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

[Suhail Singh <suhailsingh247@gmail.com>]

Efraim Flashner <efraim@flashner.co.il> writes:

> The problem is RMS.  The incident Juliana is referring to is when he
> appointed himself back onto the board of the FSF a few years ago.

Thank you for clarifying.

> To phrase it diplomatically, it is not his Free Software positions that
> give people pause. I will not try to list or go into detail the
> different reasons people don't want to associate with him, but I will be
> explicit that it is not because of his stance on Free Software.

So if I understand correctly, for some people an association with FSF
and GNU is indiscernible from an endorsement of RMS's opinions and
actions that are distinct from his stance on Free Software.  Whereas for
others the association with FSF and GNU is about an endorsement of Free
Software ideals.

Without going into matters such as how widespread or
worthy-of-mitigation a problem this is, i.e., whether or not something
_should_ be done about this, I am left wondering why a simple disclaimer
such as below wouldn't be adequate (assuming it's deemed
worthy-of-action by the maintainers):

#+begin_quote
  While the Guix project supports the Free Software movement and in
  those matters is aligned with the ideals of the FSF, we do not
  (necessarily) condone nor support the opinions of all members,
  especially on unrelated matters.  Specifically, we do not approve nor
  support RMS's views on matters distinct from his stance on Free
  Software.
#+end_quote

If the issue isn't simply about clarifying what the Guix project
supports or doesn't support, but rather about the public's perception of
it, I sincerely hope the maintainers give some thought to what
constitutes "reasonable" vs "beyond reasonable" before making a
decision.  For instance, should support for Emacs be dropped because
it's related to RMS?  What if someone states that the support for Emacs
makes them uncomfortable?  What if 10 people state that?

These are difficult questions indeed, but in my opinion these questions
are necessary to consider (and in the interest of transparency,
important to make opinions on them explicit), before deciding on a
course of action.  Otherwise, we run the risk of trading-in conviction
for our beliefs for, possibly, short-lived public approval.

-- 
Suhail