From: "Linus Björnstam" <linus.bjornstam@veryfast.biz>
To: guile-devel@gnu.org
Subject: Re: conflicts in the gnu project now affect guile
Date: Wed, 16 Oct 2019 23:03:32 +0200 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <f4cf99c4-f0dc-4891-9433-a4276b5623a3@www.fastmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <87blugg7dt.fsf@pobox.com>
Hi Andy!
Your work (and amazing blog) and the wonderful work by the GUIX team is what brought me to guile. I don't have any I'll feelings towards Mark (I have appreciated his support on the mailing list many times), but I will follow Guile wherever you and Ludo take it, inside or outside the GNU project.
I am but a lowly hobby programmer (who found a home in scheme) soI don't think I can contribute much in either case, but if financial support for hosting is needed I can contribute to that. Apart from trying my best to help people in the IRC channel.
Thank you for your work.
--
Linus Björnstam
On Wed, 16 Oct 2019, at 15:14, Andy Wingo wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> In the last few weeks, a conversation among GNU maintainers that has
> been simmering for years burst into public. For a while it resubmerged
> into private GNU lists, but now it has resurfaced to affect the Guile
> project.
>
> Just for background information, I wrote about my thoughts here:
>
> https://wingolog.org/archives/2019/10/08/thoughts-on-rms-and-gnu
>
> The summary is that, like many people in GNU, I have long treated
> Richard Stallman not as a hero, not as a leader, but rather a "missing
> stair" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_stair) that one has to
> route around. This approach was never very inclusive -- if you don't
> have much experience in GNU, it's possible to not know about it, and to
> fall in the hole yourself. On the other hand if you know of RMS but not
> Guile, you might think that Guile developers support RMS.
>
> However, recent events made me realize this approach was not only unfair
> to newcomers, but unjust as well, as by continuing to work on GNU and
> not saying anything, I was both lending unmerited prestige to RMS,
> enabling his creepy behavior towards women, and additionally, enabling
> his apparent pedophilia-advocacy.
>
> Regarding this latter point, I wasn't really aware that this was a view
> RMS was promoting, but I am ashamed to admit that I had heard rumors
> that Richard publically advocated sex between adults and teenagers,
> defended sexual harassers, and questioned the experience of victims of
> sexual assault, and I preferred not to listen. Looking again, and I
> think Richard's web site speaks for itself:
>
>
> https://web.archive.org/web/20170612074722/http://stallman.org/archives/2017-mar-jun.html#26_May_2017_(Prudish_ignorantism)
>
> https://web.archive.org/web/20180131020215/https://stallman.org/archives/2017-jul-oct.html#29_October_2017_(Pestering_women)
>
> https://web.archive.org/web/20180104112431/https://www.stallman.org/archives/2017-nov-feb.html#27_November_2017_(Roy_Moore's_relationships)
>
> https://web.archive.org/web/20180509120046/https://stallman.org/archives/2018-mar-jun.html#30_April_2018_(UN_peacekeepers_in_South_Sudan)
>
> https://web.archive.org/web/20180911075211/https://www.stallman.org/archives/2018-jul-oct.html#17_July_2018_(The_bullshitter's_flirting)
>
> https://web.archive.org/web/20180911075211/https://www.stallman.org/archives/2018-jul-oct.html#21_August_2018_(Age_and_attraction)
>
> https://web.archive.org/web/20180924231708/https://stallman.org/archives/2018-jul-oct.html#23_September_2018_(Cody_Wilson)
>
> https://web.archive.org/web/20181113161736/https://www.stallman.org/archives/2018-sep-dec.html#6_November_2018_(Sex_according_to_porn)
>
> https://web.archive.org/web/20190325024048/https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jan-apr.html#14_February_2019_(Respecting_peoples_right_to_say_no)
>
> https://www.stallman.org/archives/2019-may-aug.html#11_June_2019_(Stretching_meaning_of_terms)
>
> https://web.archive.org/web/20190801201704/https://stallman.org/archives/2019-may-aug.html#12_June_2019_(Declining_sex_rates)
>
> https://web.archive.org/web/20190801201704/https://stallman.org/archives/2019-may-aug.html#30_July_2019_(Al_Franken)
>
> https://web.archive.org/web/20190903050208/https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#27_August_2019_(Me-too_frenzy)
>
> Anyway. So far, so GNU. A couple weeks ago I thought it an opportune
> moment to declare publicly the views that I have long held privately:
> that I do not consider RMS to be the leader of GNU, and that GNU
> maintainers and other developers with a stake in the project should
> organize to fill the void.
>
> * * *
>
> I pause here to mention that you may not agree with this perspective and
> that is fine. There are many ways that we can continue to work together
> while this discussion plays out. Part of the purpose of this mail
> though is to make it clear that there are differences of opinion and
> that the GNU project is in flux.
>
> * * *
>
> Now we get to how this issue affects Guile.
>
> Before the RMS/GNU/FSF conversation started, Mark Weaver left Guile, for
> essentially unrelated reasons. He threatened to leave because he wished
> to be consulted before I landed mixed definitions and expressions and
> shipped them in the 2.9.4 release; I responded over email asking to talk
> about the issues; in response a week later I see that he resigned from
> maintainership and left the Guile group on Savannah. It was truly a
> shame for Guile, as Mark is an excellent hacker and has done a lot of
> good work for Guile.
>
> It's true also that, mixed with the sadness, I felt a modicum of relief.
> It has never been easy to work with Mark. I could toil on Guile for
> weeks, taking time away from my family, and then wake up to receive a
> private mail excoriating me for my work. It was also far from the first
> time he threatened to leave the project if he did not get his way. I
> have never let the problems between Mark and me into the public sphere
> though, preferring to preserve his reputation, and it is only out of
> necessity that I do so now.
>
> Yesterday, on internal project-wide GNU mailing lists, Mark brought up
> his personal grievances with me, arguing that the only reason I was
> ignoring RMS was because, in his opinion, RMS is the only person that
> could stop me from being Guile Dictator For Life; that I was attacking
> Richard out of some kind of hypocritical, tyrannical megalomania.
>
> Naturally I don't think this is the case. We all have our problems but
> this particular one isn't mine. It is true that when I get home after a
> long day of work and take care of my family and maybe have a precious
> half-hour or hour here or there, I usually prefer to devote it to
> retiring items from my personal Guile 3.0 to-do list, rather than
> helping others; a failing, perhaps, but not a malicious one. I always
> tried to enable Mark's work, supporting him becoming committer, then
> maintainer, then trying to keep him on board; but evidently that was not
> enough. Fair enough; I can't please everybody.
>
> Still, it was with surprise that I woke up this morning to a request
> from Mark to re-join the Guile project on Savannah, saying that RMS had
> appointed Mark to become co-maintainer, and that Mark assented -- "given
> recent events".
>
> Now, Richard has no idea about Guile or how it works either technically
> or socially, and has not consulted with me as Guile maintainer, nor to
> my knowledge did he consult with Ludovic. I don't know what to conclude
> about RMS's motivations -- is it retaliation? And why would Mark
> assent, especially if he professes to be scandalized by autocratic
> behavior and messianic tendencies? I can't say as I have no more
> information than this Savannah request.
>
> It a test, perhaps? Mark is already aware that I do not consider RMS to
> have a leadership role in the GNU project, but although this position is
> shared by others, it is not a consensus position, and I don't think it's
> Mark's position. Of course it goes without saying that I don't consider
> this supposed appointment of Mark as co-maintainer of GNU Guile to be
> legitimate in the least, but who else will go along with it?
>
> And what role is Mark looking for? Are we to have commit wars or
> something? I would certainly hope not but I can't tell. I don't think
> the conditions exist currently for good collaboration between me and
> Mark, so I am not sure how this will play out in the future.
>
> * * *
>
> I guess I shouldn't be surprised that conversation about the future of
> GNU has now reached Guile, but it is still strange to find that the
> questions of "how much pedophilia advocacy is too much pedophilia
> advocacy" or "how much creepiness towards women is acceptable" should
> have any bearing on the development of an implementation of Scheme.
> But, here we are. The differences of position are real and we need to
> see how to go forward with them.
>
> Perhaps this moment is an opportunity, to see where the Guile community
> stands. In that spirit I invite Guile community members to weigh in on
> the issue. What do you think about Guile's continued relationship with
> GNU? What about its relationship with RMS? Finally, what would you
> like to see happen regarding the future of Guile?
>
> Yours in free software,
>
> Andy
>
>
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2019-10-16 21:03 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 44+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2019-10-16 13:14 conflicts in the gnu project now affect guile Andy Wingo
2019-10-16 14:11 ` Thompson, David
2019-10-16 15:33 ` Christopher Lemmer Webber
2019-10-16 16:10 ` Eli Zaretskii
2019-10-19 17:05 ` Mark H Weaver
2019-10-16 18:27 ` Jean Louis
2019-10-16 18:27 ` Jean Louis
2019-10-16 19:30 ` pelzflorian (Florian Pelz)
2019-10-18 9:44 ` Alex Sassmannshausen
2019-10-16 18:12 ` Jean Louis
[not found] ` <CAGua6m3d_t2hd7P2ueTsPZytF7pNO7f8xptBWofPw9UvyYWDaw@mail.gmail.com>
2019-10-16 21:32 ` Fwd: " Stefan Israelsson Tampe
2019-10-16 21:56 ` Tadeus Prastowo
2019-10-16 22:05 ` Adrienne G. Thompson
2019-10-18 3:16 ` Richard Stallman
2019-10-18 3:17 ` Richard Stallman
2019-10-18 10:37 ` Tadeus Prastowo
2019-10-16 19:21 ` Mikael Djurfeldt
2019-10-16 21:03 ` Linus Björnstam [this message]
2019-10-17 0:18 ` Arne Babenhauserheide
2019-10-17 1:24 ` Mark H Weaver
2019-10-17 7:07 ` Jan Nieuwenhuizen
2019-10-18 7:24 ` Mark H Weaver
2019-10-19 7:51 ` Guile and Mes [WAS: conflicts in the gnu project now affect guile] Jan Nieuwenhuizen
2019-10-19 8:56 ` Mikael Djurfeldt
2019-10-18 11:20 ` conflicts in the gnu project now affect guile Christopher Lemmer Webber
2019-10-18 13:14 ` Mark H Weaver
2019-10-18 13:33 ` Christopher Lemmer Webber
2019-10-18 13:49 ` Thompson, David
2019-10-17 1:40 ` Mike Gran
2019-10-17 2:11 ` Neil Van Dyke
2019-10-17 18:11 ` Mikhail Kryshen
2019-10-18 9:26 ` Alex Sassmannshausen
2019-10-19 4:03 ` Mikhail Kryshen
2019-10-18 1:06 ` Mark H Weaver
2019-10-18 6:31 ` Nala Ginrut
2019-10-18 9:20 ` Mikael Djurfeldt
2019-10-18 14:22 ` Ludovic Courtès
2019-10-19 22:55 ` Taylan Kammer
2019-10-20 3:08 ` Mark H Weaver
2019-10-20 3:54 ` Nala Ginrut
2019-10-20 19:12 ` Taylan Kammer
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2019-10-18 11:29 Todor Kondić
2019-10-18 15:09 ` pelzflorian (Florian Pelz)
2019-10-18 11:45 Mark H Weaver
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