Re: [Action Required] glibc decision to use CTI services.

[Alexandre Oliva <oliva@gnu.org>]

On Aug 30, 2023, Joseph Myers <joseph@codesourcery.com> wrote:

> On Wed, 30 Aug 2023, Alexandre Oliva wrote:
>> Even then, this would IMHO be a move for GNU to decide, or at the very
>> least be consulted on, according to its own values and priorities,
>> something that all mantainers appointed by GNU, myself included,
>> committed ourselves to observe, prioritize and uphold as maintainers of
>> GNU packages.  I encourage other maintainers to justify their responses
>> based on GNU's values and priorities, as they understand them.

> I believe the LF has already agreed to implement the hosting entirely with 
> free software.

Meeting basic requirements that, if not met, would make the service
provider profoundly hostile to software freedom is a far cry from being
in line with the movement's values.

Are you familiar with the notion of SaaSS, Service as a Software
Substitute?

"LF has agreed to such and such" doesn't sound good for me.  "We the
community have decided to implement our own services so and so" would
have made a lot of difference in avoiding the ills of SaaSS, but that
doesn't seem to even be in the radar of the path that is being proposed.

Now, this doesn't pertain to activities of publishing source code;
publishing is not SaaSS.  Remote merging, building, testing, and other
activities that are being bundled with source code publishing services,
however, are computing, community computing, and communities of such key
projects ought to not only be careful to avoid enabling third parties to
subjugate us through SaaSS, but also show other communities how to go
about avoiding that.

-- 
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.  Think Assange & Stallman.  The empires strike back