Re: The GNU Toolchain Infrastructure Project

[Mark Wielaard <mark@klomp.org>]

Hi Carlos,

Thanks for describing your proposal publicly. It will take some time
to deconstruct it to see how we can mix-and-match the different
parts. But I really like our approach of creating a sourceware
infrastructure bug for each separate concern to see how we can resolve
it.

For now I just wanted to comment in this part which I think caused
some confusion and might have caused the impression some people were
working against each other.

On Tue, Sep 27, 2022 at 03:59:32PM -0400, Carlos O'Donell via Overseers wrote:
> The key stakeholders of the GNU Toolchain community have been
> proactively briefed and included in community conversations during
> the process of developing this proposal with incorporation of their
> feedback. The key stakeholders consulted include GNU Toolchain
> project leadership, GNU Toolchain project release managers, GNU
> Toolchain project core developers, major vendors, active Sourceware
> / Overseers administrators, and both John Sullivan and Zoë Kooyman
> of the Free Software Foundation.

Now that I have talked to some of these people I think something went
wrong in the feedback loop. I think several people, me included,
didn't know what parts of their feedback was incorporated or not and
might have had a different understanding of how the proposal changed
over time and/or which parts of the proposals they had agreed to or
what others had been told. Or even if these proposals were still a
thing, because after initial contact there was no more communication.

Just speaking for myself when you contacted me at the start of the
year, I thought we agreed on the following feedback:

- We use the name GNU Toolchain Infrastructure because that is more
  popular and recognizable, but this really is about all of
  sourceware. Only later did I realize this is confusing and we should
  just talk about sourceware as a Free Software hosting project and
  not single out a few projects. This also helped when we started
  talking to the SFC and FSF because it made clear we didn't want to
  influence or control any of projects receiving infrastructure
  support.

- If we are going to seek additional funding for sourceware, which I
  didn't believe was really necessary at that point, we need a fiscal
  sponsor that is a 501(c)3 public charity to keep the community in
  control instead of any potential sponsors. That is why we are now in
  the process of becoming a SFC member project.

- This needs to be a public and open discussion with a public
  technical roadmap. Which is why we had those public roadmap
  discussions and why we now have builder.sourceware.org, upgraded
  patchwork.sourceware.org, inbox.sourceware.org, the
  sr.ht/~sourceware mirror, etc.

- It needs to be fully free software, I won't join a groups.io "list"
  or use google meet/docs or use github, etc. Which is why there is so
  much enthousiasm now for setting up a BBB server.

Hope that helps explain how we seemed to have ended up with different
sets of proposals for the future of sourceware which we now are trying
to combine again.

Cheers,

Mark