Re: Guix (and Guile's) promise, and how to (hopefully) get there

["Ludovic Courtès" <ludo@gnu.org>]

Hi!

Before I reply to Christine’s insightful message, here’s my
Chief Visionary *cough* view on the questions you ask:

Ekaitz Zarraga <ekaitz@elenq.tech> skribis:

> - Do we need independent funding so we can pay for our machines and
>   maintenance?

We have enough money, about 50k€ currently at the FSF plus a couple
thousand € at Guix Foundation⁰.

⁰ There’s a ledger at
  <https://framagit.org/guix-europe/guix-europe/-/blob/main/accounting/accounting.ledger>
  but I don’t remember how to get the balance with the ‘ledger’ command.
  :-)

> - Is the Guix Foundation the way to do it?

It is one way to do it, yes.

> - Does GNU, or the FSF, have some role on that?

GNU isn’t a legal structure, it “doesn’t exist” so to speak.

The FSF reimburses when we send them invoices; Guix Foundation can pay
services, hardware, etc. directly, which is more convenient.

My preference would be to have a single structure, to improve legibility
and simplify things, and that structure would not be the FSF.

> - Can we improve anything relieving weight from the shoulders of some
>   people instead of putting even more on them?

Yes!  Committers can review code; people interested in governance can
help with the next steps, in particular the RFC process at
<https://issues.guix.gnu.org/66844>; sysadmins/devops/hackers can help
with the infrastructure¹; and so on.

These are some of the thankless tasks that are key to a healthy project
and where we must ensure a fair distribution of work to avoid burnout.

¹ https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2024-05/msg00183.html

> - Would having more committers help relieve some of the weight?

Only if they participate in code review.

> - If so, should we propose commit access to people, instead of waiting
>   them to propose themselves?

We should.  I think maintainers started doing it?

> - Should we ease the process of becoming a committer?

Do you think the process is difficult?  Or intimidating maybe?

Ludo’.