Re: conflicts in the gnu project now affect guile

[Alex Sassmannshausen <alex.sassmannshausen@gmail.com>]

Hello,

pelzflorian (Florian Pelz) <pelzflorian@pelzflorian.de> writes:

> This is very sad.  I appreciate the enormous time investments of all
> of you for Guile.  When you make a decision, I hope you understand the
> other.
>
> Regards,
> Florian

Many incredibly thoughtful emails have been sent to the mailing list on
this subject, and I will struggle to communicate ideas any more clearly
than has been done so far.

I have enormous respect for the work that RMS carried to bring Free
Software, and indeed GNU, into the world.  It is possible to recognise
the great deeds of a person whilst realising they are flawed, like the
rest of us; or that they have also done less than desirable things.

It is possible to believe RMS has done great work, and to believe that
maybe he is not the right person to lead the FSF or GNU.  If you start a
movement, you must realise that at some point you might find yourself no
longer the leader of it.

I believe that if different people, over a long period of time, keep
expressing similar worries about a person, then we need to listen to
those people.

But all the above points are really only tangentially related to the
present conversation.  Here, we are concerned with the wonderful
community that exists right now around Guile and Guix.  And I want this
community to continue to exist, and grow and retain its momentum.

We are all responsible for the wonderful community we have here, and the
way that this debate has taken place on these lists, when compared to
others I have seen is testament to this.

As for the disagreements between the past and present maintainers, I
have enormous respect for all of you, and hope you can together come to
an agreement on how to proceed.  I do believe there is sufficient space
in our community for different perspectives.  We should always start
from a commitment to doing what's right and to ensuring our space is
welcoming to people from all walks of life.

Best wishes,

Alex