GCC Mission Statement

GCC Mission Statement

[Valentino Giudice]

Hi.

The Mission Statement of the GCC project recently changed without any
announcement.

I am not a contributor to GCC, merely a user.
However, I'd like to understand more, especially about the
transparency of the project.

The GCC Steering Committee is supposed to follow the mission statement
as a guide for its decision.

Who changes the mission statement, and for what reason?
How can a modification of the statement be guided by the mission statement?
How were users and contributors informed of this?

Thank you in advance for your response.
Best regards.

For reference:
- The GCC homepage states the SC is "guided by the mission statement":
https://gcc.gnu.org/
- The mission statement before the update:
https://web.archive.org/web/20210331192925/https://gcc.gnu.org/gccmission.html

Re: GCC Mission Statement

[Siddhesh Poyarekar]

On 6/9/21 10:13 AM, Valentino Giudice via Gcc wrote:
> Hi.
> 
> The Mission Statement of the GCC project recently changed without any
> announcement.

Well there was an announcement; the changes in the mission statement 
reflect the new reality introduced by that announcement:

https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2021-June/236182.html

Siddhesh

Re: GCC Mission Statement

[Valentino Giudice]

Thank you.

> Well there was an announcement; the changes in the mission statement reflect the new reality introduced by that announcement:
>
> https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2021-June/236182.html
>
> Siddhesh

I was aware of that announcement, but it doesn't mention the mission
statement at all.
It appears that the decision in question was, at the time, in contrast
with the mission statement (rather than guided by it).

If the Steering Committee updates the mission statement, it may appear
that the mission statement follows the decisions of the steering
committee (in place of the contrary). In that case, what would be the
purpose of a mission statement?

The mission statement was also updated beyond simply making it
consistent with the change: in "Supporting the goals of the GNU
project, as defined by the FSF" the reference to the FSF was removed.

Was there any announcement about the update of the mission statement itself?
On what basis does the Steering Committee change the mission statement?

Re: GCC Mission Statement

[Siddhesh Poyarekar]

On 6/9/21 10:39 AM, Valentino Giudice wrote:
> I was aware of that announcement, but it doesn't mention the mission
> statement at all.
> It appears that the decision in question was, at the time, in contrast
> with the mission statement (rather than guided by it).
> 
> If the Steering Committee updates the mission statement, it may appear
> that the mission statement follows the decisions of the steering
> committee (in place of the contrary). In that case, what would be the
> purpose of a mission statement?
> 
> The mission statement was also updated beyond simply making it
> consistent with the change: in "Supporting the goals of the GNU
> project, as defined by the FSF" the reference to the FSF was removed.

Quite a few projects under the GNU project[1] have dissociated 
themselves from the FSF, so "as defined by the FSF" perhaps doesn't 
apply as consistently as it did before.  That is my understanding 
anyway; maybe there's more context that others may be able to add.

Siddhesh

[1] https://gnu.tools/en/software/

Re: GCC Mission Statement

[Didier Kryn]

Le 09/06/2021 à 07:09, Valentino Giudice via Gcc a écrit :
> If the Steering Committee updates the mission statement, it may appear
> that the mission statement follows the decisions of the steering
> committee (in place of the contrary). In that case, what would be the
> purpose of a mission statement?

    A chicken and egg question, hey (~:

--     Didier

Re: GCC Mission Statement

[Gabriel Ravier]

On 6/9/21 7:09 AM, Valentino Giudice via Gcc wrote:
> If the Steering Committee updates the mission statement, it may appear
> that the mission statement follows the decisions of the steering
> committee (in place of the contrary). In that case, what would be the
> purpose of a mission statement?

In essence, a mission statement is just that, a statement of the mission 
that the SC aims to follow. If the SC wishes to change that mission, it 
follows that the statement should be adjusted to adapt. The statement 
serves as any other statement serves: it gives information to others.

Of course, the mission statement is also binding on the SC itself, in a 
more social way: If it does not wish to lose faith of the GCC community, 
it should not go against the mission statement nor should it change it 
recklessly.

Speaking on the "change it recklessly" issue, I would personally say 
that SC has indeed arguably done this: I believe there should have been 
discussion of this change in the mailing list before it occurred, as 
essentially the only discussion on the mailing list that could have 
implied something like this would happen was the discussion from a while 
back about RMS and the FSF where some people threatened to pull away 
from GCC entirely if it remained tied to the FSF. I personally happen to 
agree with the change (which seems to have especially avoided what would 
have been a painful split that could have had disastrous consequences 
for GCC as a whole), but find it rather disconcerting that such changes 
with potentially major consequences were done without any direct 
discussion of them with the community whatsoever.

Re: GCC Mission Statement

[Giacomo Tesio]

Hi Gabriel,

On Wed, 9 Jun 2021 11:44:10 +0200 Gabriel Ravier via Gcc wrote:
> Speaking on the "change it recklessly" issue, I would personally say 
> that SC has indeed arguably done this [...]
> some people threatened to pull away from GCC entirely if it remained
> tied to the FSF. I personally happen to agree with the change (which
> seems to have especially avoided what would have been a painful split
> that could have had disastrous consequences for GCC as a whole), but
> find it rather disconcerting that such changes with potentially major
> consequences were done without any direct discussion of them with the
> community whatsoever.

Did you consider that, in fact, the lack of transparency of the
Steering Committee has shown since then (or even just the lack of
professionalism, when it comes to explicit intruduce major changes in
major versions) is a "disastrous consequence for GCC as a whole"?

Unilateral undiscussed changes by the Steering Committe is the new norm.


And such Steering Committee is in no way representing the interests of
the worldwide users of GCC, first because its members do not know them
(the vast majority is from the US, work for US corporations or both)
and second because they do not listen to any objection / request that
does not comes from their own circle / social group.


Are you sure that an explicit fork with two projects with different
names and governance would had been worse than what GCC has become?


Giacomo

Re: GCC Mission Statement

[Gabriel Ravier]

On 6/9/21 12:11 PM, Giacomo Tesio wrote:
> Hi Gabriel,
>
> On Wed, 9 Jun 2021 11:44:10 +0200 Gabriel Ravier via Gcc wrote:
>> Speaking on the "change it recklessly" issue, I would personally say
>> that SC has indeed arguably done this [...]
>> some people threatened to pull away from GCC entirely if it remained
>> tied to the FSF. I personally happen to agree with the change (which
>> seems to have especially avoided what would have been a painful split
>> that could have had disastrous consequences for GCC as a whole), but
>> find it rather disconcerting that such changes with potentially major
>> consequences were done without any direct discussion of them with the
>> community whatsoever.
> Did you consider that, in fact, the lack of transparency of the
> Steering Committee has shown since then (or even just the lack of
> professionalism, when it comes to explicit intruduce major changes in
> major versions) is a "disastrous consequence for GCC as a whole"?

I do consider that a lack of transparency is pretty bad, and that 
discussions on subjects like this should be done in public, but I 
wouldn't say it's just as bad as the potential risk that a fork would incur.

As for a lack of professionalism, I think it's pretty clear that GCC 11 
is the cutoff point here, and although there might be some problems with 
licensing bug fixes to old versions (which could not be reasonably 
avoided unless GCC made no major releases until GCC 11.5 is out), there 
isn't much reason to make a major version just for this when there was a 
major version a month ago. Note that releases are done ~1 time per year, 
so there isn't much FSF-copyrighted work "lost" with this.


> Unilateral undiscussed changes by the Steering Committe is the new norm.
>
>
> And such Steering Committee is in no way representing the interests of
> the worldwide users of GCC, first because its members do not know them
> (the vast majority is from the US, work for US corporations or both)
> and second because they do not listen to any objection / request that
> does not comes from their own circle / social group.

 From what I know on this subject, the SC is meant to represent the GCC 
community (those that actively participate in GCC development, at 
least), and they are composed of well-recognized members of that 
community. Adding in random unknown people to represent the "worldwide 
users" of GCC would certainly not be taken well by the community and 
would heavily hurt the credibility of the SC in the eyes of everyone 
involved in working on GCC, which would consequently hurt the project.

You might have your own views on the subject, but I would prefer having 
a credible SC that might not represent everyone in the world well than 
have an SC representing everyone in the world that isn't trusted by the 
people involved with the project (which could then result in the SC 
becoming trusted... by the few people who remain after all those that 
don't trust it leave).


> Are you sure that an explicit fork with two projects with different
> names and governance would had been worse than what GCC has become?

To be clear: From what I can see, the GCC project has effectively 
declared their independence (which they already pretty much had, they've 
just made it publicly clear) from the FSF in terms of who is at the helm 
of the project. It is their right to do so, and they certainly had the 
power to do so when the only power the FSF could exert over them was 
very minor, with as the only leverage some minor reputation loss from 
the loss of association with GNU and the DNS records for gcc.gnu.org. If 
RMS wants to try to do anything, the most he can do is expel the SC as 
the maintainers of the "GNU Compiler Collection", take the DNS records 
for gcc.gnu.org and make a fork that would most certainly be considered 
by everybody to be "FSF GCC" or something like that to distinguish it 
from what would most certainly be the GCC basically everyone uses. The 
only result of this would be that basically everyone would move over to 
gcc-compiler.org or something like that, and the situation would be 
functionally unchanged from what it is now.

Note: GCC as it has been for the past 2 decades was already a fork of 
the original GCC: RMS just decided to accept EGCS (former name of the 
current GCC) as the official version of GCC endorsed by GNU (this is why 
it was already effectively independent).


> Giacomo

Mission Statement

[Christopher Dimech]

All this could became meaningless in ten years time because major
changes have resulted from division.  If we go on dividing the
world using a knife rather than stitching it together, everything
will be left in tatters.  The more effort taken in this direction,
the more destructive things will become.  Rather, we must touch
deeper dimensions of our intelligence which is naturally
unifying.

For the sake of study, we initially divided things.  With time we
start believing that's how things work.  But nature is such that
without inclusiveness, there is no possibility.  If people do not
understand what I am talking about, they only have to keep their
mouth shut and hold their nose, and became totally exclusive.
And in a few minutes they will be dead.

The question is whether we are conscious about what is happening
or not.  Otherwise, inclusiveness will only be for survival
purposes.  The recent changes in the control of Gcc have all been
about survival.  Although, the change in copyright assignment can
prove beneficial to everybody, this assumes that the people in
the Gcc Steering Committee are actually capable of formally
understanding and operating the appropriate legal instruments (or
getting people who do the capability) to move the world closer to
a freedom respecting technological culture.

It is undeniable that the driving force behind the change was not
communal at all.  The aim was to loosen the bonds between the GCC
Projects and the FSF, pushed by the drive to impose the most
extreme form of censure to an individual and declare him "Persona
Non-Grata".

As for the way forward in the next ten years, software must
became much leaner and effective because of technological
capabilities.  There is no other way.  Software has not moved
fast as it should be for users.  The trend in the world in the
area of technology is that most things are becoming very lean and
mean.  One of the greatest injustices I see is that many things
are made in a hurry.

> Sent: Wednesday, June 09, 2021 at 4:56 PM
> From: "Siddhesh Poyarekar" <siddhesh@gotplt.org>
> To: "Valentino Giudice" <valentino.giudice96@gmail.com>, gcc@gcc.gnu.org
> Subject: Re: GCC Mission Statement
>
> On 6/9/21 10:13 AM, Valentino Giudice via Gcc wrote:
> > Hi.
> >
> > The Mission Statement of the GCC project recently changed without any
> > announcement.
>
> Well there was an announcement; the changes in the mission statement
> reflect the new reality introduced by that announcement:
>
> https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2021-June/236182.html
>
> Siddhesh
>



----- Christopher Dimech
Administrator General - Naiad Informatics - Gnu Project

Society has become too quick to pass judgement and declare someone
Persona Non-Grata, the most extreme form of censure a country can
bestow.

In a new era of destructive authoritarianism, I support Richard
Stallman.  Times of great crisis are also times of great
opportunity.  I call upon you to make this struggle yours as well !

https://stallmansupport.org/
https://www.fsf.org/     https://www.gnu.org/

Re: Mission Statement

[Aaron Gyes]

On Jun 9, 2021, at 6:48 AM, Christopher Dimech via Gcc <gcc@gcc.gnu.org <mailto:gcc@gcc.gnu.org>> wrote
> All this could became meaningless in ten years time because major
> changes have resulted from division.  If we go on dividing the
> world using a knife rather than stitching it together, everything
> will be left in tatters.  The more effort taken in this direction,
> the more destructive things will become.  Rather, we must touch
> deeper dimensions of our intelligence which is naturally
> unifying.
> 
> For the sake of study, we initially divided things.  With time we
> start believing that's how things work.  But nature is such that
> without inclusiveness, there is no possibility.  If people do not
> understand what I am talking about, they only have to keep their
> mouth shut and hold their nose, and became totally exclusive.
> And in a few minutes they will be dead.
> 
> The question is whether we are conscious about what is happening
> or not.  Otherwise, inclusiveness will only be for survival
> purposes.  The recent changes in the control of Gcc have all been
> about survival.  Although, the change in copyright assignment can
> prove beneficial to everybody, this assumes that the people in
> the Gcc Steering Committee are actually capable of formally
> understanding and operating the appropriate legal instruments (or
> getting people who do the capability) to move the world closer to
> a freedom respecting technological culture.
> 
> It is undeniable that the driving force behind the change was not
> communal at all.  The aim was to loosen the bonds between the GCC
> Projects and the FSF, pushed by the drive to impose the most
> extreme form of censure to an individual and declare him "Persona
> Non-Grata".
> 
> As for the way forward in the next ten years, software must
> became much leaner and effective because of technological
> capabilities.  There is no other way.  Software has not moved
> fast as it should be for users.  The trend in the world in the
> area of technology is that most things are becoming very lean and
> mean.  One of the greatest injustices I see is that many things
> are made in a hurry.


I imagine a person who could write this sort of thing in this context might
imagine themselves a prescient voice of reason, along the lines of Cicero or 
something or perhaps imagine the writings one day being read it and readers shaking
their heads sadly at how they were treated just as they do when reading about Socrates’
Apology, or Tacitus about suffering under the emperors. Instead, I suspect this
will be tossed in a very different, more awkward category.

Aaron

Re: GCC Mission Statement

[Giacomo Tesio]

Hi Gabriel,

On June 9, 2021 12:41:09 PM UTC, Gabriel Ravier <gabravier@gmail.com>
wrote:
> 
> I do consider that a lack of transparency is pretty bad, and that 
> discussions on subjects like this should be done in public, but I 
> wouldn't say it's just as bad as the potential risk that a fork would
> incur.

I really wonder what kind of risks are you thinking about.

Really, I could not see anyone.

Two organizations with different goals and values that explore
different ways to implement a compiler collection cannot cause any harm.


> As for a lack of professionalism, I think it's pretty clear that GCC
> 11 is the cutoff point here

May you point me to the line in the GCC 11.1's Changelog that
document this?

I cannot find anything!

Please give it a look: https://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-11/changes.html

> and although there might be some problems with 
> licensing bug fixes to old versions (which could not be reasonably 
> avoided unless GCC made no major releases until GCC 11.5 is out),
> there isn't much reason to make a major version just for this when
> there was a major version a month ago. 

GCC 11.1 is the first release of the 11 series.

In a professional environment more respectful of downstream users,
such major change would have been announced for the 12 series and
applied only to it an successive ones.

It would be very easy to achieve, allowing people around the
world to properly assess and handle the subtle legal risk introduced.


I mean: are we talking about GCC or a random hobby compiler on github?


> Note that releases are done ~1 time per year, 
> so there isn't much FSF-copyrighted work "lost" with this.

To be honest, I do not see the change as an issue for FSF.

The new legal risks affect users.


> > Unilateral undiscussed changes by the Steering Committe is the new
> norm.
> >
> > And such Steering Committee is in no way representing the interests
> > of the worldwide users of GCC, first because its members do not know
> > them (the vast majority is from the US, work for US corporations or
> > both) and second because they do not listen to any objection /
> > request that does not comes from their own circle / social group.
> 
> From what I know on this subject, the SC is meant to represent the GCC

The steering committee was founded in 1998 with the intent of
preventing any particular individual, group or organization from
getting control over the project [1].

But as Juvenal wrote "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"

I argued that FSF had such role (through RMS [2]), but now the members
of Steering Committee itself are "getting control over the project".


> community (those that actively participate in GCC development, at 
> least), and they are composed of well-recognized members of that 
> community. Adding in random unknown people to represent the 
> "world wideusers" of GCC would

Strawman: nobody ever suggested this.

You could radically increase SC diversity very easily, by removing
people who comes from the same corporation and adding people who are
well respected but do NOT share the exact same demographics and
interests of the other SC members.

Do you really think that ONLY white men working for a US tech company
or another ought to be "well-recognized members of that community"?

If not, they need not to be "random unknown people".

> certainly not be taken well by the community and 
> would heavily hurt the credibility of the SC in the eyes of everyone 
> involved in working on GCC, which would consequently hurt the project.

I always love how diversity completely stop being important when called
on the right group of good ol' well-respected US-centric white men! :-D
 

> You might have your own views on the subject, but I would prefer
> having a credible SC that might not represent everyone in the world
> well than have an SC representing everyone in the world that isn't
> trusted by the people involved with the project 

This is a false dilemma.

GCC could have a diverse AND trustworthy Steering Committee.
The current one is not diverse at all.

And if it was trustworthy they would have had no issue in discussing
this major change BEFORE applying it.


> > Are you sure that an explicit fork with two projects with different
> > names and governance would had been worse than what GCC has become?
> 
> To be clear: From what I can see, the GCC project has effectively 
> declared their independence (which they already pretty much had,
> they've just made it publicly clear) from the FSF in terms of who is
> at the helm of the project. It is their right to do so

Sure!

It's called "forking" and usually comes with a clear change in name.

GNU Compiler Collection is... uhm... a GNU project.



> they certainly had the power to do so when the only power the FSF
> could exert over them was very minor, with as the only leverage some
> minor reputation loss from the loss of association with GNU and the
> DNS records for gcc.gnu.org.

Well, you are right, it's plain clear: all of this has been a power play
between the FSF and the US companies that sponsor GCC development since
the very beginning.

BUT to be honest I was suprised that they didn't at least defer such
major change to the 12 series.

I mean they are not noobs.

They should know better.
We are talking about people from IBM, RedHat, Google...

This change IS going to cause legal issues to some users.
There was such a huge rush for this power grab?

> Note: GCC as it has been for the past 2 decades was already a fork of 
> the original GCC: RMS just decided to accept EGCS (former name of the 
> current GCC) as the official version of GCC endorsed by GNU (this is
> why it was already effectively independent).

Indeed.

RMS/FSF accepted the EGCS (former name of the FORK of GCC) as the
official version of GCC and left the project full indipendence.

Such indipendence was still true today, thus all this mess has been
created for no reason at all (as far as we can say... thanks to SC).


But note: as you say, back then the decision was taken by FSF/GNU. 
Also note: back then people who wanted to "declare their independence"
forked the project AND changed the name of their indipendent project.

Why today they cannot do the same?
Why they cannot even wait for the 12+ series?


Giacomo

[1] see https://gcc.gnu.org/steering.html

[2] see https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2021-March/235183.html

Re: GCC Mission Statement

[Richard Biener]

On Wed, Jun 9, 2021 at 4:22 PM Giacomo Tesio <giacomo@tesio.it> wrote:
>
> Hi Gabriel,
>
> On June 9, 2021 12:41:09 PM UTC, Gabriel Ravier <gabravier@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > I do consider that a lack of transparency is pretty bad, and that
> > discussions on subjects like this should be done in public, but I
> > wouldn't say it's just as bad as the potential risk that a fork would
> > incur.
>
> I really wonder what kind of risks are you thinking about.
>
> Really, I could not see anyone.
>
> Two organizations with different goals and values that explore
> different ways to implement a compiler collection cannot cause any harm.
>
>
> > As for a lack of professionalism, I think it's pretty clear that GCC
> > 11 is the cutoff point here
>
> May you point me to the line in the GCC 11.1's Changelog that
> document this?
>
> I cannot find anything!

Because GCC 11.1 was not affected by this change though GCC 11.1.1+
will.

You are free to create "DCO-free" branches for the GCC 11 series
(and older), reverting any DCO "incumbered" backports that reach
the official GCC branches for those series.  git should make that
easy up to the first major conflict / dependence issue.

Richard.

Re: GCC Mission Statement

[Giacomo Tesio]

Sure Richard, I know.

On June 9, 2021 2:32:22 PM UTC, Richard Biener  wrote:
> 
> You are free to create "DCO-free" branches for the GCC 11 series
> (and older), reverting any DCO "incumbered" backports that reach
> the official GCC branches for those series.  

I could.

Like all other people affected by the change.
If they know they should.

But isn't this a responsibility inversion?


I wonder: is this how you treat your users?

"Go fuck yourself" but politely stated?

To be honest, this comes to me as a great surprise.


That's what one would expect by the random guy on github, not by employees
of RedHat or Google serving as the Steering Committee of GCC.


Giacomo

GCC Mission Statement

[Christopher Dimech]

> Sent: Thursday, June 10, 2021 at 3:26 AM
> From: "Giacomo Tesio" <giacomo@tesio.it>
> To: "Richard Biener" <richard.guenther@gmail.com>
> Cc: "gcc@gcc.gnu.org" <gcc@gcc.gnu.org>, "Valentino Giudice" <valentino.giudice96@gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: GCC Mission Statement
>
> Sure Richard, I know.
>
> On June 9, 2021 2:32:22 PM UTC, Richard Biener  wrote:
> >
> > You are free to create "DCO-free" branches for the GCC 11 series
> > (and older), reverting any DCO "incumbered" backports that reach
> > the official GCC branches for those series.
>
> I could.
>
> Like all other people affected by the change.
> If they know they should.
>
> But isn't this a responsibility inversion?
>
>
> I wonder: is this how you treat your users?
>
> "Go fuck yourself" but politely stated?
>
> To be honest, this comes to me as a great surprise.
>
>
> That's what one would expect by the random guy on github, not by employees
> of RedHat or Google serving as the Steering Committee of GCC.
>
>
> Giacomo

We could start all over again.  We have already done it once with just one man.
And he shocked the world!

Re: Mission Statement

[Aaron Gyes]

On Jun 9, 2021, at 8:30 AM, Christopher Dimech <dimech@gmx.com> wrote:
> 
> Besides inspiring a sceptic attitude, Cicero made the language of
> the civilized world.

Yes

> This has nothing to do with any complaints
> of mistreatment, but mostly about belief systems that have taken
> over many people's lives.  That's what is most embarrassing.

Huh

> 
> After all, it was yourself who criticised my attitude towards Liu
> Hao, who had stated on 4/10/2021 the greatness of chairman mao
> and how he eradicated discrimination from chinese society.  Once
> you take on such zeal, you will get so badly identified with it,
> that you yourself will became a social problem.
> 
> The chinese communist party killed thousands of people every year
> by firing squads, lethal injection and mobile death vans.  Not to
> mention the horrifying child-killing policy during china's
> draconian one-child system.  It has recently also became infamous
> for forced uighur sterilisation.  How can I ever agree with
> someone who thinks the suppression of others is good!

Are you asserting I was wrong in my observations that day? Do you
think I disagree with anything in the second quoted paragraph?
Would it matter? Oh, why do I let myself get sucked in?

What even is that kind of argument occurring post “After all,”?

I can’t figure out if this is just a non-sequitur, and/or a straw
man, or part of a gish gallop? Something just pathological?
Perhaps I should go get checked and make sure I didn’t have a stroke
since it seems like I must be having trouble processing my
environment: it seems like you’ve been behaving this way on the
mailing list for months and apparently nobody in charge has asked
you to do better or stop and everyone here is pretty smart and
professional.

Aaron

Mission Statement

[Christopher Dimech]

> Sent: Thursday, June 10, 2021 at 3:49 AM
> From: "Aaron Gyes via Gcc" <gcc@gcc.gnu.org>
> To: "GCC Administrator via Gcc" <gcc@gcc.gnu.org>
> Subject: Re: Mission Statement
>
> On Jun 9, 2021, at 8:30 AM, Christopher Dimech <dimech@gmx.com> wrote:
> > 
> > Besides inspiring a sceptic attitude, Cicero made the language of
> > the civilized world.
> 
> Yes
> 
> > This has nothing to do with any complaints
> > of mistreatment, but mostly about belief systems that have taken
> > over many people's lives.  That's what is most embarrassing.
> 
> Huh

> > After all, it was yourself who criticised my attitude towards Liu
> > Hao, who had stated on 4/10/2021 the greatness of chairman mao
> > and how he eradicated discrimination from chinese society.  Once
> > you take on such zeal, you will get so badly identified with it,
> > that you yourself will became a social problem.
> > 
> > The chinese communist party killed thousands of people every year
> > by firing squads, lethal injection and mobile death vans.  Not to
> > mention the horrifying child-killing policy during china's
> > draconian one-child system.  It has recently also became infamous
> > for forced uighur sterilisation.  How can I ever agree with
> > someone who thinks the suppression of others is good!
> 
> Are you asserting I was wrong in my observations that day? Do you
> think I disagree with anything in the second quoted paragraph?
> Would it matter? Oh, why do I let myself get sucked in?

Absolutely.  You were wrong that day in attributing my comments
as personal criticisms based on country of origin.  Rather, it
was Liu Hao who started with group-based rhetoric that is the
mainstream position of the Chinese Communist Party.  One would be 
a fool to disagree with the second paragraph.  It was an argument
of how Liu Hao was wrong.
 
> What even is that kind of argument occurring post “After all,”?

It was a rejection of how things could be categorised as awkward. 
And an opportunity to set things right after the great controversies
we got embroiled into then. 
 
> I can’t figure out if this is just a non-sequitur, and/or a straw
> man, or part of a gish gallop? Something just pathological?
> Perhaps I should go get checked and make sure I didn’t have a stroke
> since it seems like I must be having trouble processing my
> environment: it seems like you’ve been behaving this way on the
> mailing list for months and apparently nobody in charge has asked
> you to do better or stop and everyone here is pretty smart and
> professional.

On the contrary, I have received a number of personal
correspondence questioning why I continue expressing my point of
view, or support people such as Richard Stallman and
others (within the Free Software Foundation; and among the open
source chiefs), from other prominent individuals leading software
projects around the world.

> Aaron

Such discussions have only come from cultures which are steeped
in morality.  As to something has to be good, and something has to
be bad.  In this state of making something right, and making
something wrong, there is no way for inclusiveness.

Every master has his own way.  You don't like my way as has been
evident by your implications that I am somehow diseased.  There
are whole academic dissertations on this inappropriate,
segregation-minded black-white dualism.  Such deliberate
segregation is something that has to be tackled.

I am very clear on what I am doing.  What somebody says, good or
bad things, it does not matter.  The best things that have ever
been done on this planet have always had bad press.  Today the
cycle has changed, but it will come back.  Soon the appreciation
will come.  Although my involvement is not about appreciation or
fear of criticism, I will not fall short of myself.  What I can
do must happen.

Re: Mission Statement

[Aaron Gyes]

> In this state of making something right, and making
> something wrong, there is no way for inclusiveness.

Are you familiar with the tolerance paradox?

Aaron

Mission Statement

[Christopher Dimech]

> Sent: Thursday, June 10, 2021 at 9:07 AM
> From: "Aaron Gyes via Gcc" <gcc@gcc.gnu.org>
> To: "GCC Administrator via Gcc" <gcc@gcc.gnu.org>
> Subject: Re: Mission Statement
>
> > In this state of making something right, and making
> > something wrong, there is no way for inclusiveness.
>
> Are you familiar with the tolerance paradox?
>
> Aaron

Yes, but I don't actually see how anybody in the hacker culture
has ever done that.  Do you?

Re: GCC Mission Statement

[Valentino Giudice]

> Quite a few projects under the GNU project[1] have dissociated
themselves from the FSF, so "as defined by the FSF" perhaps doesn't
apply as consistently as it did before.

That doesn't really answer any of my questions, though.

Re: GCC Mission Statement

[Valentino Giudice]

I am glad this email created some discussion.

Some users seem to think the change was either reckless or nontransparent.
This includes one user who replied me off list:
> Please continue until they tell the truth.

Given the additional context provided by the answers, I agree with that opinion.

I therefore call for the Steering Committee to reconsider the decision
and, at minimum, discuss it openly and transparently both on this
mailing list (seeking for consensus) and the FSF (especially given its
strong role in the previous mission statement).

I think the SC is accountable to the users as well, given that it
being guided by the mission statement is plainly stated on the GCC
homepage. But of course, it is also accountable to the people directly
involved.

I think the SC needs to clarify whether it gets to do whatever it
wants and change the mission of the project at will, for any reason
whatsoever.

I personally believe a positive answer is in contradiction with what
the SC is meant to be:

> The primary purpose of the steering committee is to make major decisions in the best interests of the GCC project and to ensure that the project adheres
to its fundamental principles found in the project's mission statement.

https://gcc.gnu.org/steering.html