Re: conflicts in the gnu project now affect guile

[Neil Van Dyke <neil@neilvandyke.org>]

Dear fellow Guile people,

I'm a long-time libre software and Scheme person, who recently 
subscribed to the Guile lists.  After so long away from Guile, I was 
very happy to return and see an active developer community around it.  I 
appreciate everyone's labor-of-love efforts here, in some of the best 
spirit of libre software.

I'm troubled to hear, in the last month or so, some concerns that have 
been discouraging people in libre software, including Guile. I've long 
been aware of some ways people have been alienated from libre software, 
but not of some of the more discouraging things I've heard recently.

Discouragement tends to mean losing people.  One of our primary goals is 
the opposite of losing people -- welcoming and gaining the collective 
benefits of *many more* people, participating and contributing.

Being welcoming is a continual learning process, for all of us. Like 
many topics, the more I learn, I realize the less I knew.  It's very 
humbling.  What I think we can do is embrace that humility -- to ask, to 
listen, and to try.  (I don't claim to be at all good at this, 
personally; only that it seems to be a very constructive aspiration or 
guideline, to try to remember.)

I'd also like to propose that we try to extend that humility to 
supporting others, as we all continually learn from mistakes. Making it 
safe/permissible to recognize, learn from, and correct mistakes seems 
part of a healthy environment.  We're all human, built on learning from 
mistakes, and it's OK.  Some situations might eventually prove to be 
"irreconcilable", but we should try to consider the possibilities, 
perhaps with a touch of aspirational idealism and creativity, and 
considering the good that might come from each possibility we can 
imagine, before we decide which paths to pursue.

I hope that everyone currently involved with Guile will continue to be 
involved, not get discouraged and leave -- even as we all continue 
figuring out how to be more welcoming to everyone, and figuring out how 
to correct some past alienation of people, which I think has also harmed 
us collectively.

Thank you, and best regards to everyone.