have replied
to the same multiple-hundred word e-mail about a broad issue of trying
to gatekeep discussion and both have focused on semantics ("it's not
*all* day"). I will remember not to use hyperbole in future for fear of
it being taken literally and used as an excuse to dodge the point.
> > Once upon a time, free software developers understood that users'
> > opinions
> > were as valid as contributor's opinions.
>
> That depends on the user.
>
> Once upon a time, free software's developers *were* it's primary users,
> i.e. they built the technology for themselves and made it freely
> available in the hope that it would be useful to others. It's also the
> case that the vast majority of GCC *current* users are not here making
> proclamations about what GCC's project governance should be. Rather it's
> a vocal and vanishingly small minority, who have contributed nothing of
> value, code or insights, and continue to vocally do so. Many of GCC's
> users are, however, watching in horror at the absolutely amateurish way
> in which this is playing out and wondering if their long term commitment
> should be to using this piece of software to build their
> products/businesses.
It's obvious that the majority of current users aren't here, the majority of
current users don't use the mailing lists. What have you done to try to
consult their opinions on the matter? It's amazing how much effort is being
expended to silence opposition, whilst not even one argument has been made
as to how breaking from FSF/GNU will result in a better technical outcome.
>>= %frosku = { os => 'gnu+linux', editor => 'emacs', coffee => 1 } =<<
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-20 3:47 ` Frosku
@ 2021-04-20 5:06 ` Christopher Dimech
2021-04-20 7:53 ` Jonathan Wakely
1 sibling, 0 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: Christopher Dimech @ 2021-04-20 5:06 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Frosku; +Cc: Thomas Rodgers, Jonathan Wakely, Jonathan Wakely via Gcc
> Sent: Tuesday, April 20, 2021 at 3:47 PM
> From: "Frosku" <frosku@frosku.com>
> To: "Thomas Rodgers" <rodgert@appliantology.com>, "Jonathan Wakely" <jwakely.gcc@gmail.com>
> Cc: "Jonathan Wakely via Gcc" <gcc@gcc.gnu.org>
> Subject: Re: removing toxic emailers
>
> On Mon Apr 19, 2021 at 4:06 PM BST, Thomas Rodgers wrote:
> > Google doesn't pay anybody to work on GCC all day. You know nothing
> > about
> > GCC or the "problems" you're complaining about. Your input to this
> > conversation is not constructive.
>
> This feels like that moment in 8Mile, "pay attention, you're saying the
> same shit that he said." The personal insults and technical semantic
> arguments are testament to the fact that you're not willing or not able
> to argue the points. It's quite incredible that two people have replied
> to the same multiple-hundred word e-mail about a broad issue of trying
> to gatekeep discussion and both have focused on semantics ("it's not
> *all* day"). I will remember not to use hyperbole in future for fear of
> it being taken literally and used as an excuse to dodge the point.
>
> > > Once upon a time, free software developers understood that users'
> > > opinions
> > > were as valid as contributor's opinions.
> >
> > That depends on the user.
> >
> > Once upon a time, free software's developers *were* it's primary users,
> > i.e. they built the technology for themselves and made it freely
> > available in the hope that it would be useful to others. It's also the
> > case that the vast majority of GCC *current* users are not here making
> > proclamations about what GCC's project governance should be. Rather it's
> > a vocal and vanishingly small minority, who have contributed nothing of
> > value, code or insights, and continue to vocally do so. Many of GCC's
> > users are, however, watching in horror at the absolutely amateurish way
> > in which this is playing out and wondering if their long term commitment
> > should be to using this piece of software to build their
> > products/businesses.
>
> It's obvious that the majority of current users aren't here, the majority of
> current users don't use the mailing lists. What have you done to try to
> consult their opinions on the matter? It's amazing how much effort is being
> expended to silence opposition, whilst not even one argument has been made
> as to how breaking from FSF/GNU will result in a better technical outcome.
Is that right!!! Users want to build their products and businesses?
Sounds very corporate to me, with wording that suggests the provision
of resources working on other projects for personal profit. The users
watching in horror are most likely developers who see Richard Stallman
as an obstacle.
GCC can never break from Gnu. They can only break from gnu, clone gcc and call
it something else such as gcc-fuckup, gcc-screw and the like. Then, if they
manage to fuckup the licensing or the compatibility with Gcc, we shall wait for
a new generation of forward thinking hackers to join us. The success of Gcc was
achieved to large extent due to the personal efforts of Rms.
These people never learned from the Cygnus EGCS Saga, because they cannot get
beyond the short-sighted viewpoint of "always disobey every authority".
The U.S.S. Cygnus was a "Death Ship". Reinhardt had planned to fly her
through the black hole but suffered sever damage and was torn apart.
> >>= %frosku = { os => 'gnu+linux', editor => 'emacs', coffee => 1 } =<<
>
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-20 3:47 ` Frosku
2021-04-20 5:06 ` Christopher Dimech
@ 2021-04-20 7:53 ` Jonathan Wakely
2021-04-20 14:03 ` Ian Lance Taylor
1 sibling, 1 reply; 153+ messages in thread
From: Jonathan Wakely @ 2021-04-20 7:53 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Frosku; +Cc: Thomas Rodgers, Jonathan Wakely via Gcc
On Tue, 20 Apr 2021 at 04:47, Frosku <frosku@frosku.com> wrote:
>
> On Mon Apr 19, 2021 at 4:06 PM BST, Thomas Rodgers wrote:
> > Google doesn't pay anybody to work on GCC all day. You know nothing
> > about
> > GCC or the "problems" you're complaining about. Your input to this
> > conversation is not constructive.
>
> This feels like that moment in 8Mile, "pay attention, you're saying the
> same shit that he said." The personal insults and technical semantic
> arguments are testament to the fact that you're not willing or not able
> to argue the points. It's quite incredible that two people have replied
> to the same multiple-hundred word e-mail about a broad issue of trying
> to gatekeep discussion and both have focused on semantics ("it's not
> *all* day"). I will remember not to use hyperbole in future for fear of
> it being taken literally and used as an excuse to dodge the point.
Check the git logs, Google employees are minor contributors these
days. The GPLv3 scared Google away from GCC years ago.
I've unsubscribed from this list now, so please stop CCing me. I'm not
interested in continuing this.
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-20 7:53 ` Jonathan Wakely
@ 2021-04-20 14:03 ` Ian Lance Taylor
2021-04-20 14:15 ` Richard Kenner
0 siblings, 1 reply; 153+ messages in thread
From: Ian Lance Taylor @ 2021-04-20 14:03 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Jonathan Wakely; +Cc: Frosku, Jonathan Wakely via Gcc
On Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 12:54 AM Jonathan Wakely via Gcc <gcc@gcc.gnu.org>
wrote:
>
> Check the git logs, Google employees are minor contributors these
> days. The GPLv3 scared Google away from GCC years ago.
>
Just for the record, Google has no problem with the GPLv3. Google stopped
working on GCC because they made a company decision to use clang instead.
That decision was made for technical reasons, not licensing reasons.
Ian
>
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-20 14:03 ` Ian Lance Taylor
@ 2021-04-20 14:15 ` Richard Kenner
2021-04-20 14:22 ` David Brown
0 siblings, 1 reply; 153+ messages in thread
From: Richard Kenner @ 2021-04-20 14:15 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: iant; +Cc: gcc, jwakely.gcc
> Just for the record, Google has no problem with the GPLv3. Google stopped
> working on GCC because they made a company decision to use clang instead.
> That decision was made for technical reasons, not licensing reasons.
But note that some cellphone manufacturers (e.g, Samsung) have taken
steps to prevent non-signed binaries from being loaded in their phones.
This would have been problematic ("Tivoisation") if GPLv3 code was
included in Android.
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-20 14:15 ` Richard Kenner
@ 2021-04-20 14:22 ` David Brown
2021-04-20 14:30 ` Richard Kenner
0 siblings, 1 reply; 153+ messages in thread
From: David Brown @ 2021-04-20 14:22 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Richard Kenner, iant; +Cc: gcc, jwakely.gcc
On 20/04/2021 16:15, Richard Kenner via Gcc wrote:
>> Just for the record, Google has no problem with the GPLv3. Google stopped
>> working on GCC because they made a company decision to use clang instead.
>> That decision was made for technical reasons, not licensing reasons.
>
> But note that some cellphone manufacturers (e.g, Samsung) have taken
> steps to prevent non-signed binaries from being loaded in their phones.
> This would have been problematic ("Tivoisation") if GPLv3 code was
> included in Android.
>
That would surely only be relevant if people wanted to use their
telephones to compile code? The license of the compiler does not matter
(except for libraries or code snippets that are copied directly by the
compiler to the binaries, and gcc has permissive license exceptions for
these.)
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-20 14:22 ` David Brown
@ 2021-04-20 14:30 ` Richard Kenner
0 siblings, 0 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: Richard Kenner @ 2021-04-20 14:30 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: david.brown; +Cc: gcc, iant, jwakely.gcc
> That would surely only be relevant if people wanted to use their
> telephones to compile code?
That's not completely clear. It would certainly be true if the compiler
were included on the phone, whether or not the compiler was actually used.
But I was more addressing the general comment that Google doesn't care
about GPLv3 than the specific issue of GCC. If the kernel were GPLv3,
for example, there would be an issue with what Samsung is doing.
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-17 9:09 ` Gerald Pfeifer
2021-04-17 11:56 ` Giacomo Tesio
@ 2021-04-17 13:57 ` Christopher Dimech
1 sibling, 0 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: Christopher Dimech @ 2021-04-17 13:57 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Gerald Pfeifer; +Cc: Frosku, gcc
> Sent: Saturday, April 17, 2021 at 9:09 PM
> From: "Gerald Pfeifer" <gerald@pfeifer.com>
> To: "Frosku" <frosku@frosku.com>
> Cc: gcc@gcc.gnu.org
> Subject: Re: removing toxic emailers
>
> On Fri, 16 Apr 2021, Frosku wrote:
> > In my view, if people employed by a small number of American companies
> > succeed in disassociating GCC from GNU/FSF, which is representative of
> > the free software grassroots community
>
> I find this insistant focus by some on "American companies"
> interesting - and quite pointless. And my passport is burgundy.
>
> It also is a completely unwarranted attack on the integrity of the
> maintainers, contributors, and other leaders of GCC. Regardless of
> the color of their passports.
> Personally I care about quality of what we ship, supporting our
> users, and upholding the principles of free software/open source.
> And I am willing to bet this applies to the vast majority of us.
>
> So please stop those unfounded allegations.
>
> Gerald
>
> PS: Our release managers, for example, are British (Joseph), Czech
> (Jakub), and German (Richi), IIRC. The majority of the FSF board,
> FSF leadership, and RMS himself are American from what I can tell.
It all depends on the quality of the people running it and in it.
RMS is certainly top quality considering he got so many minds to
start thinking straight about how software is developed and used.
Nation is just an idea. The idea of nation is made because of
sameness, of race, religion, ethnicity, ideologies, languages.
The free software movement is in defiance of all those things.
A total defiance of the sameness. Many people in our community
have still to figure out *how to be* in our community. Many
are getting it wrong. And it shows.
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-15 20:26 ` Chris Punches
2021-04-15 20:51 ` Ian Lance Taylor
@ 2021-04-15 21:13 ` David Malcolm
2021-04-15 23:21 ` JeanHeyd Meneide
2021-04-15 22:09 ` Christopher Jefferson
2021-04-15 22:40 ` Jeff Law
3 siblings, 1 reply; 153+ messages in thread
From: David Malcolm @ 2021-04-15 21:13 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: chris.punches, esr, Joseph Myers; +Cc: gcc, Nathan Sidwell
On Thu, 2021-04-15 at 16:26 -0400, Chris Punches wrote:
> What I see here in sum is another high level tightly integrated Red
> Hat
> employee saying the gist of "I'm really not saying it out of my
> employer's interest and it has nothing to do with my personal
> feelings".
I'm not sure I'm "high level", but I guess I'll take that as a
compliment.
I stated that the opinions in my screed were my own, but I'm a former
FLOSS enthusiast in the fortunate position of being paid to work on
GCC. I've tried to be open about my biases.
>
> Every single proponent of this argument that I have seen so far is
> employed by one of the same 5 companies and "really isn't doing it on
> behalf of my company I swear".
>
> Why is it almost exclusively that specific crowd saying it here,
> then?
Because, sadly, there's only a small group of companies that employ GCC
developers. These developers tend to have an emotional attachment to
the project (e.g. a broad agreement with the professed goals of the
FSF). Part of the reason I work at Red Hat is that its own internal
culture aligns with mine, much of the time, anyway (and I know we're
not perfect).
Hence there's some correlation between those with strong opinions on
the project and those who are being paid to work on it. I don't see
that as malicious or a conspiracy - just that we, reasonably, care
about the work we do and its context. It's not necessarily just a job
for me.
>
> I just don't buy it. Please say anything that would not support the
> emerging theory that these companies are using integrated employees
> to
> try to emulate justification/pretext for a rift to attack the free
> software world. Anything at all.
I hope I just did.
Dave
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-15 21:13 ` David Malcolm
@ 2021-04-15 23:21 ` JeanHeyd Meneide
0 siblings, 0 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: JeanHeyd Meneide @ 2021-04-15 23:21 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: David Malcolm
Cc: chris.punches, esr, Joseph Myers, GCC Development, Nathan Sidwell
On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 6:30 PM David Malcolm via Gcc <gcc@gcc.gnu.org> wrote:
> On Thu, 2021-04-15 at 16:26 -0400, Chris Punches wrote:
> > What I see here in sum is another high level tightly integrated Red
> > Hat
> > employee saying the gist of "I'm really not saying it out of my
> > employer's interest and it has nothing to do with my personal
> > feelings".
>
> I'm not sure I'm "high level", but I guess I'll take that as a
> compliment.
>
> I stated that the opinions in my screed were my own, but I'm a former
> FLOSS enthusiast in the fortunate position of being paid to work on
> GCC. I've tried to be open about my biases.
Then let me offer my perspective, again.
I am not affiliated with RedHat, IBM, or what have you. I do not
work for them, never have worked for them, and have contributed to the
C, C++, and other Systems Programming communities entirely
out-of-pocket or through scholarship and donation.
I submitted my Copyright Revocation to the Free Software
Foundation after giving the greenlight to merge the last of my
already-submitted patches into GCC.
Stallman is an exceptionally poor leader for Free Software. We
routinely complain about LLVM here but Stallman had the chance to get
on top of LLVM and guide it into the Free Software world; he missed
the e-mail and "found" it 10 years later. Stallman was horrible to the
people employed by the Free Software Foundation and apparently the
board was barely able to keep him in check, resulting in his employees
needing to have Shop Stewards with a Union in order to keep it
workable for employees.
Stallman is terrible at his job, and this group's inability to
have a secondary or tertiary copyright assignment has cost them my
contributions for the foreseeable future. Stallman's defenders are
ableist, because Stallman himself - in the FSF book and more - have
publicly stated that he is not autistic or neurodivergent. Stallman
has also stated this publicly, but the fact that Bruce Perens, Eric S.
Raymond, and more feel the need to show up and claim on behalf of all
Neuroatypical people and Neurodivergent people that they are fighting
for us while pushing a disgusting, ableist theory that "Neurodivergent
== Definitely An Asshole And Needs To Be Deprived Of Agency For Their
Actions" is disgusting.
That people feel the need to stereotype neurodivergent people
like me for the sake of Stallman's defense is horrible. That people
would stand by and claim this is some kind of great advocacy for
someone like me is a series of mental gymnastics I do not want to be
apart of. This place is fetid, and contrary to Raymond's idea that
toxicity has no cost, it most certainly did cost it myself and many
other people like me.
Sincerely,
JeanHeyd
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-15 20:26 ` Chris Punches
2021-04-15 20:51 ` Ian Lance Taylor
2021-04-15 21:13 ` David Malcolm
@ 2021-04-15 22:09 ` Christopher Jefferson
2021-04-15 22:40 ` Jeff Law
3 siblings, 0 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: Christopher Jefferson @ 2021-04-15 22:09 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: chris.punches; +Cc: David Malcolm, esr, Joseph Myers, gcc, Nathan Sidwell
On Thu, 15 Apr 2021 at 21:26, Chris Punches via Gcc <gcc@gcc.gnu.org> wrote:
>
> What I see here in sum is another high level tightly integrated Red Hat
> employee saying the gist of "I'm really not saying it out of my
> employer's interest and it has nothing to do with my personal
> feelings".
>
> Every single proponent of this argument that I have seen so far is
> employed by one of the same 5 companies and "really isn't doing it on
> behalf of my company I swear".
>
> Why is it almost exclusively that specific crowd saying it here, then?
>
> I just don't buy it. Please say anything that would not support the
> emerging theory that these companies are using integrated employees to
> try to emulate justification/pretext for a rift to attack the free
> software world. Anything at all.
>
One reason you might be seeing this is people who (a) are not paid to
work on GCC, and (b) found RMS and parts of the GNU community
unpleasant to work with, left years ago.
Chris
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-15 20:26 ` Chris Punches
` (2 preceding siblings ...)
2021-04-15 22:09 ` Christopher Jefferson
@ 2021-04-15 22:40 ` Jeff Law
3 siblings, 0 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: Jeff Law @ 2021-04-15 22:40 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: chris.punches, David Malcolm, esr, Joseph Myers; +Cc: gcc, Nathan Sidwell
On 4/15/2021 2:26 PM, Chris Punches via Gcc wrote:
> What I see here in sum is another high level tightly integrated Red Hat
> employee saying the gist of "I'm really not saying it out of my
> employer's interest and it has nothing to do with my personal
> feelings".
>
> Every single proponent of this argument that I have seen so far is
> employed by one of the same 5 companies and "really isn't doing it on
> behalf of my company I swear".
>
> Why is it almost exclusively that specific crowd saying it here, then?
>
> I just don't buy it. Please say anything that would not support the
> emerging theory that these companies are using integrated employees to
> try to emulate justification/pretext for a rift to attack the free
> software world. Anything at all.
[ Again, speaking or myself, not my employer or for the steering
committee. ]
So first, my employer (Tachyum) has had absolutely no clue what's going
on with this discussion until yesterday afternoon when I mentioned it in
passing. We're much more focused on getting our bits where they need to
be rather than policy, procedures and politics of the upstream
projects. However they have repeatedly, up to the CEO level emphasized
that upstreaming our work and being good players in the various relevant
communities is important and the various concerns I raised around that
prior to joining were answered to my satisfaction.
Second, I was the technical lead for Red Hat's tools team until about a
month ago. I've also held management positions in Red Hat (and Cygnus
prior to the acquisition) during my 25+ year career there. Red Hat and
Cygnus have consistently worked through the years to be good stewards
for the GNU tools. Management has consistently had a hands-off
approach to the upstream community, allowing engineers to exercise their
own judgment on if when and how to engage in various discussions. The
only time management got involved in these kinds of discussions was to
throw support behind EGCS -- including being supportive of bringing in
outside advisors for what ultimately became the steering committee.
You may not buy it, but that's OK. That's ultimately your decision to
make.
I do buy it. It's consistent with what I've seen over nearly three
decades of dealing with GNU tools and what I've *directly observed* as
part of the leadership and management teams.
Jeff
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-15 17:31 ` David Malcolm
` (2 preceding siblings ...)
2021-04-15 20:26 ` Chris Punches
@ 2021-04-15 23:28 ` Eric S. Raymond
2021-04-16 0:20 ` Christopher Dimech
2021-04-16 2:47 ` Ian Lance Taylor
3 siblings, 2 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: Eric S. Raymond @ 2021-04-15 23:28 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: David Malcolm; +Cc: Joseph Myers, gcc, Nathan Sidwell
David Malcolm <dmalcolm@redhat.com>:
> > I will, however, point out that it is a very *different* point from
> > "RMS has iupset some people and should therefore be canceled".
>
> Eric: I don't know if you're just being glib, or you're deliberately
> trying to caricature those of us who are upset by RMS's behavior.
My intent was not caricature. I was being dismissive and snarky
because I genuinely consider the personality complaints against RMS to
be pretty trivial. Not the managerial ones Joseph Myers listed; those
are serious. But they're not the cause of the current ruckus.
To make the "triviality" point in the most forceful possible way, I
will take the bull by the horns and directly address RMS's behavior towards
women. And I will reveal a few things that I haven't talked about in
public for 40 years.
I've known RMS since 1979; I'm fully aware of how obnoxious he can be
towards both men and women. There have been occasions on which I have
thought the state of the universe would have been improved if he'd
gotten a swift slap in the face.
In fact, the first or second time I met him face to face it was
because he was rather determinedly pursuing my then-girlfriend.
A hostile witness might have said he was creeping on her, though
that slang for it wouldn't be invented until much later.
I think an explanation of how how I reasoned about that situation has
some value in light of the current attempt to ostracize RMS.
I paid very careful attention to whether my girlfriend appeared to
need any help dealing with him. I regarded her as an adult fully
capable of making her own decisions. One of those decisions could
have been to slap his face. If a more severe sanction had been
required, and she had yelled for help, I would cheerfully have
punched his lights out.
No fisticuffs were required. She gently discouraged him, and we both
established friendly relations with him. In later years RMS and I
remained fairly close long after I broke up with that girlfriend. He
made passes at at least two of my later girlfriends that I know of,
including the woman I am still married to. In all cases, I trusted
these ladies to handle the situation like adults, and they did. It
really would not have occurred to me to do otherwise.
I hear a lot of talk about RMS's behavior towards women being some sort
of vast horrible transgression that will drive all women everywhere to
flee from ever being contributors to FSF projects. To me this seems
just silly, and very infantilizing of women in general. My
girlfriends were emtirely able to
(1) short-stop his advances when they became unwelcome
(2) understand that some men have poor social skills and
trouble recognizing boundaries,
(3) and *stay on friendly terms with him anyway*.
I mean I saw this not just more than once, but every single time it
came up.
I don't assume that any adult female is incapable of these things; I
respect women as fully capable of asserting and defending their
interests, I *expect* women to do that, and I thus consider a lot of the
white-knighting on their behalf to be at best empty virtue signaling
and at worst a cover for much more discreditable motives.
Of course, he offends men too. When I deal with RMS, I know that I'm
going to have to cope with a certain amount of unpleasantness because
he has autism-like deficits amplified by some unfortunate personal
history. Yes. So what? He's one of my oldest friends anyway. He
has many admirable qualities; I respect and value him even when I have
to argue with him. And I can work with him when I need to.
Why in the *hell* should I assume anyone with female genitalia is
incapable of doing the same? More to the point, why is anybody else
making such a silly, reductive assumption and then turning it into a
galloping moral panic that somehow justifies stoning RMS and driving
him out of the village?
*grumble* Get *over* yourselves. You want to be "welcoming" to
women? Don't patronize or infantilize them - respect their ability to
tell off RMS for themselves *and then keep working with him*!
--
<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-15 23:28 ` Eric S. Raymond
@ 2021-04-16 0:20 ` Christopher Dimech
2021-04-16 2:47 ` Ian Lance Taylor
1 sibling, 0 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: Christopher Dimech @ 2021-04-16 0:20 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: esr; +Cc: David Malcolm, gcc, Nathan Sidwell, Joseph Myers
I fully agree with your assessment.
Have in the past organised meetings for him and never seen any bs.
Having led the discussions, RMS was always cooperative and at no point
disrupted procedure. This was 2017-2018 when I was in Barcelona coordinating
all this - leading to the CaixaForum conversation on digital cities with
Barcelona City Council Chief of Technology Francesca Bria. And other
interactions, e.g. with Behavioral Expert Dr Diane Hamilton. If anyone
thinks the two women needed white-knighting, people who think this way,
should go and get their head tested. Although the 14th century is long past,
many educated people today are either uneducated, or education has educated
them out of it.
---------------------
Christopher Dimech
General Administrator - Naiad Informatics - GNU Project (Geocomputation)
- Geophysical Simulation
- Geological Subsurface Mapping
- Disaster Preparedness and Mitigation
- Natural Resource Exploration and Production
- Free Software Advocacy
> Sent: Friday, April 16, 2021 at 11:28 AM
> From: "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@thyrsus.com>
> To: "David Malcolm" <dmalcolm@redhat.com>
> Cc: gcc@gcc.gnu.org, "Nathan Sidwell" <nathan@acm.org>, "Joseph Myers" <joseph@codesourcery.com>
> Subject: Re: removing toxic emailers
>
> David Malcolm <dmalcolm@redhat.com>:
> > > I will, however, point out that it is a very *different* point from
> > > "RMS has iupset some people and should therefore be canceled".
> >
> > Eric: I don't know if you're just being glib, or you're deliberately
> > trying to caricature those of us who are upset by RMS's behavior.
>
> My intent was not caricature. I was being dismissive and snarky
> because I genuinely consider the personality complaints against RMS to
> be pretty trivial. Not the managerial ones Joseph Myers listed; those
> are serious. But they're not the cause of the current ruckus.
>
> To make the "triviality" point in the most forceful possible way, I
> will take the bull by the horns and directly address RMS's behavior towards
> women. And I will reveal a few things that I haven't talked about in
> public for 40 years.
>
> I've known RMS since 1979; I'm fully aware of how obnoxious he can be
> towards both men and women. There have been occasions on which I have
> thought the state of the universe would have been improved if he'd
> gotten a swift slap in the face.
>
> In fact, the first or second time I met him face to face it was
> because he was rather determinedly pursuing my then-girlfriend.
> A hostile witness might have said he was creeping on her, though
> that slang for it wouldn't be invented until much later.
>
> I think an explanation of how how I reasoned about that situation has
> some value in light of the current attempt to ostracize RMS.
>
> I paid very careful attention to whether my girlfriend appeared to
> need any help dealing with him. I regarded her as an adult fully
> capable of making her own decisions. One of those decisions could
> have been to slap his face. If a more severe sanction had been
> required, and she had yelled for help, I would cheerfully have
> punched his lights out.
>
> No fisticuffs were required. She gently discouraged him, and we both
> established friendly relations with him. In later years RMS and I
> remained fairly close long after I broke up with that girlfriend. He
> made passes at at least two of my later girlfriends that I know of,
> including the woman I am still married to. In all cases, I trusted
> these ladies to handle the situation like adults, and they did. It
> really would not have occurred to me to do otherwise.
>
> I hear a lot of talk about RMS's behavior towards women being some sort
> of vast horrible transgression that will drive all women everywhere to
> flee from ever being contributors to FSF projects. To me this seems
> just silly, and very infantilizing of women in general. My
> girlfriends were emtirely able to
>
> (1) short-stop his advances when they became unwelcome
>
> (2) understand that some men have poor social skills and
> trouble recognizing boundaries,
>
> (3) and *stay on friendly terms with him anyway*.
>
> I mean I saw this not just more than once, but every single time it
> came up.
>
> I don't assume that any adult female is incapable of these things; I
> respect women as fully capable of asserting and defending their
> interests, I *expect* women to do that, and I thus consider a lot of the
> white-knighting on their behalf to be at best empty virtue signaling
> and at worst a cover for much more discreditable motives.
>
> Of course, he offends men too. When I deal with RMS, I know that I'm
> going to have to cope with a certain amount of unpleasantness because
> he has autism-like deficits amplified by some unfortunate personal
> history. Yes. So what? He's one of my oldest friends anyway. He
> has many admirable qualities; I respect and value him even when I have
> to argue with him. And I can work with him when I need to.
>
> Why in the *hell* should I assume anyone with female genitalia is
> incapable of doing the same? More to the point, why is anybody else
> making such a silly, reductive assumption and then turning it into a
> galloping moral panic that somehow justifies stoning RMS and driving
> him out of the village?
>
> *grumble* Get *over* yourselves. You want to be "welcoming" to
> women? Don't patronize or infantilize them - respect their ability to
> tell off RMS for themselves *and then keep working with him*!
> --
> <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>
>
>
>
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-15 23:28 ` Eric S. Raymond
2021-04-16 0:20 ` Christopher Dimech
@ 2021-04-16 2:47 ` Ian Lance Taylor
2021-04-16 3:02 ` Frosku
2021-04-16 4:09 ` Eric S. Raymond
1 sibling, 2 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: Ian Lance Taylor @ 2021-04-16 2:47 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Eric S. Raymond; +Cc: GCC Development
On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 4:29 PM Eric S. Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com> wrote:
>
> *grumble* Get *over* yourselves. You want to be "welcoming" to
> women? Don't patronize or infantilize them - respect their ability to
> tell off RMS for themselves *and then keep working with him*!
Thank you for sharing your experiences.
I just want to note that I think this last paragraph misses the point.
Patronizing or infantilizing anybody doesn't come into this at all.
This is about work. There are social aspects to free software, but
it's not fundamentally a social activity. It's about getting
something done, and for many people it's their job. For the sake of
argument, I'm going to temporarily set aside all consideration of how
people should behave in a professional setting, not because it doesn't
matter, but just to try to clarify matters. Let's just think about
the project.
We want free software to succeed. Free software is more likely to
succeed if more people work on it. If you are a volunteer, as many
are, you can choose to spend your time on the project where you have
to short-stop unwelcome advances, where you are required to deal with
"men with poor social skills." Or you can choose to spend your time
on the project where people treat you with respect. Which one do you
choose?
Or perhaps you have a job that requires you to work on free software.
Now, if you work on a project where the people act like RMS, you are
being forced by your employer to work in a space where you face
unwelcome advances and men who have "trouble recognizing boundaries."
That's textbook hostile environment, and a set up for you to sue your
employer. So your employer will never ask anyone to work on a project
where people act like that--at least, they won't do it more than once.
In other words, having people who act in the way that you describe RMS
as acting is actively harmful for a free software project, because it
will discourage people from working on it.
(Entirely separately, I don't get the slant of your whole e-mail. You
can put up with RMS despite the boorish behavior you describe. Great.
You're a saint. Why do you expect everyone else to be a saint? I
don't meet with people who act like that, not more than once. Life is
too short. I'll work with them if I must, but not if I don't have
to.)
Ian
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-16 2:47 ` Ian Lance Taylor
@ 2021-04-16 3:02 ` Frosku
2021-04-16 3:19 ` Ian Lance Taylor
2021-04-16 4:09 ` Eric S. Raymond
1 sibling, 1 reply; 153+ messages in thread
From: Frosku @ 2021-04-16 3:02 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Ian Lance Taylor, 'Eric S. Raymond'; +Cc: GCC Development
On Fri Apr 16, 2021 at 3:47 AM BST, Ian Lance Taylor via Gcc wrote:
> This is about work. There are social aspects to free software, but
> it's not fundamentally a social activity. It's about getting
> something done, and for many people it's their job. For the sake of
> argument, I'm going to temporarily set aside all consideration of how
> people should behave in a professional setting, not because it doesn't
> matter, but just to try to clarify matters. Let's just think about
> the project.
>
> We want free software to succeed. Free software is more likely to
> succeed if more people work on it. If you are a volunteer, as many
> are, you can choose to spend your time on the project where you have
> to short-stop unwelcome advances, where you are required to deal with
> "men with poor social skills." Or you can choose to spend your time
> on the project where people treat you with respect. Which one do you
> choose?
The one where technical excellence is prioritized over social skills,
personally. If I have a choice between partaking in a project where I
have to walk on eggshells for fear of people coming with torches and
pitchforks to expel me because I was a bit too harsh in my critique or
posted an opinion on my personal blog which wasn't something they
agreed with, or a project where some of the other people are people I
wouldn't share a beer with but the technical standard is high and free
expression is generally valued, I would choose the latter.
This comes down to culture. I did not grow up in a culture where I was
taught that other people need to wrap me in cotton wool. I grew up in a
culture where arguments were judged on merit and generally as people we
accepted other peoples' rights to hold shitty opinions. For many of us,
the latter is more comfortable.
> Or perhaps you have a job that requires you to work on free software.
> Now, if you work on a project where the people act like RMS, you are
> being forced by your employer to work in a space where you face
> unwelcome advances and men who have "trouble recognizing boundaries."
> That's textbook hostile environment, and a set up for you to sue your
> employer. So your employer will never ask anyone to work on a project
> where people act like that--at least, they won't do it more than once.
I have never seen RMS act like that in a technical setting though, and
if he did, I think that would be a valid reason to remove him from the
mailing list and demand that GNU chooses someone else to represent
itself when communicating with GCC.
> In other words, having people who act in the way that you describe RMS
> as acting is actively harmful for a free software project, because it
> will discourage people from working on it.
>
> (Entirely separately, I don't get the slant of your whole e-mail. You
> can put up with RMS despite the boorish behavior you describe. Great.
> You're a saint. Why do you expect everyone else to be a saint? I
> don't meet with people who act like that, not more than once. Life is
> too short. I'll work with them if I must, but not if I don't have
> to.)
I don't think anyone needs to be a saint, but we do need to be able to
collaborate with people from different cultural, political, and personal
backgrounds to our own. Enforcing a social code which is exclusive to
the coasts of the United States on a global community seems to me to be
even more exclusionary than allowing people with poor social skills.
>>= %frosku = { os => 'gnu+linux', editor => 'emacs', coffee => 1 } =<<
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-16 3:02 ` Frosku
@ 2021-04-16 3:19 ` Ian Lance Taylor
2021-04-16 4:07 ` Frosku
2021-04-16 8:54 ` Iain Sandoe
0 siblings, 2 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: Ian Lance Taylor @ 2021-04-16 3:19 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Frosku; +Cc: GCC Development
On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 8:02 PM Frosku <frosku@frosku.com> wrote:
>
> > We want free software to succeed. Free software is more likely to
> > succeed if more people work on it. If you are a volunteer, as many
> > are, you can choose to spend your time on the project where you have
> > to short-stop unwelcome advances, where you are required to deal with
> > "men with poor social skills." Or you can choose to spend your time
> > on the project where people treat you with respect. Which one do you
> > choose?
>
> The one where technical excellence is prioritized over social skills,
> personally. If I have a choice between partaking in a project where I
> have to walk on eggshells for fear of people coming with torches and
> pitchforks to expel me because I was a bit too harsh in my critique or
> posted an opinion on my personal blog which wasn't something they
> agreed with, or a project where some of the other people are people I
> wouldn't share a beer with but the technical standard is high and free
> expression is generally valued, I would choose the latter.
Those are not the only two possible ways that a project can work.
Also, you seem to be making the implicit assumption that there is some
sort of trade off between technical excellence and social skills.
That is false. They are independent axes.
Ian
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-16 3:19 ` Ian Lance Taylor
@ 2021-04-16 4:07 ` Frosku
2021-04-16 16:28 ` Ian Lance Taylor
2021-04-16 8:54 ` Iain Sandoe
1 sibling, 1 reply; 153+ messages in thread
From: Frosku @ 2021-04-16 4:07 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Ian Lance Taylor; +Cc: GCC Development
On Fri Apr 16, 2021 at 4:19 AM BST, Ian Lance Taylor wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 8:02 PM Frosku <frosku@frosku.com> wrote:
> >
> > > We want free software to succeed. Free software is more likely to
> > > succeed if more people work on it. If you are a volunteer, as many
> > > are, you can choose to spend your time on the project where you have
> > > to short-stop unwelcome advances, where you are required to deal with
> > > "men with poor social skills." Or you can choose to spend your time
> > > on the project where people treat you with respect. Which one do you
> > > choose?
> >
> > The one where technical excellence is prioritized over social skills,
> > personally. If I have a choice between partaking in a project where I
> > have to walk on eggshells for fear of people coming with torches and
> > pitchforks to expel me because I was a bit too harsh in my critique or
> > posted an opinion on my personal blog which wasn't something they
> > agreed with, or a project where some of the other people are people I
> > wouldn't share a beer with but the technical standard is high and free
> > expression is generally valued, I would choose the latter.
>
> Those are not the only two possible ways that a project can work.
>
> Also, you seem to be making the implicit assumption that there is some
> sort of trade off between technical excellence and social skills.
> That is false. They are independent axes.
I shouldn't really use the term 'social skills' when what I really mean is
conformance to a specific set of cultural norms. I don't necessarily think
that social skills are quantifiable in the way that i.e. writing performant
and secure code is. Someone could be highly compliant with social norms in
their own culture, in their first language, without necessarily being as
conformant with foreign cultural norms in a second language, for example.
I agree with you that a project which creates a hostile atmosphere to women
would drive people away, not just women but men with a sense of decency. I
would not want to be a part of such a project. I would differ from you on
whether RMS has created such a thing given his seemingly limited
interactions with the project spaces. If I am wrong, and he has been here
harassing women, or on other project-related spaces, I am very willing to
admit I'm wrong.
On the other hand, I also think that a project which goes too far in
policing speech, especially speech unrelated to the project, will drive away
talented people who are more than willing to comply with the project's norms
within the project's spaces. Trying to enforce the 'California cultural
standard' on not only someone's interactions with the project but their
entire life (which may be lived in a very different cultural setting) seems
very invasive and culturally exclusionary.
I'd be interested to know where you draw the line as to what behavior is
related to the project, or if you don't draw a line, why volunteers in China,
Russia, Poland etc should be expected to accept an entire political doctrine
over their life to contribute to a compiler toolchain.
>>= %frosku = { os => 'gnu+linux', editor => 'emacs', coffee => 1 } =<<
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-16 4:07 ` Frosku
@ 2021-04-16 16:28 ` Ian Lance Taylor
2021-04-16 23:15 ` Frosku
0 siblings, 1 reply; 153+ messages in thread
From: Ian Lance Taylor @ 2021-04-16 16:28 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Frosku; +Cc: GCC Development
On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 9:08 PM Frosku <frosku@frosku.com> wrote:
>
> On the other hand, I also think that a project which goes too far in
> policing speech, especially speech unrelated to the project, will drive away
> talented people who are more than willing to comply with the project's norms
> within the project's spaces. Trying to enforce the 'California cultural
> standard' on not only someone's interactions with the project but their
> entire life (which may be lived in a very different cultural setting) seems
> very invasive and culturally exclusionary.
I do live in California, but I don't know what the "California
cultural standard" is. It's a big place, and it's full of people who
behave in all kinds of different ways. Harvey Weinstein and
brogrammer culture are California cultures. You presumably have
something in mind, but I'm not sure it's a real thing.
> I'd be interested to know where you draw the line as to what behavior is
> related to the project, or if you don't draw a line, why volunteers in China,
> Russia, Poland etc should be expected to accept an entire political doctrine
> over their life to contribute to a compiler toolchain.
How did we get to accepting an entire political doctrine?
What I have in mind is treating people with respect. For example, I'm
involved with the Go programming language. The Go community has a
code of conduct: https://golang.org/conduct. The key elements are:
- Be friendly and welcoming
- Be patient
Remember that people have varying communication styles and that not
everyone is using their native language. (Meaning and tone can be lost
in translation.)
- Be thoughtful
Productive communication requires effort. Think about how your words
will be interpreted.
Remember that sometimes it is best to refrain entirely from commenting.
- Be respectful
In particular, respect differences of opinion.
- Be charitable
Interpret the arguments of others in good faith, do not seek to disagree.
When we do disagree, try to understand why.
Avoid destructive behavior:
Derailing: stay on topic; if you want to talk about something else,
start a new conversation.
Unconstructive criticism: don't merely decry the current state of
affairs; offer—or at least solicit—suggestions as to how things may be
improved.
Snarking (pithy, unproductive, sniping comments)
Discussing potentially offensive or sensitive issues; this all too
often leads to unnecessary conflict.
Microaggressions: brief and commonplace verbal, behavioral and
environmental indignities that communicate hostile, derogatory or
negative slights and insults to a person or group.
That is what I would aim for. And in general that is how the GCC
community behaves. I don't know whether that is "California culture"
or not.
And I have to note that I have seen very few people here saying "RMS
must never participate in GCC in any way." What I see most people
saying is "RMS should not be in a position of leading the GCC project
and telling people what to do."
Ian
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-16 16:28 ` Ian Lance Taylor
@ 2021-04-16 23:15 ` Frosku
2021-04-17 0:43 ` Christopher Dimech
` (2 more replies)
0 siblings, 3 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: Frosku @ 2021-04-16 23:15 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Ian Lance Taylor; +Cc: GCC Development
On Fri Apr 16, 2021 at 5:28 PM BST, Ian Lance Taylor wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 9:08 PM Frosku <frosku@frosku.com> wrote:
> >
> > On the other hand, I also think that a project which goes too far in
> > policing speech, especially speech unrelated to the project, will drive away
> > talented people who are more than willing to comply with the project's norms
> > within the project's spaces. Trying to enforce the 'California cultural
> > standard' on not only someone's interactions with the project but their
> > entire life (which may be lived in a very different cultural setting) seems
> > very invasive and culturally exclusionary.
>
> I do live in California, but I don't know what the "California
> cultural standard" is. It's a big place, and it's full of people who
> behave in all kinds of different ways. Harvey Weinstein and
> brogrammer culture are California cultures. You presumably have
> something in mind, but I'm not sure it's a real thing.
There isn't a real name for any given culture because culture is such an organic
thing. When I think of codes of conduct I come back to i.e. Linus giving people
a hard time in code reviews, or Coraline Ada Ehmke's critiques of meritocracy.
Neither of these beliefs about what culture should be (Linus' or Coraline's) are
objectively right or objectively wrong, but both are likely to attract different
people, and result in different outcomes.
When I refer to a 'California cultural standard', that's not prescriptive. It's
just a reference to the fact that a *lot* of the SC live in California, and any
culture prescribed by the steering committee will be overly influenced by that
commonality. You will have ideas about what is welcoming, what is polite, etc
which are shaped by your upbringing just as I or anyone else does. These are
not objective truths, or internationally accepted as such.
> > I'd be interested to know where you draw the line as to what behavior is
> > related to the project, or if you don't draw a line, why volunteers in China,
> > Russia, Poland etc should be expected to accept an entire political doctrine
> > over their life to contribute to a compiler toolchain.
>
> How did we get to accepting an entire political doctrine?
>
> What I have in mind is treating people with respect. For example, I'm
> involved with the Go programming language. The Go community has a
> code of conduct: https://golang.org/conduct. The key elements are:
>
> - Be friendly and welcoming
> - Be patient
> Remember that people have varying communication styles and that not
> everyone is using their native language. (Meaning and tone can be lost
> in translation.)
> - Be thoughtful
> Productive communication requires effort. Think about how your words
> will be interpreted.
> Remember that sometimes it is best to refrain entirely from commenting.
> - Be respectful
> In particular, respect differences of opinion.
> - Be charitable
> Interpret the arguments of others in good faith, do not seek to
> disagree.
> When we do disagree, try to understand why.
>
> Avoid destructive behavior:
>
> Derailing: stay on topic; if you want to talk about something else,
> start a new conversation.
> Unconstructive criticism: don't merely decry the current state of
> affairs; offer—or at least solicit—suggestions as to how things may
> be
> improved.
> Snarking (pithy, unproductive, sniping comments)
> Discussing potentially offensive or sensitive issues; this all too
> often leads to unnecessary conflict.
> Microaggressions: brief and commonplace verbal, behavioral and
> environmental indignities that communicate hostile, derogatory or
> negative slights and insults to a person or group.
I certainly prefer it to the Contributor Covenant, however the last
point ('microaggressions') is an example of 'California culture'. In
most of the world, we do not have any such concept. The examples I've
seen online for what counts as a microaggression include asking questions
like "where are you from?"
I'm assuming this is considered offensive because there's a trend of using
it to imply that someone "isn't welcome" in the local area, but in most of
the world this isn't considered an offensive question. As someone who
spends the vast majority of my time in countries that aren't my birthplace,
it's one of the questions I hear the most.
I'm not sure that most of us who live outside of cultures where "micro-
-aggressions" are a commonly referenced 'thing' would know if we're making
one or just being friendly. As an aside, would this be applied to
communication in GCC spaces or to all off-list communications i.e. Twitter
/ Weibo postings, e-mails, things said at unrelated conferences?
> And I have to note that I have seen very few people here saying "RMS
> must never participate in GCC in any way." What I see most people
> saying is "RMS should not be in a position of leading the GCC project
> and telling people what to do."
My concern here is that if not RMS/GNU -- an institution which most free
software users outside of the corporate space trust -- then who? I mean no
personal offense to you or anyone else, but as (I assume) a fairly typical
GNU+Linux user, I do not have a large amount of trust built up for Silicon
Valley technology companies which have shown outright hostility to us for
years. I, and I assume many others, would feel very aggrieved if the GNU's
oversight were to be replaced with a group of representatives of those same
corporations (even if you are all good people).
GNU's primary mission is to be a free operating system, and GCC is supposed
to be a part of that operating system. I understand that GCC now has plenty
of usage outside of hacker culture & GNU -- it has outgrown us -- but it
is still the tool we turn to when we need to compile something. For that
reason, I'd like to think that there's some representation of that 'hacker'
culture and that OS within the leadership, even if it's not RMS, to respect
that we are still a large constituency of the users and historically were a
large constituency of the contributors.
I can't speak for others, but for me at least, replacing ties with GNU with
ties to another well-respected (non-corporate) entity in the free software
world like Debian or the Apache foundation would go a long way in allaying
my worries about this shift.
>>= %frosku = { os => 'gnu+linux', editor => 'emacs', coffee => 1 } =<<
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-16 23:15 ` Frosku
@ 2021-04-17 0:43 ` Christopher Dimech
2021-04-17 4:05 ` Ian Lance Taylor
2021-04-17 9:29 ` Giacomo Tesio
2 siblings, 0 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: Christopher Dimech @ 2021-04-17 0:43 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Frosku; +Cc: Ian Lance Taylor, GCC Development
> Sent: Saturday, April 17, 2021 at 11:15 AM
> From: "Frosku" <frosku@frosku.com>
> To: "Ian Lance Taylor" <iant@google.com>
> Cc: "GCC Development" <gcc@gcc.gnu.org>
> Subject: Re: removing toxic emailers
>
> On Fri Apr 16, 2021 at 5:28 PM BST, Ian Lance Taylor wrote:
> > On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 9:08 PM Frosku <frosku@frosku.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > On the other hand, I also think that a project which goes too far in
> > > policing speech, especially speech unrelated to the project, will drive away
> > > talented people who are more than willing to comply with the project's norms
> > > within the project's spaces. Trying to enforce the 'California cultural
> > > standard' on not only someone's interactions with the project but their
> > > entire life (which may be lived in a very different cultural setting) seems
> > > very invasive and culturally exclusionary.
> >
> > I do live in California, but I don't know what the "California
> > cultural standard" is. It's a big place, and it's full of people who
> > behave in all kinds of different ways. Harvey Weinstein and
> > brogrammer culture are California cultures. You presumably have
> > something in mind, but I'm not sure it's a real thing.
>
> There isn't a real name for any given culture because culture is such an organic
> thing. When I think of codes of conduct I come back to i.e. Linus giving people
> a hard time in code reviews, or Coraline Ada Ehmke's critiques of meritocracy.
> Neither of these beliefs about what culture should be (Linus' or Coraline's) are
> objectively right or objectively wrong, but both are likely to attract different
> people, and result in different outcomes.
We will certainly have to adapt to the recognition that the human race is in great
danger because of our politics going crazy and nationalism being a serious treat.
Our world must turn itself into a new set of people that is unlike the generation
that brought us in free software - just one corner of the western world. In 2016, Cosmologist Stephen Hawking warned us to stop reaching out to aliens before it's
too late. His assessment was that distant alien civilisations might view us as
inferior, weak, and perfect to conquer.
We barely averted nuclear annihilation in the later half of last century. The problem
is that we have not adapted ourselves to control all the power we already have. Science and technology has empowered us too much. After destroying much of the vegetal and animal species on Earth, we have started destroying ourselves, like other civilisations have destroyed themselves in the past. But this time, the collapse may be global.
Good luck with death!
> When I refer to a 'California cultural standard', that's not prescriptive. It's
> just a reference to the fact that a *lot* of the SC live in California, and any
> culture prescribed by the steering committee will be overly influenced by that
> commonality. You will have ideas about what is welcoming, what is polite, etc
> which are shaped by your upbringing just as I or anyone else does. These are
> not objective truths, or internationally accepted as such.
>
> > > I'd be interested to know where you draw the line as to what behavior is
> > > related to the project, or if you don't draw a line, why volunteers in China,
> > > Russia, Poland etc should be expected to accept an entire political doctrine
> > > over their life to contribute to a compiler toolchain.
> >
> > How did we get to accepting an entire political doctrine?
> >
> > What I have in mind is treating people with respect. For example, I'm
> > involved with the Go programming language. The Go community has a
> > code of conduct: https://golang.org/conduct. The key elements are:
> >
> > - Be friendly and welcoming
> > - Be patient
> > Remember that people have varying communication styles and that not
> > everyone is using their native language. (Meaning and tone can be lost
> > in translation.)
> > - Be thoughtful
> > Productive communication requires effort. Think about how your words
> > will be interpreted.
> > Remember that sometimes it is best to refrain entirely from commenting.
> > - Be respectful
> > In particular, respect differences of opinion.
> > - Be charitable
> > Interpret the arguments of others in good faith, do not seek to
> > disagree.
> > When we do disagree, try to understand why.
> >
> > Avoid destructive behavior:
> >
> > Derailing: stay on topic; if you want to talk about something else,
> > start a new conversation.
> > Unconstructive criticism: don't merely decry the current state of
> > affairs; offer—or at least solicit—suggestions as to how things may
> > be
> > improved.
> > Snarking (pithy, unproductive, sniping comments)
> > Discussing potentially offensive or sensitive issues; this all too
> > often leads to unnecessary conflict.
> > Microaggressions: brief and commonplace verbal, behavioral and
> > environmental indignities that communicate hostile, derogatory or
> > negative slights and insults to a person or group.
>
> I certainly prefer it to the Contributor Covenant, however the last
> point ('microaggressions') is an example of 'California culture'. In
> most of the world, we do not have any such concept. The examples I've
> seen online for what counts as a microaggression include asking questions
> like "where are you from?"
>
> I'm assuming this is considered offensive because there's a trend of using
> it to imply that someone "isn't welcome" in the local area, but in most of
> the world this isn't considered an offensive question. As someone who
> spends the vast majority of my time in countries that aren't my birthplace,
> it's one of the questions I hear the most.
>
> I'm not sure that most of us who live outside of cultures where "micro-
> -aggressions" are a commonly referenced 'thing' would know if we're making
> one or just being friendly. As an aside, would this be applied to
> communication in GCC spaces or to all off-list communications i.e. Twitter
> / Weibo postings, e-mails, things said at unrelated conferences?
>
> > And I have to note that I have seen very few people here saying "RMS
> > must never participate in GCC in any way." What I see most people
> > saying is "RMS should not be in a position of leading the GCC project
> > and telling people what to do."
>
> My concern here is that if not RMS/GNU -- an institution which most free
> software users outside of the corporate space trust -- then who? I mean no
> personal offense to you or anyone else, but as (I assume) a fairly typical
> GNU+Linux user, I do not have a large amount of trust built up for Silicon
> Valley technology companies which have shown outright hostility to us for
> years. I, and I assume many others, would feel very aggrieved if the GNU's
> oversight were to be replaced with a group of representatives of those same
> corporations (even if you are all good people).
>
> GNU's primary mission is to be a free operating system, and GCC is supposed
> to be a part of that operating system. I understand that GCC now has plenty
> of usage outside of hacker culture & GNU -- it has outgrown us -- but it
> is still the tool we turn to when we need to compile something. For that
> reason, I'd like to think that there's some representation of that 'hacker'
> culture and that OS within the leadership, even if it's not RMS, to respect
> that we are still a large constituency of the users and historically were a
> large constituency of the contributors.
>
> I can't speak for others, but for me at least, replacing ties with GNU with
> ties to another well-respected (non-corporate) entity in the free software
> world like Debian or the Apache foundation would go a long way in allaying
> my worries about this shift.
>
> >>= %frosku = { os => 'gnu+linux', editor => 'emacs', coffee => 1 } =<<
>
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-16 23:15 ` Frosku
2021-04-17 0:43 ` Christopher Dimech
@ 2021-04-17 4:05 ` Ian Lance Taylor
2021-04-17 4:08 ` Frosku
2021-04-17 9:29 ` Giacomo Tesio
2 siblings, 1 reply; 153+ messages in thread
From: Ian Lance Taylor @ 2021-04-17 4:05 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Frosku; +Cc: GCC Development
On Fri, Apr 16, 2021 at 4:16 PM Frosku <frosku@frosku.com> wrote:
>
> When I refer to a 'California cultural standard', that's not prescriptive. It's
> just a reference to the fact that a *lot* of the SC live in California, and any
> culture prescribed by the steering committee will be overly influenced by that
> commonality.
To the best of my knowledge, 2 of the 13 members of the GCC steering
committee live in California.
Ian
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-17 4:05 ` Ian Lance Taylor
@ 2021-04-17 4:08 ` Frosku
2021-04-17 5:04 ` Andrew Pinski
2021-04-17 5:35 ` Jeff Law
0 siblings, 2 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: Frosku @ 2021-04-17 4:08 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Ian Lance Taylor; +Cc: GCC Development
On Sat Apr 17, 2021 at 5:05 AM BST, Ian Lance Taylor wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 16, 2021 at 4:16 PM Frosku <frosku@frosku.com> wrote:
> >
> > When I refer to a 'California cultural standard', that's not prescriptive. It's
> > just a reference to the fact that a *lot* of the SC live in California, and any
> > culture prescribed by the steering committee will be overly influenced by that
> > commonality.
>
> To the best of my knowledge, 2 of the 13 members of the GCC steering
> committee live in California.
>
> Ian
And the rest of the west coast United States / New England?
>>= %frosku = { os => 'gnu+linux', editor => 'emacs', coffee => 1 } =<<
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-17 4:08 ` Frosku
@ 2021-04-17 5:04 ` Andrew Pinski
2021-04-17 9:08 ` Giacomo Tesio
2021-04-17 5:35 ` Jeff Law
1 sibling, 1 reply; 153+ messages in thread
From: Andrew Pinski @ 2021-04-17 5:04 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Frosku; +Cc: Ian Lance Taylor, GCC Development
On Fri, Apr 16, 2021 at 9:56 PM Frosku <frosku@frosku.com> wrote:
>
> On Sat Apr 17, 2021 at 5:05 AM BST, Ian Lance Taylor wrote:
> > On Fri, Apr 16, 2021 at 4:16 PM Frosku <frosku@frosku.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > When I refer to a 'California cultural standard', that's not prescriptive. It's
> > > just a reference to the fact that a *lot* of the SC live in California, and any
> > > culture prescribed by the steering committee will be overly influenced by that
> > > commonality.
> >
> > To the best of my knowledge, 2 of the 13 members of the GCC steering
> > committee live in California.
> >
> > Ian
>
> And the rest of the west coast United States / New England?
I count 5 which are not in the United States or Canada.
Thanks,
Andrew Pinski
>
> >>= %frosku = { os => 'gnu+linux', editor => 'emacs', coffee => 1 } =<<
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-17 5:04 ` Andrew Pinski
@ 2021-04-17 9:08 ` Giacomo Tesio
2021-04-17 9:41 ` Frosku
0 siblings, 1 reply; 153+ messages in thread
From: Giacomo Tesio @ 2021-04-17 9:08 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Andrew Pinski, Andrew Pinski via Gcc, Frosku
Hi Andrew and GCC,
On April 17, 2021 5:04:55 AM UTC, Andrew Pinski via Gcc
<gcc@gcc.gnu.org> wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 16, 2021 at 9:56 PM Frosku <frosku@frosku.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Sat Apr 17, 2021 at 5:05 AM BST, Ian Lance Taylor wrote:
> > > On Fri, Apr 16, 2021 at 4:16 PM Frosku <frosku@frosku.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > When I refer to a 'California cultural standard', that's not
> > > > prescriptive. It's just a reference to the fact that a *lot* of
> > > > the SC live in California, and any culture prescribed by the
> > > > steering committee will be overly influenced by that
> > > > commonality.
> > >
> > > To the best of my knowledge, 2 of the 13 members of the GCC
> > > steering committee live in California.
> >
> > And the rest of the west coast United States / New England?
>
> I count 5 which are not in the United States or Canada.
And how many are affiliated with (controversial) US corporations
(or their subsidiaries)?
Here are the numbers:
https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2021-April/235285.html
Ultimately the culture and behavious that you are trying to prescribe
here, are those of US tech workplaces.
The ones where "hiring for culture fit" was invented.
A culture that works strongly against unions, for example.
https://theintercept.com/2020/06/11/facebook-workplace-unionize/
Yes, the exact same Facebook that Nathan described here as "a joy
because of the huge step towards gender equality amongst the
engineers": https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2021-March/235091.html
Inclusive to some, but eager to exclude others for political reasons,
as you see in Nathan's long request.
We are talking about culture where people do NOT start a strike when a
scientist like Timnit Gebru is fired for what she wrote in a paper and
so on. Nor when Google doubled down by firing Margaret Mitchell.
THIS is the culture you are trying to impose to global Free Software.
Is this a culture that is safe for Free Software?
To me, it's not. To Stallman, neither. Terry Davis? Nope.
As for me, I have been depicted as a "jerk" and "concern troll" here.
My contribution is unwelcome. My code is welcome, the problem is me.
Because I refuse to bow down to US workspace moralism and hypocrisy.
I'm a toxic emailer, right?
But in fact, millions of people outside the US would feel excluded.
And threatened. But we are all "jerks", right?
Such culture is also dominated by RICH men, but it's unable to see the
problem in term of global and local distribution of wealth and power
and thus interprets it as a matter of sex, gender and race.
Which is obviously totally fine for rich men, as it distract people's
attention from the root of their power and won't really fix the problem.
And it's also fine for most leaders in this activist space, because
they can focus attivists' attention and outrage against easier preys,
like Stallman.
After all, it's easier to obtain corporate support (and money) if you
problematize these issues instead of the distribution of wealth and
power that causes them. They need to fight, but cannot afford to win.
Giacomo
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-17 9:08 ` Giacomo Tesio
@ 2021-04-17 9:41 ` Frosku
2021-04-17 15:07 ` Christopher Dimech
0 siblings, 1 reply; 153+ messages in thread
From: Frosku @ 2021-04-17 9:41 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Giacomo Tesio, Andrew Pinski, Andrew Pinski via Gcc
On Sat Apr 17, 2021 at 10:08 AM BST, Giacomo Tesio wrote:
> But in fact, millions of people outside the US would feel excluded.
> And threatened. But we are all "jerks", right?
>
> ...
>
> Such culture is also dominated by RICH men, but it's unable to see the
> problem in term of global and local distribution of wealth and power
> and thus interprets it as a matter of sex, gender and race.
>
> Which is obviously totally fine for rich men, as it distract people's
> attention from the root of their power and won't really fix the problem.
Did you ever notice that income group (in a global sense) is never a
protected characteristic in these COCs which proclaim to defend the
disenfranchised and the disadvantaged? It would seem to me that low income
is the greatest predictor of disadvantage globally.
>>= %frosku = { os => 'gnu+linux', editor => 'emacs', coffee => 1 } =<<
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-17 9:41 ` Frosku
@ 2021-04-17 15:07 ` Christopher Dimech
0 siblings, 0 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: Christopher Dimech @ 2021-04-17 15:07 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Frosku; +Cc: Giacomo Tesio, Andrew Pinski, Andrew Pinski via Gcc
> Sent: Saturday, April 17, 2021 at 9:41 PM
> From: "Frosku" <frosku@frosku.com>
> To: "Giacomo Tesio" <giacomo@tesio.it>, "Andrew Pinski" <pinskia@gmail.com>, "Andrew Pinski via Gcc" <gcc@gcc.gnu.org>
> Subject: Re: removing toxic emailers
>
> On Sat Apr 17, 2021 at 10:08 AM BST, Giacomo Tesio wrote:
> > But in fact, millions of people outside the US would feel excluded.
> > And threatened. But we are all "jerks", right?
> >
> > ...
> >
> > Such culture is also dominated by RICH men, but it's unable to see the
> > problem in term of global and local distribution of wealth and power
> > and thus interprets it as a matter of sex, gender and race.
> >
> > Which is obviously totally fine for rich men, as it distract people's
> > attention from the root of their power and won't really fix the problem.
>
> Did you ever notice that income group (in a global sense) is never a
> protected characteristic in these COCs which proclaim to defend the
> disenfranchised and the disadvantaged? It would seem to me that low income
> is the greatest predictor of disadvantage globally.
The one thing that would make a difference is if the rich take on the idea
of sharing. The reason that communism failed was because the idea of sharing
was taken on by the poor, who had nothing to offer.
If there is going to be progress regarding the way the free software movement
sees things, mocking day and night those who have things to offer is stupid.
I have no intention of going there, or trying to buy a ticket to heaven with
my goodness.
> >>= %frosku = { os => 'gnu+linux', editor => 'emacs', coffee => 1 } =<<
>
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-17 4:08 ` Frosku
2021-04-17 5:04 ` Andrew Pinski
@ 2021-04-17 5:35 ` Jeff Law
[not found] ` <e324569ac358127174e1ba08337166c4d9494883.camel@silogroup.org>
1 sibling, 1 reply; 153+ messages in thread
From: Jeff Law @ 2021-04-17 5:35 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Frosku, Ian Lance Taylor; +Cc: GCC Development
On 4/16/2021 10:08 PM, Frosku wrote:
> On Sat Apr 17, 2021 at 5:05 AM BST, Ian Lance Taylor wrote:
>> On Fri, Apr 16, 2021 at 4:16 PM Frosku <frosku@frosku.com> wrote:
>>> When I refer to a 'California cultural standard', that's not prescriptive. It's
>>> just a reference to the fact that a *lot* of the SC live in California, and any
>>> culture prescribed by the steering committee will be overly influenced by that
>>> commonality.
>> To the best of my knowledge, 2 of the 13 members of the GCC steering
>> committee live in California.
>>
>> Ian
> And the rest of the west coast United States / New England?
I'm not aware of anywhere in the US that is a monoculture in the way you
seem to be implying. And if you really believe there are those kinds of
monocultures , then you're showing a high degree of ignorance.
FTR, I've never resided on the west coast of the US or in the
traditionally defined New England states.
Jeff
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-16 23:15 ` Frosku
2021-04-17 0:43 ` Christopher Dimech
2021-04-17 4:05 ` Ian Lance Taylor
@ 2021-04-17 9:29 ` Giacomo Tesio
2021-04-17 9:36 ` Frosku
2 siblings, 1 reply; 153+ messages in thread
From: Giacomo Tesio @ 2021-04-17 9:29 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: gcc, Frosku, Ian Lance Taylor; +Cc: GCC Development
Beware with what you desire, Frosku.
On April 16, 2021 11:15:57 PM UTC, Frosku <frosku@frosku.com> wrote:
>
> I can't speak for others, but for me at least, replacing ties with GNU
> with ties to another well-respected (non-corporate) entity in the free
> software world like Debian or the Apache foundation would go a long way in
> allaying my worries about this shift.
Pretending to defend Free Software is way cheaper that to actually defend it.
In particular against a Google employee that violate GPL during his working hours.
https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2021-March/235224.html
Giacomo
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-17 9:29 ` Giacomo Tesio
@ 2021-04-17 9:36 ` Frosku
0 siblings, 0 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: Frosku @ 2021-04-17 9:36 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Giacomo Tesio, gcc, Ian Lance Taylor
On Sat Apr 17, 2021 at 10:29 AM BST, Giacomo Tesio wrote:
> Beware with what you desire, Frosku.
>
> On April 16, 2021 11:15:57 PM UTC, Frosku <frosku@frosku.com> wrote:
> >
> > I can't speak for others, but for me at least, replacing ties with GNU
> > with ties to another well-respected (non-corporate) entity in the free
> > software world like Debian or the Apache foundation would go a long way in
> > allaying my worries about this shift.
>
> Pretending to defend Free Software is way cheaper that to actually
> defend it.
> In particular against a Google employee that violate GPL during his
> working hours.
>
> https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2021-March/235224.html
What I desire is that GCC stay a part of GNU, a project that exists solely
to create a free operating system for the entire world to use. What I fear
most is a GCC steered by essentially a monoculture of paid big-tech coders
with no input from the free software community or GCC's non-corporate
users. Therefore, if a childish and ultimately unwarranted split is to
happen, it should be with the oversight of an organization friendly to free
software values. Not Google and not Facebook.
>>= %frosku = { os => 'gnu+linux', editor => 'emacs', coffee => 1 } =<<
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-16 3:19 ` Ian Lance Taylor
2021-04-16 4:07 ` Frosku
@ 2021-04-16 8:54 ` Iain Sandoe
2021-04-16 10:02 ` Thomas Koenig
` (2 more replies)
1 sibling, 3 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: Iain Sandoe @ 2021-04-16 8:54 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: GCC Development
Ian Lance Taylor via Gcc <gcc@gcc.gnu.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 8:02 PM Frosku <frosku@frosku.com> wrote:
>>> We want free software to succeed. Free software is more likely to
>>> succeed if more people work on it. If you are a volunteer, as many
>>> are, you can choose to spend your time on the project where you have
>>> to short-stop unwelcome advances, where you are required to deal with
>>> "men with poor social skills." Or you can choose to spend your time
>>> on the project where people treat you with respect. Which one do you
>>> choose?
>>
>> The one where technical excellence is prioritized over social skills,
>> personally. If I have a choice between partaking in a project where I
>> have to walk on eggshells for fear of people coming with torches and
>> pitchforks to expel me because I was a bit too harsh in my critique or
>> posted an opinion on my personal blog which wasn't something they
>> agreed with, or a project where some of the other people are people I
>> wouldn't share a beer with but the technical standard is high and free
>> expression is generally valued, I would choose the latter.
>
> Those are not the only two possible ways that a project can work.
>
> Also, you seem to be making the implicit assumption that there is some
> sort of trade off between technical excellence and social skills.
> That is false. They are independent axes.
Absolutely!
This forum (barring the current discussion where, frankly, the dissent is not
coming from people who are actually active contributors), does not usually
have a problem.
Nor is this isolated; I participate in two other forums where there are many
excellent software engineers with good social and communication skills (and
those that would not, perhaps, do this naturally have managed to adapt).
The world has changed (for the better in my view) this is 2021, not 1971;
it is
not a passing fashion to treat each other with respect, but a steady
progression that I’ve witnessed over my adult life.
Perpetuating the stereotypical “excellent” engineer (this problem is not
confined to software) as a beer-drinking male social misfit is a huge
disservice
to engineering everywhere.
It is already a considerable leap for many engineers to post code for public
review; it is essential (IMO) that review of code is carried out on a fair
and
technical basis without personal attack or harrassment (or unwelcome
unrelated
attention).
“Grow a thicker skin” is an appalling advertising slogan.
Iain
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-16 8:54 ` Iain Sandoe
@ 2021-04-16 10:02 ` Thomas Koenig
[not found] ` <CAJWNc-7q+t1njvEow=a6QPD4uWA7htEZn=koRBNd3ziO4y8A-g@mail.gmail.com>
2021-04-16 17:31 ` NightStrike
2 siblings, 0 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: Thomas Koenig @ 2021-04-16 10:02 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Iain Sandoe, GCC Development
On 16.04.21 10:54, Iain Sandoe via Gcc wrote:
> This forum (barring the current discussion where, frankly, the dissent
> is not
> coming from people who are actually active contributors),
Maybe I should have been less diplomatic :-)
I dissent, strongly.
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
[parent not found: <CAJWNc-7q+t1njvEow=a6QPD4uWA7htEZn=koRBNd3ziO4y8A-g@mail.gmail.com>]
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-16 8:54 ` Iain Sandoe
2021-04-16 10:02 ` Thomas Koenig
[not found] ` <CAJWNc-7q+t1njvEow=a6QPD4uWA7htEZn=koRBNd3ziO4y8A-g@mail.gmail.com>
@ 2021-04-16 17:31 ` NightStrike
2 siblings, 0 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: NightStrike @ 2021-04-16 17:31 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Iain Sandoe; +Cc: GCC Development
On Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 23:42 Iain Sandoe via Gcc <gcc@gcc.gnu.org> wrote:
> it is essential (IMO) that review of code is carried out on a fair and
> technical basis without personal attack or harrassment (or
> unwelcome unrelated attention).
>
Is this not the case on gcc-patches?
>
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-16 2:47 ` Ian Lance Taylor
2021-04-16 3:02 ` Frosku
@ 2021-04-16 4:09 ` Eric S. Raymond
2021-04-16 9:39 ` Kalamatee
2021-04-16 16:17 ` Ian Lance Taylor
1 sibling, 2 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: Eric S. Raymond @ 2021-04-16 4:09 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Ian Lance Taylor; +Cc: GCC Development
Ian Lance Taylor <iant@google.com>:
> Patronizing or infantilizing anybody doesn't come into this at all.
I am not even *remotely* persuaded of this. This whole attitude that if
a woman is ever exposed to a man with less than perfect American
upper-middle-class manners it's a calamity requiring intervention
and mass shunning, that *reeks* of infantilizing women.
> We want free software to succeed. Free software is more likely to
> succeed if more people work on it. If you are a volunteer, as many
> are, you can choose to spend your time on the project where you have
> to short-stop unwelcome advances, where you are required to deal with
> "men with poor social skills." Or you can choose to spend your time
> on the project where people treat you with respect. Which one do you
> choose?
The one where your expected satisfaction is higher, with boorishness
from autistic males factored in as one of the overheads. Don't try to
tell me that's a deal-killer, I've known too many women who would
laugh at you for that assumption.
> Or perhaps you have a job that requires you to work on free software.
> Now, if you work on a project where the people act like RMS, you are
> being forced by your employer to work in a space where you face
> unwelcome advances and men who have "trouble recognizing boundaries."
> That's textbook hostile environment, and a set up for you to sue your
> employer. So your employer will never ask anyone to work on a project
> where people act like that--at least, they won't do it more than once.
Here's what happens in the real world (and I'm not speculating, I was
a BoD member of a tech startup at one time, stuff like this came up).
You say "X is being a jerk - can I work on something else?" Your
employer, rightly terrified of the next step, is not going to "force"
you to do a damn thing. He's going to bend over backwards to
accommodate you.
> (Entirely separately, I don't get the slant of your whole e-mail. You
> can put up with RMS despite the boorish behavior you describe. Great.
> You're a saint. Why do you expect everyone else to be a saint?
I'm no saint, I'm merely an adult who takes responsibility for my own
choices when dealing with people who have minimal-brain-damage
syndromes. OK, I have probably acquired a bit more tolerance for
their quirks than average from long experience, but I don't believe I'm
an extreme outlier that way.
What I am pushing for is for everyone to recognize that *women are
adults* - they have their own agency and are in general perfectly
capable of treating an RMS-class jerk as at worst a minor annoyance.
Behaving as though he's some sort of icky monster who should be
shunned by all right-thinking people and taints everything he touches
is ... just unbelievably disconnected from reality. Bizarre
neo-Puritan virtue signaling of no help to anyone.
If I needed more evidence that many Americans lead pampered,
cossetted, hyper-insulated lives that require them to make up their
own drama, this whole flap would be it.
--
<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-16 4:09 ` Eric S. Raymond
@ 2021-04-16 9:39 ` Kalamatee
2021-04-16 9:58 ` Frosku
2021-04-16 16:17 ` Ian Lance Taylor
1 sibling, 1 reply; 153+ messages in thread
From: Kalamatee @ 2021-04-16 9:39 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: esr, gcc
On Fri, 16 Apr 2021 at 05:59, Eric S. Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com> wrote:
> Ian Lance Taylor <iant@google.com>:
> > Patronizing or infantilizing anybody doesn't come into this at all.
>
> I am not even *remotely* persuaded of this. This whole attitude that if
> a woman is ever exposed to a man with less than perfect American
> upper-middle-class manners it's a calamity requiring intervention
> and mass shunning, that *reeks* of infantilizing women.
>
> > We want free software to succeed. Free software is more likely to
> > succeed if more people work on it. If you are a volunteer, as many
> > are, you can choose to spend your time on the project where you have
> > to short-stop unwelcome advances, where you are required to deal with
> > "men with poor social skills." Or you can choose to spend your time
> > on the project where people treat you with respect. Which one do you
> > choose?
>
> The one where your expected satisfaction is higher, with boorishness
> from autistic males factored in as one of the overheads. Don't try to
> tell me that's a deal-killer, I've known too many women who would
> laugh at you for that assumption.
>
> > Or perhaps you have a job that requires you to work on free software.
> > Now, if you work on a project where the people act like RMS, you are
> > being forced by your employer to work in a space where you face
> > unwelcome advances and men who have "trouble recognizing boundaries."
> > That's textbook hostile environment, and a set up for you to sue your
> > employer. So your employer will never ask anyone to work on a project
> > where people act like that--at least, they won't do it more than once.
>
> Here's what happens in the real world (and I'm not speculating, I was
> a BoD member of a tech startup at one time, stuff like this came up).
> You say "X is being a jerk - can I work on something else?" Your
> employer, rightly terrified of the next step, is not going to "force"
> you to do a damn thing. He's going to bend over backwards to
> accommodate you.
>
> > (Entirely separately, I don't get the slant of your whole e-mail. You
> > can put up with RMS despite the boorish behavior you describe. Great.
> > You're a saint. Why do you expect everyone else to be a saint?
>
> I'm no saint, I'm merely an adult who takes responsibility for my own
> choices when dealing with people who have minimal-brain-damage
> syndromes. OK, I have probably acquired a bit more tolerance for
> their quirks than average from long experience, but I don't believe I'm
> an extreme outlier that way.
>
> What I am pushing for is for everyone to recognize that *women are
> adults* - they have their own agency and are in general perfectly
> capable of treating an RMS-class jerk as at worst a minor annoyance.
>
> Behaving as though he's some sort of icky monster who should be
> shunned by all right-thinking people and taints everything he touches
> is ... just unbelievably disconnected from reality. Bizarre
> neo-Puritan virtue signaling of no help to anyone.
>
> If I needed more evidence that many Americans lead pampered,
> cossetted, hyper-insulated lives that require them to make up their
> own drama, this whole flap would be it.
>
>
Im glad there are people like you on the project Eric, because you express
exactly what a lot of people see - even if a minority of people chose to
ignore it,
To a lot of "non americans", the events on here appear as nothing more than
a power grab by a small minority of developers, abusing their position and
american corporate ideologies to enact change, ignoring any one who dares
question or disagree unless they fit into a clique they have built (and
want to maintain by ostracizing people they deem unworthy),
brandishing them jerks, trolls, toxic and other childish names. Im glad
there are a few devs that can see this, but it feels like they are stepping
on egg shells (despite the rhetoric about how well the people in said
clique can communicate on technical matters).
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-16 9:39 ` Kalamatee
@ 2021-04-16 9:58 ` Frosku
0 siblings, 0 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: Frosku @ 2021-04-16 9:58 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Kalamatee, esr, gcc
On Fri Apr 16, 2021 at 10:39 AM BST, Kalamatee via Gcc wrote:
> On Fri, 16 Apr 2021 at 05:59, Eric S. Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com> wrote:
>
> > Ian Lance Taylor <iant@google.com>:
> > > Patronizing or infantilizing anybody doesn't come into this at all.
> >
> > I am not even *remotely* persuaded of this. This whole attitude that if
> > a woman is ever exposed to a man with less than perfect American
> > upper-middle-class manners it's a calamity requiring intervention
> > and mass shunning, that *reeks* of infantilizing women.
> >
> > > We want free software to succeed. Free software is more likely to
> > > succeed if more people work on it. If you are a volunteer, as many
> > > are, you can choose to spend your time on the project where you have
> > > to short-stop unwelcome advances, where you are required to deal with
> > > "men with poor social skills." Or you can choose to spend your time
> > > on the project where people treat you with respect. Which one do you
> > > choose?
> >
> > The one where your expected satisfaction is higher, with boorishness
> > from autistic males factored in as one of the overheads. Don't try to
> > tell me that's a deal-killer, I've known too many women who would
> > laugh at you for that assumption.
> >
> > > Or perhaps you have a job that requires you to work on free software.
> > > Now, if you work on a project where the people act like RMS, you are
> > > being forced by your employer to work in a space where you face
> > > unwelcome advances and men who have "trouble recognizing boundaries."
> > > That's textbook hostile environment, and a set up for you to sue your
> > > employer. So your employer will never ask anyone to work on a project
> > > where people act like that--at least, they won't do it more than once.
> >
> > Here's what happens in the real world (and I'm not speculating, I was
> > a BoD member of a tech startup at one time, stuff like this came up).
> > You say "X is being a jerk - can I work on something else?" Your
> > employer, rightly terrified of the next step, is not going to "force"
> > you to do a damn thing. He's going to bend over backwards to
> > accommodate you.
> >
> > > (Entirely separately, I don't get the slant of your whole e-mail. You
> > > can put up with RMS despite the boorish behavior you describe. Great.
> > > You're a saint. Why do you expect everyone else to be a saint?
> >
> > I'm no saint, I'm merely an adult who takes responsibility for my own
> > choices when dealing with people who have minimal-brain-damage
> > syndromes. OK, I have probably acquired a bit more tolerance for
> > their quirks than average from long experience, but I don't believe I'm
> > an extreme outlier that way.
> >
> > What I am pushing for is for everyone to recognize that *women are
> > adults* - they have their own agency and are in general perfectly
> > capable of treating an RMS-class jerk as at worst a minor annoyance.
> >
> > Behaving as though he's some sort of icky monster who should be
> > shunned by all right-thinking people and taints everything he touches
> > is ... just unbelievably disconnected from reality. Bizarre
> > neo-Puritan virtue signaling of no help to anyone.
> >
> > If I needed more evidence that many Americans lead pampered,
> > cossetted, hyper-insulated lives that require them to make up their
> > own drama, this whole flap would be it.
> >
> >
> Im glad there are people like you on the project Eric, because you
> express
> exactly what a lot of people see - even if a minority of people chose to
> ignore it,
>
> To a lot of "non americans", the events on here appear as nothing more
> than
> a power grab by a small minority of developers, abusing their position
> and
> american corporate ideologies to enact change, ignoring any one who
> dares
> question or disagree unless they fit into a clique they have built (and
> want to maintain by ostracizing people they deem unworthy),
> brandishing them jerks, trolls, toxic and other childish names. Im glad
> there are a few devs that can see this, but it feels like they are
> stepping
> on egg shells (despite the rhetoric about how well the people in said
> clique can communicate on technical matters).
A lot of Americans see it too, just many are petrified of speaking out
against this new illiberal orthodoxy.
>>= %frosku = { os => 'gnu+linux', editor => 'emacs', coffee => 1 } =<<
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread
* Re: removing toxic emailers
2021-04-16 4:09 ` Eric S. Raymond
2021-04-16 9:39 ` Kalamatee
@ 2021-04-16 16:17 ` Ian Lance Taylor
1 sibling, 0 replies; 153+ messages in thread
From: Ian Lance Taylor @ 2021-04-16 16:17 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Eric S. Raymond; +Cc: GCC Development
On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 9:09 PM Eric S. Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com> wrote:
>
> Ian Lance Taylor <iant@google.com>:
> > Patronizing or infantilizing anybody doesn't come into this at all.
>
> I am not even *remotely* persuaded of this. This whole attitude that if
> a woman is ever exposed to a man with less than perfect American
> upper-middle-class manners it's a calamity requiring intervention
> and mass shunning, that *reeks* of infantilizing women.
I just don't see it. Maybe occasionally. But in general you see
someone acting badly, and you think "I don't want to associate with
that person." Preferring to work with people who treat others
decently is not about infantilizing others.
> > We want free software to succeed. Free software is more likely to
> > succeed if more people work on it. If you are a volunteer, as many
> > are, you can choose to spend your time on the project where you have
> > to short-stop unwelcome advances, where you are required to deal with
> > "men with poor social skills." Or you can choose to spend your time
> > on the project where people treat you with respect. Which one do you
> > choose?
>
> The one where your expected satisfaction is higher, with boorishness
> from autistic males factored in as one of the overheads. Don't try to
> tell me that's a deal-killer, I've known too many women who would
> laugh at you for that assumption.
I'm not saying either option is a deal killer, I'm saying you have to
make a choice. And more generally a project has to make a choice.
> > Or perhaps you have a job that requires you to work on free software.
> > Now, if you work on a project where the people act like RMS, you are
> > being forced by your employer to work in a space where you face
> > unwelcome advances and men who have "trouble recognizing boundaries."
> > That's textbook hostile environment, and a set up for you to sue your
> > employer. So your employer will never ask anyone to work on a project
> > where people act like that--at least, they won't do it more than once.
>
> Here's what happens in the real world (and I'm not speculating, I was
> a BoD member of a tech startup at one time, stuff like this came up).
> You say "X is being a jerk - can I work on something else?" Your
> employer, rightly terrified of the next step, is not going to "force"
> you to do a damn thing. He's going to bend over backwards to
> accommodate you.
Yes.
> What I am pushing for is for everyone to recognize that *women are
> adults* - they have their own agency and are in general perfectly
> capable of treating an RMS-class jerk as at worst a minor annoyance.
OK, you got it. Not sure it's relevant to what I'm saying, though.
Ian
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 153+ messages in thread