Re: The GNU Toolchain Infrastructure Project

[Alexandre Oliva <oliva@gnu.org>]

On Oct  7, 2022, Mark Wielaard <mark@klomp.org> wrote:

> Hi Siddhesh,
> On Thu, 2022-10-06 at 17:07 -0400, Siddhesh Poyarekar wrote:
>> Could you clarify in what way you think the *scope* got changed
>> between 
>> the private communications and the proposal that actually got posted?

> Given that they were private I can only talk for myself:
> https://inbox.sourceware.org/overseers/Yz9dZWC9QIv+r4LH@elastic.org/T/#m22a52506bc116dbcb10c8cbfa8ed89510f4dc1b7
> But various people listed as "key stakeholders consulted" said they
> either didn't know anything about this, they were contacted but never
> got any details, or were only told about parts of it.

That makes me very concerned.

Negotiating a community agreement in secrecy is worrysome to boot, but
giving different stakeholders different views of what the agreement
supposedly amounts to is a political trick normally used to push an
agreement through that would have been rejected by a majority, even if
for different reasons.  By presenting different views to different
parties, and misrepresenting their support for those partial views as
support for the whole they didn't even know about, one might put enough
pressure to persuade other parties to drop their objections, if they
believe the claimed broad support.

Even I got presented two very different views of the proposal by two of
its lead proponents, with different motivations (which is reasonable)
but factually conflicting commitments (which is not).

This all taken together makes me conclude that the alleged support for
the proposal, claimed by its lead proponents, is not something that can
be counted on, or taken for granted.  It needs to be double-checked by
circulating publicly a proposal encompassing everything that the
proposal entails, and then seeing whether it's actually acceptable as a
whole.  Given the chosen strategy, I suspect it won't be.

-- 
Alexandre Oliva, happy hacker                https://FSFLA.org/blogs/lxo/
   Free Software Activist                       GNU Toolchain Engineer
Disinformation flourishes because many people care deeply about injustice
but very few check the facts.  Ask me about <https://stallmansupport.org>